Category: Old Testament

Let’s take a last look at the symbolism in Israel’s Old Testament journey to the promised land.  Recall that the wilderness represents the believer who, having received the Holy Spirit, is not experiencing His presence.  He struggles to live the Christian life by his own efforts as if the Spirit were not there on the inside.  The promised land, on the other hand, represents the Christian life at rest; a life of walking in the Spirit by faith.  Or put another way, a life lived in the power of the risen Christ.

If you think about it, there is a brand of Christian teaching today that is basically how to survive in the wilderness.  It holds no promise of a life at rest, only a life at work.  We must keep the work level up to be accepted and approved by God.  And if it has a soundtrack, this is what we hear.  “The Christian life is going to be very difficult, but God said to do it.  You are not going to want to walk in His ways, but it is what is required.  This obedient life is going to be a drudgery, but buck up and stick to it.  All of this will feel like a burden, but take courage heaven is coming.”

There is not a lot of joy or optimism in that kind of teaching.  And it is also not what the over-arching message of the New Testament teaches.  Not only do you have a new heart, a new nature, a new power, and a new Spirit inside, but in a very misunderstood and underappreciated promise, you also have a new hunger, a new “want to” inside you.  As Andrew Murray wrote in The Two Covenants, over a hundred years ago, “The New Covenant’s central promise is a heart delighting in God’s law and capable of knowing and having fellowship with Him.”

God is inviting you out of the wilderness.  God is inviting you to cross the symbolic Jordan River.  God is inviting you into His rest in the here and now.  And we enter that rest by faith.  Faith that even when we are not feeling it, we do indeed have a new heart, a new nature, a new power, a new Spirit, and a new hunger to follow God’s ways.

Once we recognize God’s offer of rest and embrace it by faith, those negative voices of shame we saw at the top of this blog post are replaced by the incredible promises of God.

• His burden is light and His load is easy (Matt 11:30).  Why?  Because Christ Himself is in the yoke doing the heavy lifting.
• His commandments are not burdensome (I Jn 5:3).  Why?  Because you were made for this.  God is good and His instruction is for our good.
• Our old self and its evil practices have been laid aside (Col 3:9).  Why?  Because sin is no longer your master.  Christ is our guide.
• His divine power has given us everything we need for godliness (II Pet 1:3).  Why?  Because Christ is always near to give us the energy and desire.
• We are no longer slaves to sin (Rom 6:7)  Why?  Because our old nature died with Christ and sin has lost its power over us.
• Christ is living His life through us (Gal 2:20)  Why?  Because He came to indwell us and as instruments of good, we show His goodness to the world.
• We are motivated by love, not by selfish ambition (II Cor 5:14).  Why?  Because we have the Spirit to influence and check our motives.
• There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1).  Why?  The price has been paid in full by our Savior.  There is no more shame or rejection from God.
• Christ has set us free (Gal 5:1), and He invites us to walk in that freedom.

Of course, these promises are just the tip of the iceberg.  Just the New Testament imagery of God as our good and tender and kind Father – that one concept alone – carries incredible implications for resting in Him.

By God’s grace, I believe the church and it’s teaching on discipleship is headed in this direction.  I am seeing so many musicians, artists, teachers, and preachers recognizing this supernatural provision of Christ and His Spirit living in us.  And it is leading to freedom, joy, and peace in the our Christian experience.

Will you join us?  Is the path in this promised land always smooth?  Not at all.  Just as for the nation of Israel, there are battles to be fought even in the promised land.  Sin, though no longer our master, still presses upon us with its ugly and lying influence; it’s guilt and shame, it’s fear and worry.  But victory – powered by our faith and the sureness of God’s promises – is waiting!

Over the past few months, we have been considering the connection between our path to spiritual growth and the experience of the children of Israel on their path to the promised land.  We have compared Israel’s escape from Egypt with our initial salvation which set us free from sin’s penalty.  We have compared God’s promise to take Israel into the land with His promise to us of a Sabbath rest.  This is not a one-day-a-week rest.  This is a life of rest in Him.  A life of walking in the Spirit by faith.  A life of peace and victory.

Finally, when Israel shrunk back and refused to go into the land due to a lack of faith, they were destined for a generation of wandering in the wilderness.  This detour is a picture of today’s believer who shrinks back from God’s promise of freedom from the power of sin.  The wilderness Christian is content to live the life in his own power, going around in circles without direction; without progress along the path of spiritual maturity.

If this gospel analogy between Israel and us is awakening something in you, we have one more passage about Israel’s journey that, quite frankly, blows me away.

Let’s fast forward from Israel’s initial rejection of entry into the promised land.  Forty years of wandering in the wilderness have now passed.  A new generation of the children of Israel are camped across the Jordan River from Canaan, ready to cross over and enter the land of promise.  Joshua, Moses’ successor and leader of the nation, has sent two spies into the land reminiscent of an earlier spy mission forty years before.

When the spies arrived in the house of Rahab, the Canaanite, in the city of Jericho, they made a startling discovery.  Listen to it in Rahab’s own words to the spies.  “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away [become demoralized] before you.  For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.  And when we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath” (Josh. 2:9-11).

What did the spies discover?  That for forty years, Canaan had been a defeated foe.  The people of Canaan, who the original Israelite spies said were giants that would devour their woman and children, were only paper tigers.  They had already conceded victory to Israel forty years ago when Israel crossed the Red Sea.  Their Canaanite “hearts melted” and they had “no courage” to take on the children of Israel.  But instead of claiming this victory when they were on the doorstep of the promised land, Israel shrunk back and marched around the wilderness completely unaware that the so-called giants of the promised land had already given up; had already lost hope of defeating God’s people.

Faithless Israel had no idea that the victory was already theirs.  The enemy had already given up.  So how does this compare to our experience today?

When you look at the path ahead, do you see giants?  So you see besetting sins that cannot be conquered?  Do you see a past that holds you in prison?  Do you see unrelenting guilt and shame, fear and worry, pride and selfish ambition?

Did you know that all of these enemies were defeated by Jesus at the cross?  Yes, the victory is ours even when we are unaware or unsure if that is really true.  How can I know that for sure?  Because the Bible tells me so.  Because God not only told us about it; He promises to do something about it.  He sent Jesus to die in our place, the righteous for the unrighteous, for two purposes.

One to take away our guilt before a holy God and remove the penalty of sin from our future.  But He also died to remove the power of sin in our present by literally coming to live His life in us.  This is what the Bible means by us “being justified by Christ’s death and being saved by Christ’s life” (Rom 5:10).  So in the here and now, He is offering you a promise to set you free from guilt, shame, fear, worry, idolatry, pride, and sin’s mastery in your life.

This is the lesson of Joshua chapter 2.  Read the whole chapter and you will see a beautiful picture unfold of laying claim to victory over an already defeated enemy.  For us, the power of sin still raises its ugly head in the life of a believer, but pick up your sword of faith and lay claim to the victory that is in Christ Jesus.

Our emphasis over the past several posts has been this:  the children of Israel could not enter the promised land on the first try (Numbers 13-14) due to a lack of faith.  Likewise, the book of Hebrews looking back at their example, teaches us that faith is required of us to enter the believer’s rest.  The offer for us to enter a life of rest – walking in the Spirit by faith and experiencing the power of Christ living in us – it is accepted and received and embraced by faith.

Looking back at Israel’s example in the book of Numbers, there is an obscure incident in Israel’s refusal to enter the land that again illuminates our own walk of faith.  Recall that when Israel first arrived on the doorstep of the promised land, ten of the spies who scouted out Canaan came back with a message of doom.  “The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants” (Num 13:32)  And by implication … “it will devour us and our children if we go in.”

The children of Israel believed the spies report and turned their back on God’s promise to give them the land.  “And all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, ‘Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness!  And why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword?  Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?’  So they said to one another, ‘Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt’ ” (Num 14:2-4).

We know what happens next.  As a result of Israel’s refusal to go in, God delivers a curse.  “Say to this evil congregation, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will surely do to you; your corpses shall fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me…Your children, however, whom you said would become prey – I will bring them in, and they shall know the land which you have rejected.  But as for you, your corpses shall fall in this wilderness’ ” (Num 14:28-32).

Now comes the less well-known next scene.  Did you know that faced with God’s punishment of a 40 year trek across the wilderness, the children of Israel change course and decide to go into the land after all – right here in Numbers 14?

But it is too late.  Moses warns the children of Israel against this plan.  “But Moses said, ‘Why then are you transgressing the mouth of the Lord, when it will not succeed?  Do not go up, lest you be struck down before your enemies, for the Lord is not among you’ ” (Num 14:41-42)

But they went up anyway against the Canaanites.  “But the children of Israel went up heedlessly to the ridge of the hill country; neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses left the camp.  Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in the hill country came down, and struck them and beat them down as far as Hormah” (Num 14:44-45).  The Israelites struck out on their own and the result was disaster and defeat because “the Lord was not among them.”

Here is the application for us in light of all we have been studying in Israel’s example.  God has promised us a rest that comes from abiding in Him (Matt 11, Jn 15, Heb 4, and many New Testament passages).  This rest is characterized by a complete trust in Him.  Trusting Christ to keep His promises of love, acceptance, forgiveness, peace, power, victory, and so much more.  But it only happens if we put our full trust in God’s promise of provision.

When we follow Israel’s example of rejecting God’s plan and seeking to accomplish the same result on their own terms, we are living the Christian life with Christ out of the picture.  We are living the Christian life on our own.  We are following the rules in our own power and putting our trust in our own checklist.  We are engaged in “sin management” through our own self-effort with no regard for His promise to live His life through us.

This is Israel trying to take the land in their own power in Numbers 14.  And this is us, trying to live the life in our own power; trying to work hard enough to gain God’s acceptance and approval.  Israel’s effort ended in disaster and defeat.  Our self-effort will also end in defeat; lost in a cycle of pride when we are doing well and shame when we fail.  A lost peace, lost power, and lost victory.  A lost closeness to the Father, a lost connection with the Son, and a lost power from the Holy Spirit.

The Father is reaching out to you today.  Will you embrace His offer of rest for your soul?

So we learned last time that God’s rest is sometimes called a Sabbath rest.  Just as God rested after six days of creation (a rest that provided a basis for observing the Sabbath), so we, upon entering God’s rest of walking in the Spirit by faith, are also to rest from our work.  “There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.  For the one who has entered His rest has himself rested from his works, as God did from His” (Heb 4:9-10).

What does this “rested from our works” look like for you and me?  Are we just sitting on a cloud reading a magazine?  Or is there work for us to do even as we enter God’s rest?

The short answer is, “Yes, there is much work to do.”  The deeper answer is, “We are in fact resting even as we work because we are not doing the work in our own power.”  Let’s see how the New Testament connects work and rest.

First, we were created for good works.  “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10).  Even though these good works were created specifically for us to walk in them, we are not the one who is doing them.  What do I mean, “not the one doing them?”

Think for a minute about the yoke of Jesus that we were introduced to in our last post.  “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My load is light” (Matt 11:28-30).

“My yoke is easy and My load is light” has tripped up many a believer who have yet to experience that Jesus’ load is light.  After all, the Christian life can look like a burden; an overwhelming job to keep up with the rules, to keep up with the expectation of always doing the right thing.  It appears to be anything but “easy and light”.

The key to understanding Jesus’ promise of rest in these verses is the yoke.  Yes, bound in the yoke, we are working.  Yes, the load we are pulling behind the yoke is a wagon of good works.  But look who is in the yoke with us; Jesus!  Jesus is doing the heavy lifting.  Jesus is bearing all the weight of us working, of us living a righteous life, on His shoulders.

How do we know this?  Because the promise throughout the New Testament is that Jesus and His Spirit will live their righteous life through you if we embrace their presence.  The rest promised and the yoke shared in Matthew chapter 11 is a beautiful visual image of the promise that Jesus Christ is here to live His resurrection life through you.

When we are resting in Christ, He is doing the work through us.  Our good cheer and diligence at doing good works comes from Him, not our own will-power or self-discipline or genius.  And the absolute beauty of this is we do not have to figure out and over-analyze “Is that Christ or me doing the work?”

Because our separation from the Father ended at our conversion, we can forge ahead doing the things God has asked us to do.  And we can trust that it is Christ Himself doing the work through us.  We are now one with Christ, one with the Spirit, and one with the Father.  And they are living and working in you!  And our beautiful Christian life becomes an ongoing dialogue of dependence on Him.