The Salvation Story Told From The Old Testament

The story of the exodus to the new Promised Land is a good representation of the salvation process that happens in the New Testament. It is amazing how much the Old Testament is a foreshadowing of the New Testament. It all goes to show that God is always the same.

We can see this story in two different ways. We could examine individuals in this exodus to the new Promised Land process, and we would see how only a few people that actually started the journey actually made it to the promise land, but I want to show you this journey in a different way. I want to take the whole nation of Israel and how Israel as a nation represents the salvation process that happens in us individually under the new covenant. All the things that the nation of Israel went through is what most of us as believers under the new covenant go through during our process of coming to faith in Jesus Christ in order to be born again of God. The start of the exodus of Israel from Egypt represents the start of our salvation process and Israel entering the promise land represents our salvation process being completed by being born again into God’s kingdom.

Let’s start out with the exodus story. Before the exodus started the nation of Israel were captive and slaves to the Egyptian Empire. This captivity of Israel represents our captivity and slavery to our own sinful nature. Just like the people of Israel could not escape from the pharaoh’s grip without God intervening, we also cannot escape the grip and slavery of our sinful nature without God intervening on our behalf.

It was at the point when God made Egypt let His people go that Israel was released from her bondage of slavery. God had saved them from this bondage of slavery and now they had a choice to leave the tyranny over them. Israel was now free to worship and serve God. Just like God saved Israel from her bondage, God has sent Jesus to free us from our bondage of our sinful nature. When we start believing in Jesus Christ, God sends His Spirit into us to free us from our bondage. He saves us from our own nature. Just like the nation of Israel, we too are now free to worship and serve God. Just like Israel was very happy to be free, it is also at this point we feel God’s Spirit working in us and lifting our sin and guilt from us. This releasing of the guilt of sin makes us feel alive again, but this good feeling usually only lasts until the pressure of sin starts grabbing at us again. So far in this process we are not yet saved onto eternal life. We are only free to make the choices to become born again at this point.

Fast forwarding a little bit, we see the nation of Israel trapped between the red sea and pharaoh’s army. With pharaoh’s army pressing in on them they start doubting God. Even after all the great signs He had already done, they were wanting to go back to slavery.

Ex 14:11-12 - They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"

The nation of Israel already wanted to go back to their bondage instead being free. They were people that had no faith in their God. We too as new believers return back to our sinful ways because we don’t have enough faith in God. Well, even though Israel was not faithful, God was. He parted the sea and Israel traveled on dry ground to the other side and then God was glorified by drowning the pharaoh’s army.

After about one and a half months the people of Israel said: Ex 16:3 - If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.

Again Israel could only think out of their own selfishness, they were not interested in glorifying God, they only cared for themselves. Just like Israel, we as believers that have not been completed in God’s love, are still selfish, we are not yet relying just on God’s provisions, we are still trying to satisfy our selfish nature.

Moving forward in this process, we come to the point where Moses was taking a long time to come down from the mountain. When Moses finally comes down he sees that Israel had corrupted them selves by going back to their old ways they had learned in Egypt. They had made a golden calf as an idol that they could worship. This is a representation of a believer being pushed or tempted back into the ways of the world. The believer wants to give in to the pressure out of lack of knowledge of God and out of selfishness to return to what is known and comfortable.

Ex 32:35 - And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.

The verse above represents God’s punishment and cleansing of sinful ways upon the Israel people. God also punishes us as believers out of love for us. When He does this punishment on us, it will either work out cleansing in our heart or harden our hearts away from God. Remember we are now saved from the bondage of sin; we now have a choice to continue with God or go our own way.

Let’s fast forward to Moses sending the spies into the promise land. The spies went into the promise land and verified it was a land of milk and honey. Just like the nation of Israel was able to have a glimpse of the promise land before they entered it, we too in our individual salvation walk will get glimpses of God’s kingdom through His Word and His Spirit. But just like the nation of Israel having many spies that saw the same things, there were only two that were willing to give of them selves fully to fight with God to acquire the promise of God. We too in our walk with God still have parts of us that are and aren’t willing to give in to total obedience of our whole self to God’s will. Often there are parts of our life we are willing to give over to God, just like the two faithful spies of Israel, but we usually also have many areas of our life we are not yet willing to give over to God.

After the spies came back from the land of milk and honey that God wanted to give to them, most of the spies convinced the people of Israel that it was to dangerous. This is what the people of Israel said:

Num 14:2-4 - If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we had died in this wilderness! Why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?" So they said to one another,” Let us select a leader and return to Egypt."

Again, even after all the great miracles that God did for them and within their sight, the people of Israel did not believe that God would do most of the work of conquering the land for them. Only Joshua and Caleb had faith in God.

Num 14:11-12 - Then the Lord said to Moses: "How long will these people reject Me? And how long will they not believe Me, with all the signs which I have performed among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they."

Since the rest of the Israel people did not have faith in God and were only reasoning out that they could not fight these giants on their own, God sent Israel back into the desert for 40 years until all the unbelieving people of Israel had been cleansed out (died off). After the 40 years of the purging of unbelief was done, God let Israel come into the promise land.

Num 14:30-32 - Except for Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun, you shall by no means enter the land which I swore I would make you dwell in. But your little ones, whom you said would be victims, I will bring in, and they shall know the land which you have despised. But as for you, your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness.

What happened to Israel is what happens spiritually to a believer under the new covenant. All unbelief must be cleansed out of a believer to come to full faith in Jesus Christ. When full faith in Jesus Christ has been attained by the working of God’s Spirit upon our soul, we are then born again of God which gives us access into His eternal kingdom.

The timing of how long this process takes depends on how open a person is to the changes that needs to take place by God. If a person will humble them selves, God will lift up that person. If a person wants to stay in control and be prideful, God will have to wait for that person to be humbled before He can work with that person. Again, Jesus has saved all believers from bondage so he/she can now make their choice to fully serve God or not. The people of Israel were not willing to give their life to take the promise land, but after the 40 years of roaming around in the desert they became willing. We must also come to the point in our belief that we are willing to give our life to receive His promises for us, which is being born again into God’s eternal kingdom.

From God – through me – to you,
Mike Reid

Some of the areas where the US churches are failing

We have lightened up, or sugar coated the gospel to say, all you need to have eternal life is to accept Jesus as your personal savior. We need to emphasize that we need to make Him our Lord and Savior. The Lord part comes before and is more important then the savior part. We can’t have the salvation part without making Him our Lord first. When we make Jesus our Lord, we have to live a life of a humble servant, ready to do what ever glorifies our master. This includes dying to all our selfish desires and living only to please our God. Now I understand that we will fail at this, but this is a heart issue. Our heart must be totally submissive to His Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit will enable us to be submissive with increasing measure as long as we have a repenting heart. It is really God glorifying Himself through us.

We have to emphasize more on the Holy Spirits power. We are powerless to do any good without relying on the Spirit to do all of the good works through us. Many people’s spiritual walk gets stuck in a quagmire because they haven’t been taught about the awesome power within every born again believer – the Holy Spirit. There are also a lot of people restricting or rejecting the Spirit, because they really don’t want to give up certain parts of their life. These people need help from the Word, the Spirit, and church leaders to help bring this unwillingness to die to the flesh out in the open. The Bible commands that we must live by the Spirit - God’s Spirit within us. If we rely on ourselves we will fail, if we rely on His Spirit we will triumph over all.

The church needs to help point out all the devils deceptions that are working to keep us away from God. One of these big deceptions is money; the Word says “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil”. Many people in most churches are caught up in this trap. The fact is that many churches are teaching their flock that this is one of the major ways God blesses you. Having enough money to sustain you and your family is a blessing, having more than enough money can easily turn into a trap of the devil, where we rely on ourselves and our money instead of God.

There is another deception working behind the scenes. It is that we have to wait for Christ’s kingdom to come before we can obtain the perfection of the heart that God is looking for each believer to have. We have to fight off this belief. Jesus’ kingdom is here now and has been ever since Christ returned to His apostles after His resurrection. We have the full cleansing and sanctifying power of God’s Spirit now. We do not have to wait!

Another lie some churches are teaching is – Jesus did it all at the cross. Jesus only did what God had to and only God could do. He would not do what we had to do. What we have to do is, make a choice to love Him voluntarily and accept Jesus whole heartedly as Lord. To accept Jesus as Lord might sound easy, but for humanity it is the hardest thing to do, because of our pride. We want to stay lord of our own life.A deception of what it takes to be a true believer ( Christian ) has been watered down also, As I mentioned above, we must accept Jesus as our Lord. When we sincerely accept Jesus as Lord, we whole heartedly have to give ourselves as a living sacrifice. God demands this to be a whole heart decision, not a partial heart decision. If we are truly trusting in Jesus completely, then in time the Spirit will bring to realization through sanctification what has all ready happened within our heart. But if we keep on restricting the Spirit to the point of rejecting His Spirit’s leading in any aspects of our life, that previous decision was not whole hearted. If this falling away of the faith happens, they were never a true believer or Christian, so they never had the promise of eternal salvation. A person never can lose eternal salvation if the person never had it in the first place.

Even though righteousness from works is not taught from the pulpit, many people try to act like Christians instead of actually being Christians or relying on the Spirit in them. They hear from the pulpit and teachers that if we are Christians we should have certain qualities of love and act a certain way, which is correct, but then they try to do these works on their own. We have to help people understand good works is just a byproduct of God’s Spirit being inside a person and working through a person. Many churched people are trying to do on their own what the Spirit should be doing. I can tell you from experience, if a person has the Spirit in them and they are letting God’s Spirit work in them, they will automatically be doing works by loving people through the gifts given to them. If the Spirit is the one doing the work, that work being done will be a joy to do, it will not be any hardship to the person. When the Spirit has taken over a person’s heart, that person’s desires are all about what is best for the other person. We no longer are interested on what we can get out of a situation or person; we have all we need in the Spirit. In fact we end up having so much love from the Spirit; it wells up in us and overflows to others. If a person is doing good works, but is not enjoying doing it, it is important for that person to go to God and look at why they don’t feel like doing that good work. It might not be the Spirit doing it. They might need more of a renewing heart instead of trying to keep doing the work.

Hell must be emphasized more than it is. Hell cannot be just explained as being separated from God. As good as Heaven is, the opposite is true for hell. Hell is so bad our human minds cannot fathom it. There needs to be a healthy fear of what awaits us if we don’t have Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We also must keep explaining how bad hell is to motivate Christians to go out and witness to unbelievers. If we have the heart of God and truly understand hell and that all unbelievers are going there, we will be motivated to bring people to Christ out of love for them. This is the same love Christ showed and we are called to show.

The Bible indicates very strongly that if we have a repentive heart for our sin(s) we are forgiven for our personal sins. But if we don’t have a repentive heart of our sin(s), we are not forgiven for our personal sins. Forgiveness of personal sins is not just for the asking, there must be a repenting heart to go along with the asking.

Praying for our churches,
Michael Reid