Most Holy Call to Pray (CTP, 27th April, 2021)
Topic: Carrying the Promise with Weight
Minister: Rev. Kayode Oyegoke
In the Old Testament, the promised land typifies the realm of everlasting life, while the wilderness typifies the realm of Christ. The wilderness represents a topology for learning the law of the Spirit of life in Christ; and it terminates at the border of the land of Moab i.e., at River Jorda (Rom 8:2). River Jordan typifies the last veil before the promised land; while the Red Sea typifies the first veil before the wilderness. The waters represent veils.
Egypt is a type of the world; while Goshen is a place in Egypt that is prepared for a believer who is still fully in the world. A believer who has journeyed out of Goshen and has encamped at the Red Sea can be said to have come very close to the Outer Court. Furthermore, the wilderness is a type of the Holy Place; and this is where one will make the farthest journey. It took forty years for the Israelites to complete the journey of the Holy Place. This whole journey typifies the learning of Faith, Hope and Charity (1Cor 13:13).
Unlike the Egyptians, God preserved the Israelites through the journey to the wilderness. This is to demonstrate that the world is different from the Church (i.e., the people of God); and that the world can never make the journey that the Church has been called to embark on. The feat of the Church can never be achieved by the world; and the world can never walk in the path that the Church has been called to walk in. This is why the Bible affirms that a believer who is in friendship with the world is an enemy of God (James 4:4).
As the Israelites journeyed through the wilderness, they were marking time with God’s doctrines. No Egyptian (i.e., an unbeliever or a worldly soul) can survive in the wilderness. Therefore, Pharaoh and other Egyptians were swallowed up at the Red Sea. The pattern of separation at the Red Sea shows that God begins where men stop. Therefore, the journey of the Church should begin where the strength of this world ends. The end of a carnal man is only a beginning for a living man. Just like what the Red Sea was to the Egyptians, a river is a dead end to men. However, the river is only a path that leads to the other side of the road for a man who has been quickened.
The wilderness is not an habitable place to men; but that is where God prunes and trains men to become vessels of glory (or of rest). It is in the wilderness that men will learn the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and would be made ready for the promised land. However, the children of Israel never learnt the lesson of rest throughout their forty years in the wilderness (Heb. 3:7-10). Therefore, God was grieved with that generation. God was subjecting the Israelites to a training of rest so that they could learn to trust Him; but they could not take the lesson (Heb. 3:18-19).
After the Israelites ate manna and drank water from the rock, God’s descension on the mountain was to give them rest; but they rejected Him. They could not endure the voice of God and the sound of the trumpet (Exo. 19:16-25). The children of Israel believed that they could not fulfil the demands of the long sounding voice of God and of the trumpet. However, Moses urged them not to run away but stay under the mountain so that the holy fear of the Lord would enter into their hearts (Exo. 20:18-21). However, they still stood afar off from the mountain because they dreaded the voice of God.
Anyone who does not have the (holy) fear of the Lord cannot come into rest. The children of Israel did not have the law or the spirit that calls for rest (or everlasting life), which is the fear of the Lord. The knowledge and fear of the Lord are the last lessons that the menorah (in the Holy Place) communicates or works in a man; and this is what will open him up to the realm of everlasting life (Isa. 11:2). “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” (Prov. 9:10). This wisdom that comes through the fear of the Lord speaks of God’s judgement.
When a soul crosses the last veil that was typified by river Jordan in the Old Testament, he would move into the promised land (or the Most Holy Place). The major ordinance of the promised land is the Sabbath or rest. Everything about the design and calibration of the things of the world to come typifies Sabbath. The promise of God is all about men coming to rest. Israel was taken from their servitude (in Egypt) so that they can go into rest; but they were not interested. Through their journey, God was teaching them how to use the promise land when they eventually arrive there, because the promise is a congealed life.
There can never be a conversation or lifestyle without a life that informs it. The conversation of a life is the interpretation of the life. Egypt was not the promised land; and God did not like the interpretation of life that the Israelites had in Egypt. Therefore, He had to take them through a journey to kill that life; so that they will loathe it. The land of promise was meant for rest. Rest is actually a conversation that should be lived out.
In the promised land, there are no evil spirits to dispossess like we have in the wilderness. However, we will have opposition in the promised land against living or expressing the promised life. Our promised land is our Father, who is the Almighty God. Therefore, the oppositions that we will face in the promised land are from within us. They are higher sins that were deeply cultured in the soul by spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. 6:12).
The wilderness typifies the realm of Christ; and it was designed to take out the nature of Egypt (i.e., the worldly nature) from a man. The wilderness is meant to teach a man how to rest. Any man who would come into the promised land must possess a sense of rest. The promised land is designed for expressing rest.
“Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being a left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” (Heb. 4:1-2). The word ‘faith’ means believing. We should carry this attitude of faith into the promised land because it will take believing to cleave to God. On the other hand, it will take unbelief to depart from the living God (Heb. 3:12). To depart from the living God is to withdraw from entering the promised land or rest. A man has found eternal rest when he mounts the Ark of God and sits on the mercy seat. However, this cannot happen without first walking the distance in the Most Holy Place. This walk is an obedience to the revelation of the Father or the living God (Col. 2:2).
God’s joy is that we are able to carry the promise. Therefore, we should not let our fire or passion for holding the promise to die out. We should carry the promise till the end. This was why God loved Jacob more than Esau. The promise was given to Esau freely; he did not earn it. However, he treated it with a lackadaisical attitude (Heb. 12:16). We should all learn to carry the promise, having a very high sense of value for it.
Through dealings, God made sure He took out every strange passion and fire from Jacob, until nothing of such was left in him. God also humbled Joseph through the experiences he went through; because he needed wisdom alongside his anointing for dreams and visions. God allowed Jacob’s heart to be broken by the things that happened to Joseph; because He wanted him to hold unto nothing else but the promise. Joseph led the twelve tribes of Israel in Egypt; while Moses led them out of Egypt. Joseph (through Joshua) led them into the promised land. God took a vow and stayed with Ephraim; because the tabernacle resided in Shiloh which was situated at Ephraim (Joshua 18:1). However, God began to move from the tribe of Ephraim to Judah. This was why the womb of Hannah was closed. However, the order of the priesthood in Ephraim had to fall for God to move to Judah. This fall began when Eli failed in his assignment as an high Priest. He was not ruling his house well; and his sons did evil in God’s sight. The sons of Eli did not only have character faults but also sinned against the ordinances of service in God’s tabernacle (1 Sam. 2:12-17).
Eli’s eyes began to go dim until he died, together with his sons (1 Sam. 4:11,18). Then, Samuel the son of Hannah governed Israel as a judge until the era of the kings (1 Sam. 7:15). Samuel played a very important role in the transition from the book of Judges to the book of Kings. He was the one who anointed David as king; and this represented a transition of the ark from Ephraim to Judah (1 Sam. 16:13). With a sigh of relief, God said that He had found a man (i.e., David) who will do all His will (Acts 13:22). We all need to have David’s kind of heart if we must fulfil all of the will of God. We must not love ourselves but be sold out to carrying out the will of God. David was a man of the ark; all that he was seeking was the ark, and he eventually took it. God gave him the ark because of the disposition of his heart; God could tell that David loved Him and was jealous for His name. David was seeking something that was key in God’s heart. He loved God so much to know that God had a need and he was determined to meet the need.
We must come to a place where the need of God becomes our need. God should become our ultimate goal or ambition in life. As we grow up spiritually, our goal in life should be to see God, and to know that we have fully pleased Him. There is no fulfilment of life anywhere else but to please God. Carnal men are ambitious about what they see; but real men are ambitious about the invisible (Heb. 11:24-26). A real man is one whose ambition is to see the one who sits on the throne of God. When you find Him, then you will find rest for your soul (Matt. 11:29).