The Exodus out of Egypt was not a small thing for the Jewish people. The deliverance of the Lord out of slavery by His miraculous power is not something easily brushed under the carpet. That period was an awesome time of His presence; it was a time when they knew His glory cloud with them, and a time when judgement against sin was truly manifest.
His people were taken into the wilderness where there was no way they could support themselves by their own efforts. There had to be a total reliance on Him. If the Lord didn�t miraculously every day � They would simply die. Their everyday life was characterised by the miraculous provision of the Lord.
Before that could even happen, Moses went to Pharaoh seven times with these specific words � �This is the message of Yahweh the God of the Hebrews: Let my people go to offer me worship.� The Lord wanted to see His people free of slavery, but as well His desire was that they should be a worshipping people. That has always been His heart.
When those words were said in prayer earlier I sensed that the Lord was saying something powerfully prophetic. There is an awareness in these last days that He is calling out His people into a new revelation of the Church, a preparation to be His Bride.
We are in slavery to religion, to compromise, to hypocrisy, to accusation, and to half-truths. Our own lives have a selfish nature, worldly things that we have never broken free of, illnesses, and hurts. But that was not what was paid for us at the Cross! He paid for complete release.
There are so many things that the Lord is saying in these days, in the Cloud Fire I mentioned the pearl of great price passage in Matthew 13, but just before that come the verses about how in the end times the weeds of the enemy will be taken from amongst us and burned (40-43). Then we are revealed as that precious pearl that he purchased, but you know what? After that we are described as a net that catches many fish.
There is a progression as He prepares His Church to become that end time Church. First the weeding out and burning, then the revelation of the beauty, then the working together in complete unity as a net to catch many fish.
Before the fish encounter the net they can swim free, but once they encounter the net there is no escape, this isn�t the church we see today where people can come along for years and never know the Lord. This is the Church where once the fish encounters it, they have a choice, either become a good fish � or be burned up! There is no throwing back into the sea as in former times, the power of the Lord in this �net� Church will be completely evident.
This Church are the ones who have been through the refining, they are the ones who know His holiness, this is the people who are in that glory cloud, and who have the fire of the Lord to burn up the unrighteous. Yes there will be persecution, but it will be like the two witnesses in Revelation, The Church and the true Israel standing together against all.
Whoa getting carried away there! That sounds like another topic altogether, and I have no idea where that came from, I had never thought of the two prophets like that in my life before! But think about it, to get the Church to that place He will have to do the same thing as He did with His people Israel.
He is going to supernaturally demonstrate His choice. He is calling us out of slavery to become a true worshipping people, a people that His heart has been longing for. He is calling us to become a people who have His nature inside, a people who have finished with our self-sufficiency and have become totally dependent on Him.
So what are the things that happened as the Lord delivered his people from Egypt, what are we expecting Him to do with us? Well the first thing I see is that despite the awkwardness between Pharaoh and Israel, there was no desire to let the people go and to discover their fullness and freedom in God.
Make no mistake, as we come out of the old legalistic ways, as we break free from goal/guilt based Christianity we will encounter resistance from the world, from the flesh and from the devil. The usual suspects!
People love us to be caught up in activity, helping them get things done. It makes our flesh happy that we are achieving something. And the enemy is pleased that we are relying on our own strength rather than resting in the Lord to release His power to flow through us. But although this is a life, it isn�t the place of freedom and blessing that he has for us.
The next thing that happened was the Lord started sending plagues. Things are going to start going seriously wrong. Even non-Christians know that the last days are going to be characterised by disasters, so I guess there is no surprise there! The plagues on Pharaoh will seem small in comparison to this though. Even then, the entire Egyptian economy was devastated by what happened, and took a very long time to recover.
Then comes the Passover feast, as each of us in our small groups make the sacrifice, the angel of death passes us by and we take plunder from the enemy. The emerging Church is enriched in preparation. I have no idea what this represents in practice! Maybe the Lord will reveal this to you?
But what I do know is that after the Passover comes the flight, we come into our first experience of the glory cloud as we are led out, as we are taken to a very different place, and it will be a continuous experience. During that flight the Israelites travelled by day and by night.
Then we arrive at the Red Sea. There is no way across, what the Lord is doing with us will seem to have stalled. We are still with the glory cloud, but we have no clear direction. At that point the old structured ways, will want us back, they will recognise that the Lord is with us and will want to jump on the bandwagon. They will want to have the glory cloud but without the true refining. For them the cloud will bring to them confusion, there will be no understanding of what is happening.
Then will come the miracle, the Lord will lead us through the sea on dry land, and this time when the old ways try to pursue us in their arrogance and jealousy. The sea will roll back like a flood and completely annihilate them. I also don�t know what this will correspond to in practice!
The next place is the wilderness, this is where we have nothing, and we know it, our every step will need the Lord�s provision of shoe leather that doesn�t wear out, our every mouthful will be manna from heaven. We will learn what it is to walk in the provision of the Lord. We will, every one of us, learn to depend on His supernatural, and to walk in complete obedience.
The things we will go through there will show us how He can provide His refreshing streams from the rock, and His meat from the heavens. I don�t know how much of this will be in spiritual terms, but I know for sure that the Lord will miraculously provide us with our physical needs at this time too.
Then we will come to the mountain of the Lord. This is the place where His glory comes, this is the place where we can, if we wish, meet with Him. This is where we can only go if we have truly been purified, because if any unclean thing touches the mountain it is burned up - His judgement comes!
Again I am not totally sure what this means, or indeed what or whether there will be more wanderings in the wilderness. But I do know that what the Lord will get out at the end is a truly pure and holy Bride. He will get His pearl, He will get His treasure, and He will get a people that truly worship Him.
What has that to do with our present suffering � Well I trust it encourages each of us to stand firm because He has some awesome things to do with us yet, and we will truly come to know the truth of the prayer Paul prayed in Ephesians 3:14-21:
�For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.�