The vast majority of Christians stop short in their experience of the blessings of salvation, with the joy of forgiveness of past sins and the hope of heaven in the future. But the present is a forty-year wilderness experience full of futile wanderings, never enjoying peace and rest and never arriving in the promised land.

The history of God’s dealing with the children of Israel is full of helpfulness and instruction for us now. Indeed, it is typical of every phase of our deliverance from the old sphere and our entrance into the new. Egypt is the type of the world; the oppression of Pharaoh typifies the bondage to Satan in which the sinner is held; Canaan, the promised land flowing with milk and honey, typifies the heavenlies in which the believer has every spiritual blessing.

God purposed not only to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt but into Canaan, not only out of bondage but into rest. There are three distinct stages recorded of this deliverance; while still in Egypt, they were delivered from the judgment of death through the sprinkling of the blood of the Paschal lamb upon the doorposts; then they were delivered out of Egypt and from the enemies who pursued them by the miraculous passage of the Red Sea. Due to their rebellion and unbelief, the forty-long, weary years of futile wandering in the wilderness followed, during which all of the people, except Caleb and Joshua, died, never having “possessed their possessions.” Then came the last stage in their deliverance when the two, who had wholly followed the Lord, led the new generation of Israelites into the promised land through the miraculous passage of the river Jordan. There, they had victory over their enemies, entered into the possession of their inheritance, and had rest.

God purposes not only to bring the sinner out of the world but into the heavenlies: not only out of sinnerhood but into sainthood. There are three distinct stages in this deliverance which represent three different aspects of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are not stages in the sense of being marked off at a point in time, for they all belong to the believer through his relationship to the crucified, risen, exalted Lord and are his in experience the moment he apprehends and claims them by faith.

While still in bondage, God speaks to the sinner, telling him the way of deliverance from death through faith in the shed blood of the Lamb of God. This results in the joy and peace of forgiveness; this covers the past. But the sinner needs much more than this, for he needs to be taken out of the old sphere and to be freed from the grip of his old enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is the passage of the Red Sea—the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, which makes a way clean out of the old sphere for the believer and, at the same time, swallows up the pursuing enemies in utter defeat and destruction. This is the believer’s justification which gives him the standing before God of a freed and justified man and places the cross and the open tomb between him and his enemies.

Just here, many believers stop, satisfied with release from the servitude of Pharaoh’s land but not seeking the delights and rest of God’s land of promise. They stop short of the last stage of the journey; hence the years of wilderness wandering, constantly going but never getting anywhere. They have been taken out of Egypt but Egypt is still in them. They hanker for the things of the world and of the flesh. Their lives are characterized by selfishness, murmuring, defeat, dissatisfaction, rebellion, and fruitlessness. The Jordan crossing is still ahead for them. I wonder if this book has found such a wilderness wanderer in you? If so, may it come as God’s Joshua to lead you over the Jordan into the land of your perfect inheritance in Christ Jesus. Through justification and regeneration, the believer is separated from the old sphere of the natural man and all that pertains to it; through identification with Christ in His death, resurrection, and ascension, he is brought out of the wilderness wanderings of the carnal life and into the victory, peace, and rest of the spiritual life. Let us study together now what the crossing of the Jordan typifies for the believer.

Few people are willing to admit that “the old man” sits upon the throne and rules the whole being with despotic power. Even among Christians, there is gross ignorance of and indifference to the subtle, insidious workings of the old “I.” If the grosser “works of the flesh” are absent from the life, the individual rests in a complacent sense of goodness, failing altogether to apprehend how obnoxious to God are the more refined and less openly manifest sins of the spirit and how they separate one leagues upon leagues from His pure holiness. No man living, except the one who through the enabling Spirit has seen Christ in His righteousness and holiness, will ever willingly say, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.”

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Dear Lord, may our Christian brothers and sisters know that You did not intend for them to remain in the wilderness after our salvation. You desire them to go forward into the promised land.