Did you ever wonder why God didn’t just pick up Israel and put them in the promised land? I mean, if He wanted them there so bad, why go through all the trouble of getting Moses, arguing with Pharoah, and leading them out under the red sea, through the wilderness, giving the manna, and all that hassle – why not just make a really big whirlwind and move the whole batch!

But even granting that God didn’t want to do it that way, why did He go to all the trouble of arguing with Pharaoh? He could have just as easily built a wall of fire between Israel and Egypt (like He eventually wound up doing anyway), then Israel could have walked out unhindered. Why did He insist on getting Pharaoh’s express permission?

Well, it’s a matter of justice. God must be just, beyond reproach. And these were the slaves of Pharaoh. They belonged to Him. They had sold their birthrights to him in the time of Joseph, and it would have been illegal for God to take them from Pharaoh without his explicit consent and a payment of some sort.

Genesis 47:20, 23 And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh’s. … Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought YOU this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land.

So at first, all was well; under Joseph the people prospered and grew, even though slaves to Pharaoh, and after Joseph died all the men that had known Joseph treated the Israelites well; but then Israel began to be afflicted, and the work as Pharaoh’s servants grew harder and harder.

Exodus 1:13-14 And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

And so now these people, who had voluntarily sold themselves into Egypt with a legal sale binding them to service to Pharaoh – now these people were afflicted, and wanted a loophole in the contract. Finding none, they turned to God.

Exodus 2:23-24 And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

So now God was in a pickle. These people belonged to Pharaoh. They had CHOSEN him as their master. God had no legal right to just pluck them out of there. On the other hand, God had made a covenant with Abraham, and God had to honor that. So what to do?

The only way God could lead them out of Egypt, legally, was if

A: Pharaoh permitted it and if
B: They were purchased.
Or if C: Pharaoh was dead.

So then why didn’t God just smite Pharaoh with worms or something like He did Herod, and kill Pharaoh – like He eventually did anyway? Again, God had to be legal. If you’re in a dispute over someone’s property, and they suddenly show up dead, that looks rather suspicious doesn’t it? So God could only execute Pharaoh after the people of Israel were legally His, and then only if Pharaoh specifically violated a contract.

So first He asked Pharaoh’s permission. Pharaoh said no, then no, then finally yes – then went back to no again. Anyway, Pharaoh kept agreeing and then going back on his promise as soon as the plague was gone. God didn’t kill Pharaoh for any of these violations of contract because no contract was sealed with PAYMENT. So even though it was a bad way to do business, technically Pharaoh could legally back out. After all, lying is not a death penalty offense, so God couldn’t be 100% justified in taking Israel away. But finally, God PAID for Israel…

Exodus 12:6-7 And ye shall keep it [the passover lamb] up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.

Notice that they all take part in killing it – at least, the heads of each family do (verse 3). Showing that they are all being bought by this sacrifice.

Verse 8 And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

And the sacrificial lamb has two parts; the blood, which is put on the doorposts of the house, and the flesh, which is taken internally. We’ll be seeing that pattern again later. So after the passover, the death of the firstborn, Pharaoh finally let Israel go.

Now the contract was legal. The blood had been spilled, the people of Israel had been paid for by the sacrifice – representing Christ, of course – and finally Israel left Egypt. But then Pharaoh decided to chase them, and bring them back. But they were now BOUGHT by God. Pharaoh didn’t own them anymore!

Exodus 15:16 Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone; till thy people pass over, O LORD, till the people pass over, which thou hast PURCHASED.

God had paid for them with the sacrifice, and gotten Pharaoh’s permission (his acceptance of the sacrifice, if you will), and Israel was leaving. The deal was closed, and for Pharaoh to try and forcibly retrieve Israel was THEFT, and God now not only the right, but an obligation to defend Israel with lethal force if necessary. So Pharaoh died in the red sea.

If this had played out any differently, God would have been guilty of stealing Israel and murdering Pharaoh – which of course, God couldn’t do. So then Israel passed through the red sea; then they went to the waters of Marah, then to Elim and the 12 wells and 70 palms.

About five weeks after the passover, they were hungry and so God agreed to feed them:

Exodus 16:4Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.

Notice that this bread fell, for a purpose; to prove them. To see if they would obey Him or not. And so He gave them the test command – the Sabbath. As we know, they failed the test, but it’s worth noticing that God also gave them quails at the same time:

Verses 8, 13 And Moses said, This shall be, when the LORD shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full; … And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew [with Manna in it] lay round about the host.

Next, they went to Rephidim where they were thirsty; so thirsty in fact, that Moses was afraid they were going to stone him. So He asked God who said…

Exodus 17:6 Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

Then they battled Amalek, Moses’ hands were heavy, then Jethro came, Moses was judging the people, then finally they arrived at Sinai. There God told Moses to tell the people…

Exodus 19:5 Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:

And the people accepted the agreement!

Verse 8 And all the people answered together, and said, All that the LORD hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the LORD.

So the terms had been laid out, the people had accepted, and now it just needed formalizing, the fine print, and the contract signed.

Verse 9, 17 And the LORD said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a THICK CLOUD, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. … And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount.

So God came to meet them in a cloud; this is very important as you’ll see later. And He personally spoke to them from the mountain:

Exodus 20:1 And God spake all these words, saying, [the ten commandments]

So God spoke to them the fine print of the contract, spelling it out in great detail.

Exodus 20:18-19 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.

So they accepted the terms, but not the mediator; these terms were to speak to God directly – the terms of the new covenant. If they had accepted this, they would have needed no statutes, judgments, much less sacrifices. Because the spirit of God would have told them all about those situations when they came up.

But they were afraid of God, they didn’t trust Him, and they lacked faith. So they demanded Moses, not Jesus, to mediate between them and the Father. So God accepted those terms – the terms of the Old Covenant, you’ll notice – but this required a new contract to be drawn up, so God went to work writing up those details for the new contract, and gave them to Moses in chapters 21-23. Moses wrote them down, then afterwards…

Exodus 24:3 And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.

So Moses now spelled out these terms of the new contract, and they agreed to it. So then they made a sacrifice to seal the deal:

Verses 7-8 And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.

So now the covenant was made. Well, then Moses went up to get the tablets, and received the instructions of the tabernacle, then we had the golden calf, Moses broke the tablets, went back and got new ones – this period is thoroughly addressed in my article “Moses – The First Commandment Breaker”.

After that, they wandered the wilderness for forty years, then entered the promised land, were circumcised, and lived happily ever after. This period is addressed in detail in my article “Styx And Stones And Resurrected Bones”. Well, they didn’t exactly live happily ever after – in fact, their work just started with the entry to the promised land, but that’s another article “Geography of Salvation in the Promised Land” (Which as of 10/04/2024 hasn’t been written yet).

DECLARE UNTO US THIS PARABLE

What, you thought I was saying all that just for it’s own sake? Sure, we uncovered some new facts there but nothing Earth shaking. But what I’m about to say will be. You see, everything that happened there – everything – happened “for our admonition”. I have nearly worn this scripture out, but it seems to never fail me:

1 Corinthians 10:11 (Weymouth) All this kept happening to them with a figurative meaning; but it was put on record by way of admonition to us upon whom the ends of the Ages have come.

Or as Philips translates it “these things which happened to our ancestors are illustrations of the way in which God works” – ILLUSTRATIONS of the way in which God works! That’s what you’re going to see today, because YOU have gone on that same journey and YOU have stopped at the Red Sea, eaten the Manna, the Quails, and drank of the water from the rock!

THE BAPTISM

1 Corinthians 10:1 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud [at Sinai, remember God appeared in a thick cloud], and all passed through the sea; And were all BAPTIZED unto Moses in the cloud AND in the sea;

Now look at that! They were BAPTIZED TWICE! Once in the cloud, at Sinai, and ONCE in the sea! What could that mean?? Mind you, I didn’t make that tremendous leap, Paul did. I’m just here to make sense of it. So were they baptized twice? Are there two baptisms in the Bible?

Acts 19:4-5 Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

John’s baptism was “the baptism of repentance”. This wasn’t a baptism of conversion, just a baptism into leaving your old life behind – in Egypt, you might say – then later, they were baptized “in the name of the Lord Jesus”, which was also called a “baptism to Christ” (Galatians 3:27) and a “baptism by the the spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13).

The first baptism merely signified a willingness to leave your old life behind, the second baptism signified a commitment to live a NEW life. The first is a baptism to repentance, the second is a baptism to life; the first a baptism of water, the second a baptism of the spirit.

Acts 11:16 Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.

But why would God send John to baptize people for four years, knowing fully well that it would all have to be redone with a DIFFERENT baptism after Jesus died? As a pattern for us, of course.

In my article “What Was The Baptism Of John” I showed that John’s baptism pictured being baptized to repentance by the Father’s spirit, while the baptism we are most familiar with pictured being baptized by the Son’s spirit!

John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

You cannot come to CHRIST unless the FATHER draws you to Him! And then it is CHRIST who raises you up and resurrects you! And like the Father, John was sent to “draw people to Christ”!

Luke 1:16 And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people PREPARED for the Lord.

John, a type of the Father, was PREPARING people to meet Jesus; and then once they get to Jesus…

John 6:45, 65 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. … And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were GIVEN unto him of my Father.

NO MAN can come to Christ unless the Father FIRST draws Him! God has to GIVE the invitation to someone before they can come to the Son! So it is the FATHER who works with all new converts first, BEFORE they are brought to the Son!

When the Israelites walked out of Egypt, they were BAPTIZED in the red sea – picturing the FATHER’S baptism, the baptism of John – a baptism of WATER! Then the Father led them to Sinai, where they were baptized IN THE CLOUD, representing the baptism of Christ, a baptism of the SPIRIT!

Acts 1:5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

THE SPIRITUAL MEAT AND DRINK

In speaking of the lessons we could learn from the Exodus, Paul continued and said…

1 Corinthians 10:3-4 And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

There are two things they consumed here; the spiritual meat – and a spiritual drink. The spiritual water flowed from a rock, and the rock was Christ. The spiritual meat was the Manna which fell out of heaven:

John 6:55-58 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. … This is that bread which came down from heaven …

So the Manna they ate – the “bread from heaven” – was the body of Christ. When you eat the flesh of Christ, you are symbolically taking the essence of Christ – His spirit – in you. This is the same body of Christ we take in during the Days of Unleavened Bread, representing “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

John 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Jesus identified Himself clearly as “the bread of life”. But neither here, nor anywhere else, does Jesus ever claim to be the WATER of life! Because He isn’t!

John 4:10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

Jesus doesn’t say He IS the living water, He merely says He can GIVE it to us. You find the same statement made in Revelation 21:6, where Jesus says “… I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.”

Again in Revelation 7:17 it says “For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” – see how it works! The Lamb leads them TO the living fountains of waters – He leads them to someone else – and then GOD (the Father) wipes away tears from their eyes! He leads them to the Father!

John 5:26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;

The FATHER is the source of these “waters” OF LIFE. And He has given the son full power to distribute these waters to whomsoever He will.

John 17:2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

The source of the water is most definitely the Father, Himself. But our access to this water is through Jesus; as Paul said “For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” (Ephesians 2:18).

John 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Notice how there are two clauses here; if you COME to Jesus you will never hunger – in the context, it’s clear you’ll receive bread, the spirit of Jesus. But if you BELIEVE on Jesus, you will never thirst, because you’ll receive the WATER, the spirit of the Father!

You can’t receive that water if you don’t believe Jesus! And the bread – the spirit of Jesus – is a great thing, but it isn’t enough! Jesus said so!

Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

We live only if we have BOTH things; the bread, Jesus, and ALSO by what comes from the mouth of God (the Father), which is the SPIRIT (breath) of the Father, by which we receive “every word of God”!

Romans 8:10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

If you have the spirit of Christ in you – if you eat the bread, that spiritual meat – the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.

Romans 8:11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

But if the spirit of the Father is in you – if you drink the WATER, that spiritual DRINK – then the Father will make your bodies alive, because you’ll be drinking the WATER OF LIFE which only the Father can give!

The point of all of this is that after baptizing them in the spirit of the Father at the Red Sea, the Father led them to Jesus just as He always does according to John 6:44-45, by giving them the Manna – representative of the spirit of Christ. And then Jesus, as He always does, led them to a better understanding of God and gave them access to the spirit of the God the Father!

Exodus 17:6Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

Paul tells us plainly that Jesus stood upon that rock. And from my other papers, we know that Moses was a type of God the Father. So what significance can it have that the Father smote Jesus, and water came out?

Isaiah 53:4, 10 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, SMITTEN OF GOD, and afflicted. … Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief:

John 19:34 But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.

It was God who smote Jesus; and it is because of that that we are able to have access to the spirit of the Father (the water). Just as a type of the Father (Moses) smote Jesus (the rock) and water (the Father’s spirit) came out.

So after being led to Jesus (the Manna), the next step in the development of these people was to be led to the spirit of the Father. You’ll recall they had already had contact with the spirit of the Father at Baptism, but it was a strictly EXTERNAL event! They walked between the waters, technically immersed in them, but they never DRANK of that water!

Before they could drink of that water, they had to first eat the bread! Then they were able to take the spirit of the Father INSIDE them when they drank what flowed from the Rock.

But before they could even eat the bread, something else had to happen first!

THE QUAILS AND THE GRACES

There are two graces; the one, a physical grace, allows God to overlook your physical sins to give you a physical blessing. The other, a spiritual grace, allows God to overlook your spiritual sins to give you a spiritual blessing. Physical grace can only give you temporary life, but spiritual grace can give you eternal life. More on these two graces is in my article “The Two Sacrifices Of Jesus”.

The point being, before you can receive physical blessings, you must have physical grace to cover your sins of ignorance. And before receiving the spiritual blessings – such as the spirit of Christ – you have to receive spiritual grace to cover your spiritual sins. Now this grace is bought with blood – that’s the only thing that can cover sins.

Before Israel left Egypt, before God ever worked with them individually, they had taken the Old Testament passover sacrifice. The blood on the outside of their doorposts symbolized the blood washing only the outside of their bodies. And that passover bought them physical grace, to allow them to come to the baptism of repentance at the red sea. They did not take this water inside them though, it was merely “around” them.

Then before they “met” Jesus in the form of the Manna, they received the quails. These provided blood again, this time to cover spiritual sins, because they were about to receive their first spiritual blessing! These quails gave them spiritual grace, otherwise they would have been too dirty to take the spirit of Christ inside them when they ate the Manna! Notice WHY God said He gave them quails and manna!

Exodus 16:12 … At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God.

The quails and manna HELPED THEM KNOW that HE was the Lord! Without Jesus’ spirit in you – the manna – you cannot understand the things of God! (1 Corinthians 2:9-15). And without the blood of the quail, to wash you, you can’t have that spirit!

Moving along, they were given a chance to keep the Sabbath, which they broke, and on the next Sabbath – the first one they actually kept properly – Moses gave them water from the rock – representing the spirit of the Father, coming through Jesus, the rock. This was they first time they had taken the water INSIDE them, the first time they understood the Father on a spiritual level. Before now, they had known Him only through Moses, only dealt with him in an external, physical way.

NEW TESTAMENT BAPTISM

After the water came from the rock, Amalek came and attacked Israel (Exodus 17:8-16). So in the symbolic sense, now that Israel had both spirits with them, there was a test from outside; they were attacked. And as long as Moses (the Father) kept His arms up to bless them, Joshua (Jesus) fought against Amalek and prevailed; but when Moses’ hands went down, when the Father grew displeased with them, Joshua could no longer keep the enemy back.

Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses to keep Israel winning – we’ll talk about them a bit more later. Next Jethro came and helped Moses organize the government of Israel. Who was he in our symbolism? Well, Israel was at this very point in time called “the Church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38). So Jethro was the man who helped to organize the government of this church.

Hold that thought for a moment now. Moses represented God. If Israel was the Church, then this Church was His wife. Moses’ wife. The father of Moses’ wife was Jethro. Hence the Jethro is the father of the church – the man who founded it. That’s a bit convoluted but it fits the facts pretty well.

It can be supported better by these facts;

1 Corinthians 4:15 For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

Paul raised up the church “as a father doth his children” (1 Thessalonians 2:11), and considered them his children “in the faith” (1 Timothy 1:2), and himself their father. And since the church collectively was female, Paul as their father was in a position to promise them to Christ as His bride;

2 Corinthians 11:2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

So in a fairly real sense, this makes Paul the father-in-law of Jesus; Just as Jethro was the father-in-law of Moses. Apparently, each apostle whom God sends to raise up a church has broad discretion on exactly how to set up the administration of it. God didn’t give very many guidelines for church government, order of services, setting up of the ministerial hierarchy, and a brief study of the history of the true Church shows that the details have always varied widely.

God (Moses) always leaves these details up to the apostle whom God calls to start a work; and even after Jethro (the apostle) leaves, the organization generally remains for generations. So this event symbolizes the introduction to church government.

Then they came to Sinai. At Sinai, God (Jesus, actually) offered Israel what we call the New Covenant; God, not Moses, personally spoke the commandments to all Israel from the top of the mountain.

There was no mediator mentioned in this covenant, all of Israel was given the chance to speak directly to God and hear what God said. It was God’s intention that they take these laws and write them on their hearts, as no stone tablets were mentioned at this point. At this point, Paul says they “were all baptized… in the cloud”.

This baptism is the one we are familiar with today; where we enter into a covenant with God and are baptized with the spirit of God as well as water. This signs us onto a contract where God speaks with us directly and we, through His spirit, talk directly with Him – just as was originally offered to Israel.

Before entering this covenant however, God laid out, in simple terms, the rules of the agreement (Exodus 19:3-8), and the people accepted the contract. But when God actually spoke to them directly, they were terrified and demanded a modification to the contract (Exodus 20:18-19). God agreed to give them the mediator they had chosen – Moses – but added new conditions to this contract in chapters 20-23.

Moses wrote all this down, read it to the people – notice God was no longer dealing with them directly, at their request – and they agreed to it unanimously (Exodus 24:7-8), and the covenant was sealed with blood. Anyway, they broke this covenant as you know, and the rest is another article.

SUMMARY

As I wrote this, I continually pointed out symbolisms here and there as we passed them, but I made no effort to tie them all together. Now I will. As I said before, this was all about us, and that every single person has made this journey. What I meant is that this journey from Egypt to the Jordan shows us, in symbol, the exact way God deals with every single person He calls, from the moment of their call up to and beyond their death and the return of Christ.

We were sold into slavery to Egypt/sin by our first ancestors. We were all of us born there, and quickly reaffirmed our slavery with our earliest selfish acts. At first, all was well just as it was in the days of Joseph – but gradually, the fruits of our (very literally) Faustian bargain became apparent. Then we realized we were trapped in service to sin. We had no hope of escape, and were condemned to a future of suffering and hard labor and early death as the result of sin, at the hands of Pharaoh’s/Satan’s taskmasters.

You know, it’s ironic but people talk about “selling their soul to the devil”, in exchange for temporary success or fame, BUT THEY ALREADY HAVE! You ALREADY belong to the devil! He ALREADY owns your soul, and he has from your first sin! Before He ever begins working with you, God has to BUY YOU BACK from Satan!

And so when we cried out to God because of our bondage, God took pity on us and sent someone to deliver us from Egypt. But we still legally belonged to sin, and for God to just pluck us out of there would have been theft. We chose to follow Satan, remember, he legally owned us. We legally sold ourselves to Egypt, and God couldn’t take us out of Egypt without purchasing us, and without Satan agreeing to the purchase price.

So God sends someone to deliver us, to tell us that “the I AM” is willing to deliver us from sin, if we’ll follow Him. We are interested, and want to hear more; so God must apply grace to us – only physical grace, in order to buy us out of sin. This was the passover service in Egypt.

Then when Pharaoh agrees to let us go, we leave that world behind. But Pharaoh pursues, just as our friends and family and yes, the devil himself pursues us out of the world. If we pay attention to any of them, we’ll get scared and our hearts will go back to Egypt – and yet if our heart is right and we keep our attention on the goal, God will build a wall between us and them to protect us.

If we’ve followed Him up to this point, we will now be baptized in the red sea. This is the baptism of John, a promise of our intent to change, without really knowing all of God’s terms yet willing to take a gamble based on what we have seen so far. This is a baptism in the spirit of the Father, who is now committed to “lead us to Christ”.

Next we come to Marah, where the waters are nasty and we cannot drink. This is probably our first major trial in this life – we go to God, and God shows us the answer and gives us the promise of healing.

Next we go to Elim, where the twelve wells and seventy palm trees are. To understand them, read “The Twelve And The Seventy”, but the short answer is that this represents the angelic realm, the government of God. Remember the devil said “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?” (Acts 19:15). This is probably symbolic of the time when they are introduced to us.

Then we arrive in the wilderness of sin. It’s finally time for us to have our first REAL spiritual test. All of these things could have happened to us before we ever had contact with any true spiritual understanding or truth of God. Israel was led out of Egypt without being given a single commandment or knowing much about God at all.

But this is where you learn your first REAL commandment – the Sabbath. But the Sabbath is a spiritual command (Romans 7:14). Carnal people can’t understand it or obey it. So for man to have any hope of obeying it, man had to first have the spirit of Christ to help it make sense to him (1 Corinthians 2:9-16).

But before they could receive the spirit, they had to have more of their sins covered than physical grace can cover; so they received the spiritual commandment (the Sabbath), then spiritual grace (the quails), then they received the spirit of Christ (the manna), and then they were given a full week to get used to this commandment and get used to having the spirit of Christ before they were expected to obey it.

When the next Sabbath came around, some did, some didn’t. Those who didn’t were berated thoroughly, as was their leader (Moses), and the next week it looks like they all kept it properly. The next week, after they had their act in a pile and were all keeping the Sabbath, they were given the spirit of the Father (the water from the rock) inside them just as the spirit of Christ was inside them (the manna).

The Father’s spirit had covered them at the Red Sea, but they’d taken none of it inside them, it hadn’t affected their hearts, only their deeds. Now both spirits were inside the hearts of these Israelites, or modern-day new Christians. But as soon as they have these spirits, they are expected to do something with the new understanding they bring – so the next day Amalek (the bad guys) comes and attacks them.

This is the first serious trial from outside. The earlier one, the one at Marah, was relatively minor compared to this serious large-scale attack. And here we should learn that if the Father is pleased with us – keeps His hands raised in blessing – then Jesus will fight for us, and we will prevail. But if we lose favor with Him, even Jesus won’t be able to help us much.

Aaron and Hur hold up the hands of Moses to keep him blessing us; since Hur is mentioned rarely, it is nearly impossible to prove this theory, but it is likely that these two men holding up the hands of Moses is symbolic of the two witnesses spoken of in Revelation, and as Zechariah says of the two olive branches “These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” (Zechariah 4:14).

Notice that they stand BY the Lord, not necessarily IN FRONT OF Him, as it usually says. In addition, these may also be symbolic of the two righteous angels Michael and Gabriel (See the article “Seven Angels, Two Righteous”). But that’s deeper in speculation than I like to delve.

Regardless, after Amalek is defeated, Jethro comes; this means at this point the new would-be Christian is exposed for the first time to an organized true Church of God. After all, they have to go to someone to be baptized.

And the very next thing is the symbol of baptism itself at Sinai, where finally, they are offered the new covenant and given the chance to deal with God personally, and be covered in Jesus’ spirit. You may remember they’ve been, in this order:

1. Covered in the Father’s spirit
2. Been filled with Jesus’ spirit
3. Been filled with the Father’s spirit

And now they are to be:

4. Covered with Jesus’ spirit.

There’s a certain symmetry to that, although I’m not sure what it means. Regardless, it is certain this refers to the New Testament baptism. Of the millions who make it this far, only a few actually remain true Christians for very long after Sinai. But converted or not, they usually wander together for 40 years – an adult lifetime – until they die or Jesus returns, whichever comes first. That part is all laid out in “Styx And Stones And Resurrected Bones”.

We can use this framework to answer many nagging questions like when the spirit enters the new Christian, whether Jesus or the Father gives us their spirit first, and why we don’t have the baptism of John today.

But most importantly it gives us more insight into the spiritual workings of salvation than anything else in the Bible can even begin to do.