Under God’s command and direction Moses was called to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt, the kingdom of evil. The children of Israel had been living in Egypt a long time. Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt. Because the Lord kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the Lord for the generations to come. (Exodus 32:40-42) After so long, they were acclimated to the Egyptians' way of living. They even honored the gods of Egypt. As they left Egypt under the command of Pharaoh because the Egyptians’ firstborn had been murdered by the angel in the night, they carried in their hearts Egypt, depicted by the idols they carried in their satchels. The Israelites left Egypt, but Egypt was with them all the way through the wilderness. After three days in the wilderness, they grumbled, justifiably so because of the lack of water, but after a month and a half, they were very dissatisfied with being in the wilderness. They wished they had stayed in Egypt and died there, adding more years to their captivity. The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “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.” (Exodus 16:1-3) Sometimes because of their dissaistfaction with their lives in the wilderness, they even threatened Moses and Aron with death by stoning. For most of them, their deliverance was Moses’ vision, not theirs. Egypt had been their lives for centuries and even though they were under the cruel yoke of slavery, it was better to be Egyptians than dead in the wilderness. They had experienced the deliverance of their physical bodies from slavery by the hand of God through his emissary Moses, but the God of the heart was far from them. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They were baptized in Moses’ vision for them. They had seen the glory of God in the plagues that the Egyptians’ experienced. They saw the Red Sea open up for them, so they could cross through it on dry ground. They saw the cloud of God’s glory protect them from Pharaoh’s army by settling between them and Pharaoh’s pursuing army. They experienced this same cloud of God’s glory leading them through the wilderness, yet their hearts were full of unbelief, turning to their idols, even claiming that these no-gods delivered them from Pharaoh’s hands. The hearts of the Israelites, God’s chosen, had not been changed, only delivered. Paul says, I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Even though they had experienced God’s mighty hand in their lives, they disappointed God by serving idols and living like the Egyptians. As Paul describes in Romans 1:29 about the world and its nature: filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. We see an example of this kind of nature in Egypt, Moses saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” (Exodus 2:13) This fierceness toward a fellow Hebrew emulated the Egyptians fierceness over the Israelites, receiving beatings from their masters. Moses knew the Israelites were a contaminated people, but God told him to take them out of Egypt, regardless of their hearts’ condition. They had experienced God’s mighty presence, but their hearts remained impatient and rebellious to the God of creation.
We see in the above focus Paul telling the Corinthians, do not let your hearts stay in Egypt after you are delivered from the captivity of sin. Let the Holy Spirit transform your hearts to a new beginning in God. Yes, you are in this wilderness of life; the hot breath of the wilderness is felt everyday in your lives. But you are a new creature; do not go back into thinking and acting as the world. Instead, enjoy your freedom in God. God has provided a new covenant with his people. As Jeremiah prophesied, This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:10-12) The Israelites were delivered from Egypt without changed hearts. Because of that they lived in rebellion all of their existence, both in the wilderness and in the Promised Land. Sometimes they were obedient to the commands, laws, and decrees that God set before them, but most of the time, we see them living in idol worshipping, rivalry, and disobedience. The ten tribes who broke off from Judah after Solomon died were carried off first by the Assyrians because of their many sins. Later, the kingdom of Judah felt the hand of God’s judgment, placing them in the hands of the Babylonian king as slaves in a foreign country. God removed the Hebrews from their Promised Land because of their incessant wickedness and rebellion to God’s laws. The Israelites would not stop worshipping Idols; they were rabid in their serving of these no-gods of the pagans around them. We see this In the days of King Josiah who rules at the end of the Jews' habitation in the Promised Land. In his day after many centuries of the Israelites living in the land given by God to them, we see the Israelites' unwillingness to obey God's rules, commandments, and decrees that He gave Moses on Mount Sinai. In Josiah’s time, there is ample evidence of the Israelites’ rebellion to Jehovah who delivered them out of Egypt. King Josiah was a good king who ruled to honor Jehovah, the God of the Israelites. In his rule he attempted to cleanse the land of devil worship, idol worship, and cultish behavior. He removed from the Temple of God articles that the Israelites used to worship Baal, Asherah, the sun and the moon. He tore down the living quarters of the shrine prostitutes in the Temple. Throughout Judah he defiled the many pagan shrines where the Hebrews worshipped these no-gods. He destroyed the shrines that the governor had set up in his courtyard. He destroyed the altars where the Israelites sacrificed their babies. He removed from the entrance of the Temple horse statues to honor the sun god. He also burned the chariots that accompanied these statues. He tore down the idols that were on the roof of the palace. He destroyed the altars to these no-gods that were in the two courtyards of the Temple. He destroyed King Solomon’s shrines that he built for the gods of Ashtoreth, Chemosh and Molech. He destroyed the golden calf in Bethel. Josiah tore down the shrines in Bethel and Samaria; he executed the priests of these no-gods. He got rid of the mediums, psychics, and household gods. By all these actions, King Josiah tried to cleanse the land of the Jews, but because their hearts had not been transformed, they would return to worshipping these gods of the devils. A few years after Josiah died, the last of the Hebrews except for the very poor would be carried off by the Babylonians, God’s judgment to a rebellious people.
In today’s focus, we see Paul warning the Corinthians about straying back to their old living standard. He is telling them that the Israelites who experienced God’s great presence and interaction with them, did not come under God’s authority in their hearts. They lived the lives of the Egyptians most of their existence. With stony hearts they rejected the God who chose them amongst all the people on earth. They would not listen to their God who treated them tenderly. Hear me, my people, and I will warn you—if you would only listen to me, Israel! You shall have no foreign god among you; you shall not worship any god other than me. I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. (Psalm 81:8-12) The old covenant could not change the hearts of the Israelites. They were so unwilling to follow God that they would not even listen to him. Paul ran into this situation in Italy as he was telling the Jews of the Good News of God’s redemption plan for them, many of the Jews rejected what Paul was telling them about God’s salvation. “The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your ancestors when he said through Isaiah the prophet: “‘Go to this people and say, “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. ”For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’ “Therefore I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!” (Acts 28:25-28) Now we see in our focus for today, Paul talking to the Corinthians, a Gentile people. People with open ears. Paul is warning them that God’s chosen would not keep their ears open to the ways of the Lord, their God. And because of that, they fell away living in idol worship and in the decay of the world. But we know, God has presented these Corinthians with a new work, done under a new covenant, a covenant that changes hearts, not just the way people live or present themselves. No longer are people to worship the way they live, how they look or their customs. Cultish people live by looks and presentation so people can readily identify them as belonging to a group. Jesus castigated the Pharisees because this was their intention before the people. You knew a Pharisee by how they looked and presented themselves. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. (Matthew 23:25-26) We who are alive IN CHRIST have a new cup, one that has been cleansed. Jesus said it is a born again life. We are not under the old cloud that covered the Israelites; we have the presence of the Spirit inside of us. He only occupies a clean cup. Paul is telling the carnal Christian be careful how you walk: present the new cup, not the old crusty cup of the old fleshly man or woman. Live a life dependent on God’s strength and not your own. For if you do, you will not fall into the ways of the old man or woman; that man or woman is dead because of Christ’s redeeming work. Consider the old flesh as dead. Under God’s transforming life, when you are tempted, know he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. Not your way, but God’s way. His eternal work is already IN YOU, the cross has paid for every temptation that you will run across. It is not your work, but it is his work that is efficacious. So trust in the cross; it has already paid your way to eternal life. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
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