The Old Testament Israelites give Christians a picture into our individual spiritual life and journey. The Old Testament is real history that uses physical events to teach spiritual truths.
Note: The physical Israelites remain an important part of God’s future plans as prophecy shows. Like many prophecies, we see both physical and spiritual fulfillment.
“Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” 1 Corinthians 10:11
Summary of Comparison Events
| Condition | Israelites | Christians |
| Slavery | Egypt | Spiritual Bondage |
| Freed by God | Doorpost covered in the blood of the lamb that was sacrificed | Jesus Death pays for our Sin |
| Leave Old Life | Through Red Sea Out of Egypt | Baptism Out of Old Life |
| Free From Old, Not Living in New | Wilderness | Thankful Jesus paid for our sins, but not knowing the fullness of God |
| Death to our Old Life, Enter into New | All people died in wilderness, then crossed the river into the promised land | We die to our own desires and follow the Will of the Holy Spirit |
| Live our New Life | Promised Land was abundant with resources and Land | The Holy Spirit Fills our life and gives us the “fruits of the Spirit” |
| Purge our Old Desires | God Told Israel to completely destroy Jericho and other nations | God wants us to be ruthless to our old life before Him. Even getting rid of the seemingly non-sinful parts. |
| Risk the Danger of Settling | Israelites got comfortable with other nations eventually and they became temptations to them | We get comfortable in our Christian life and the sin around us and our Spiritual life stagnates or weakens |
The Israelites of the Old Testament show a revealing parallel between the people’s physical travels and experience and a Christian’s spiritual life. Using this, we can better understand God’s desire for us including His blessings and warnings.
Slavery and Payment
Just like the Israelites were born into slavery for 400 years in Egypt, we are born into a spiritual life of bondage. We were “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1 and Col 3:13). This life has some comforts, but is without freedom. Jesus saves us with His blood on the cross, just like God saved those who put faith in Him and put the blood of the lamb on the door posts of their houses (Exod 12:7). Before He does that, we must learn to trust Him. Like the Israelites, God shows us signs so that “we will know that He is the Lord” (Ex 6:7). Spiritually, that may come from a defined miracle, or simply the revelation that we are in slavery.
Leaving our Old Life
Once saved from death, the Israelites passed through the sea on dry land out of Egypt. Like them, we are baptized out of death when we receive Jesus as our Lord. This freedom generates great excitement, and the Israelites celebrated with a chapter long song in Exodus 15, but two verses later, in Exodus 16:2, they were grumbling. They ran out of water and were suddenly remembering all they gave up in Egypt. This led to a 40 year journey of being thankful that they weren’t in slavery, but missing the things they knew. Our spiritual lives are the same. The blood of Jesus wipes our slate clean, but we were not designed to have an empty slate. God’s design is to remove the old to replace it with the new.
When we are saved, the excitement soon fades. We are left remembering all the things that gave us “fleeting pleasures.” In our new life in Christ, we are given some of the same rules the Israelites had, but these keep us from finding our old ways of happiness. Our new joy will not arrive until we start relying on Jesus in our daily lives. The Israelites longed for the meat pots of Egypt (Exod 16:3). God promised a land overflowing with abundance in Exodus 3, but to get that, they would need to have faith to trust God.
Until the Israelites developed that faith, God sustained them.
God sustains Christians in their spiritual wilderness too. We get instruction from churches and inspiration through songs and other Christians, but as long as that spiritual food comes from the outside, it will only be “enough”. God was with the Israelites in the cloud by day and fire by night, and He provided them with manna. Just like the manna’s provision, the Israelites were given enough, but never extra in the wilderness.
God did not want them to stay in the wilderness, but they were too afraid to leave.
Our spiritual life is like that too. Until we give up the things of our old life and trust God with our fears, we will be stuck in our spiritual wilderness. Unfortunately, many Christians live their whole lives in the spiritual wilderness. God is with them and sustains them, but they miss out on the spiritual fullness that He desires. The good news is that there is a way out, but it is unexpected. Death.
I have heard many sermons go like this: Because of what Jesus did 2,000 years ago, we should endure this terrible life while thanking Him for paying for our sins until we get to enjoy paradise in Heaven. While Jesus death is worthy of an eternity of thankfulness, this approach is a tragedy. These sermons preach that the best Jesus offers is a spiritual life in the wilderness.
We do need to die, but we don’t need to wait for physical death to get to our spiritual promised land. We need to die to ourselves (Gal 2:20 and Rom 8:13). Before the Israelites could go to the promised land, all 600,000 Israelite men that came out of Egypt died, and this took 40 years (Num 14:34).
These numbers are significant, and you can learn more about them here.
Before we can go into the spiritual promised land, the life where we trust in our own strength must die. The Israelites saw the promised land and got scared, because they were not strong enough (Num 13:34). They were right. They were not strong enough, but God was.
That generation was a sad one. They saw the mighty works of God with their own eyes, but did not trust Him to deliver them on their next challenge. This is a lesson in itself. You cannot be “proven” into faith. God showed undeniable facts of his strength, but this generation still did not trust Him. When Lazarus was raised from the dead in public, some believed, but others went away knowing the facts, but rejecting Jesus (John 11:46). If you are waiting for undeniable facts before you trust God, know that without a heart of faith, even those won’t be enough. God will provide you supporting evidence, but faith requires you to trust in something even though proof is not there.
Living in the Spiritual Promised Land
After the Israelites died, God led the new generation into the promised land. Like the baptism out of Egypt, the Israelites walked through another river in Joshua 3 and were baptized into the promised land. Our Christian life follows the same parallel. Jesus saves us. We are baptized out of death by water and then baptized into life by fire through the Holy Spirit as we see in Acts.
Once we get into our promised land, we start seeing the fruits of the spirit coming through. A life reliant on the spirit does not gratify the flesh (Gal 5:16), but is rather renewed and fulfilled spiritually. The fruits are an outcome of a life of faith rather than specific goals we need to target. In our promised land, we see something else too. Elements of our old life sit like cities that the Israelites saw in the land. Just like God told Joshua, we are to be spiritually ruthless against these influences. We will find that God wants us to remove even the “good part of our sinful past”.
Click here for a more in depth study on why God called Joshua to kill everyone in Jericho and other cites.
Danger of Getting Comfortable
Initially, the Israelites followed God’s direction and purged the land, but over time they got comfortable. This is the big risk of a spirit filled person. When we get comfortable where we are spiritually, we stop looking for the remaining evil in our lives. Like the Israelites, these places where we settle become snares and hold us back from the fully productive life God called for us (Judges 2:20-23). These things are tough, because we find the good things God gives us can become secret idols in our lives. Food, family, government, sports, vacations, work, nature and many other good things from God become distractions that pull us from Him. Many of these things God assigns us to do (Paul was a tent maker for example, and God calls many of us to get married and raise families), but He does not want us to lift these things above Him. The Christian promised land is a life that fully embraces the reality that we are living a spiritual eternal life in a temporary physical body. The more we realize this, the easier it will be to de-prioritize our physical desires and circumstances. We will then begin focusing on things of infinitely greater importance.
God gave us the Israelite example for us to know the desires He has for us as Christians and to warn us against falling into the same issues they had. God not only wants to free you from going to Hell, but he wants to fill you with his Spirit. That is a spirit of power and confidence. It is a filling of the fruit of the spirit from Galatians 5:22.
Just like He gave the Israelites, He promises us a blessing and a curse (Deuteronomy 28). If we follow Him, He promises us spiritual abundance, but if we are too afraid or settle in our faith, God shows us that we will struggle.
