In that day I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin, I will also make an end.
God gave the people of Israel the tabernacle while they were in the wilderness. They didn’t get it in Egypt. They didn’t get it in Canaan. There was divine purpose in their forty year journey through the wilderness. I know that we always preach that wilderness is a type of the carnal saved person. And nobody wants to be the carnal saved person. But make no mistake, there is no other way to Canaan but through the wilderness. Jesus said this: (John 10:1) Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. And I know that the primary application to this verse is regarding Jesus being the door to salvation, and that there is no other way to God’s salvation but through the Lord Jesus Christ. But there is a principle that is laid down here. There verse that comes to mind is this: (Romans 8:29) For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son… The people of Israel did not leave Egypt and go wherever they wanted to go. They went together into the wilderness and trod the path that God had put before them.
There in the wilderness, God dealt with the murmuring, complaining, grumbling, idolatry, disobedience, and all manner of evil. God said (Number 14:29-30) As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you: Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me, Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein… God got rid of everything (or everybody) that had no part in the promised land. And that’s what God is doing for you. Nothing of your flesh has part of the victorious Christian life. The sooner the carcases fall, the sooner we cross the river Jordan. God wants to put an end to the flesh.
But God does not make an end without making a beginning. God took away much from the people of Israel. But he also gave them much. He gave them the tabernacle; the dwelling place of God. Canaan is a type of the victorious Spirit-filled Christian life. There is a death to sin and the law when we leave Egypt, but there is a death to one’s self and the flesh when we leave the wilderness. But what I want us to understand is this death coincides with that new thing that God is working in you. I really think that the reality of the tabernacle, God’s sanctuary, can only exist in the reality of that death in this wilderness. As the carcases fall, God is exalted. There’s a lot of death, but amidst the death and pain and sorrow, there hung those wooden staves that God commanded should never leave the dwelling place of God. The staves were there to take hold of God. (Exodus 25:1) The staves shall be in the rings of the ark: they shall not be taken from it. He told Joshua (Joshua 1:5) I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. You think of those priest when they took those precious steps across the Jordan River, they left it all behind, but they laid hold on those staves. They laid hold onto that ark. They left what God had made an end of, but they took with them what God had begun with them them.
Oh Christian friend, God is trying to conform us and mold us; cut away, prune, and purge us. Yes. Only because he longs to reveal himself to us. He longs for us to carry with us his presence; to only hold unto him and nothing else. Do you want to be close to God? Do you want to draw nigh unto God? He’s in the wilderness. I’ll say this: He’s where you’re at. He wants you to take hold of him and always be in his divine presence. But there’s just no room for the flesh. It’s you he wants; not your stink’n flesh. Drop it dead and you can go on. As Paul said, (Romans 8:13,14) For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Why are we still holding on to that old child of the devil that is dead in trespasses and in sin? Nobody wants to die in the wilderness, but if we could just see that there is no other way.