Briefly reviewing what we have covered earlier in this study, after Paul recited the experiences of Israel in the wilderness, we read: “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (I Corinthians 10:11). This makes clear that everything which happened to Israel was a biblical model of what would happen to the congregation of God at the end of the age. The church has indeed closely followed the same pattern. Now, after centuries of wandering in the wilderness, the church is poised to cross the Jordan and begin taking its Promised Land just as Israel did. Israel’s successes will be models for ours, and their mistakes can keep us from making similar ones.
After crossing the river, all who had not been circumcised in the wilderness had to have this done before they could go on to possess their inheritance (see Joshua 5). This represents the cutting away of the flesh or carnal nature, which is why we parked there for a time to study the works of the flesh listed in Galatians 5, and how these must likewise be removed from our lives if we are to “inherit the kingdom of God.”
In Gilgal, in the valley of Jericho, Israel was humbled and made weak in the sight of her enemies. This is what the church has been going through in many ways. The spiritual circumcision of the church has been exposed to the world, and the church has been made to look weak. Through the failures of some highly visible ministries, and such things as the sex scandals of the Catholic Church, the church may look like a real mess, but it is about to arise as a mighty, conquering army.
Some have wondered if the exposure of these sins was really the Lord’s judgment on His household because it came mostly from a very, secular news media. One of the basic principles taught in the Old Testament is that the Lord often used the heathen nations around Israel to discipline His people. He has not changed and we can expect Him to still do this. However, just as the Lord would then judge the heathen nations for being presumptuous enough to touch His people, it is a sobering study to see what happens to those who presumptuously touch His people today.
This brings up another good question: Why does the Lord judge the heathen for touching His people when they are in fact doing it for His purposes? First, the Lord uses the circumstances of this world and even the devil to accomplish His purposes. The devil’s evil intent to destroy Jesus worked right into the plans of God, but the devil is still going to suffer his judgment, and so will those who have touched His people. The heathen are intent on finding fault with Christians because it helps them feel justified in their own rebellion and sin. The Lord will at times use such people to help bring correction to His people, but He will not leave them unpunished either.
Many Christians became discouraged by the public revelations of misbehavior in the church, especially when it came through leaders of the church. I still often meet people who began to backslide when this happened. However, the mature and discerning were not discouraged by these revelations. This does not mean it was right to rejoice at the exposure and humiliation of brothers or sisters in Christ or the problems that they caused the whole church. But it should be the scariest thing in the world for us if we are sinning and getting away with it. As it is made clear in Hebrews 12, the Lord disciplines His children, and if we are without discipline then we are not His children. Such discipline coming upon the church was evidence of God’s love for us, including those who were publicly exposed, not His rejection.
If we are so hardened in our sin that the Lord has to make it public to get our attention, then we should still be thankful that He loves us enough to not let us keep getting away with it. Even so, after the pain of Gilgal we should have the resolve to never want to go through that again! “…Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21), and we want to go on to the conquest of our inheritance, which is His kingdom.
Right after the circumcision, Israel celebrated the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread which is connected to the Passover. They were commanded to celebrate these each year to remind them of the Source of their freedom, the Lamb. After the severe pain of our spiritual circumcision and the cutting away of the carnal nature, we, too, will be prone to be self-centered, focusing on ourselves and our shortcomings, and we will likewise need to quickly turn our attention back to the Lord, “Christ our Passover.”
As you may have heard me say or write often, a great return is coming to the cross in Christianity. True Christianity is a life of sacrifice, taking up our crosses daily. However, if we become more focused on our cross than the cross of Christ, we will not only open the door for a demonic religious spirit, but we are set up for ultimate defeat.
When the Lord is cutting away our flesh, we need to focus on that work and let godly sorrow for our sinful ways have its intended result. However, we need to get over it quickly and get our attention off of ourselves and back on to Him. The very deliverance from our sinful ways does not just come from seeing our own evil ways; we must then behold His glory and be changed into His image from glory to glory (see II Corinthians 3:18).
Once we have truly beheld the glory of the Lord, all human glory will seem insignificant. Our works and accomplishments will always be pale in the light of what He did. When we have truly beheld the cross of Christ, we will not be prone to glory in our own sacrifices, but we will see any sacrifice required of us as small and a great honor to do for His name’s sake.
Many of the self-improvement teachings and movements in the church have accomplished good things for people, helping some become more fruitful in their lives. Ministries that are devoted to inner healing have also helped some. However, the way some of these teachings are promoted and practiced are not really healing anyone, but rather leading Christians to a black hole of self-centeredness from which few ever escape. Just because something claims to be Christ-centered does not mean it is.
I recently asked a surgeon his opinion on how much modern medical science really understood the human body. His response was that the greatest experts in their fields have about a 35 percent understanding at best. We can thank the Lord we now understand even this much and for how much modern medicine helps people, but we also need to know its present limitations, and they are considerable. We would be very foolish to allow an amateur to just go digging around in our bodies trying to fix things.
In relation to how our minds work, even a smaller percentage than this is understood by the greatest professionals. It also seems that the mind of man is even more fragile and easily damaged than the body. Yet, there are movements and teachers which seek to release multitudes of amateur counselors on the body of Christ to do surgery on the minds and souls of Christians. They often do this by digging around in a person’s soul like an amateur surgeon trying to fix things he only has a tiny understanding of. The result of this has been a catastrophe for many, damaging them far worse than they were to begin with.
This does not mean we do not need counseling, as this should be a special domain of the church and fundamental to a true pastoral ministry. In my thirty-five years as a Christian, I have yet to meet someone who I felt was truly helped by amateur counselors or “inner healing.” I have met many who felt they did seem to do better for a short term, but then seemed inevitably to regress into an even worse state of self-centeredness and constantly trying to fix themselves.
However, I do believe in inner healing, and I have witnessed many strongholds broken by prophetic revelation, but I have never seen the real thing take more than a couple of hours at best. People can get addicted to counseling very fast because it assuages their self-centeredness. It is foolishness to try to resurrect the “old man” and get him healed. The old self must be crucified and buried, and we must move on. Trying to heal the old man is like punching the tar baby. Our spiritual circumcision is essential; the carnal nature must be cut away, but then we need to get healed fast by turning back to the Lord and His cross and moving forward to possess our promises.
We must learn to guard ourselves against any teaching or ministry that has us more focused on our own selves than on Christ. Many of these teachings which can be a major distraction do have a lot of truth in them, and I have never met anyone promoting them that was not genuinely interested in trying to help people. However, we need to seriously examine the fruit of even the most professional counseling ministries and even more so the amateur ones. They can be devastating in distracting believers from the true path of life—the knowledge of the Lord Himself.
Most of us still have a few hundred things wrong with us. It is the devil’s strategy to get us focused on all of them at once, spreading ourselves so thin that we are wearied and easily defeated. This is one part of the devil’s strategy for “wearing out the saints.” It is a web that few can ever get free from once they become entangled in such “self improvement.” We do not need self-improvement—we need to be transformed by the Holy Spirit. We cannot fix ourselves, but we must rely on the Holy Spirit to do this. The way He almost always works is to focus on one or maybe two things at a time. When we get a victory in just one thing, it tends to spill over into victory in all of the other areas as well.
Our victory over our flesh will not come from taking up our own crosses. We are commanded to take up our crosses for the purpose of laying down our lives for the sake of others, not ourselves. The deliverance we will receive from our sins will only come from the cross of Jesus. He is the One we must look to for our atonement and our deliverance from sin. The path to true deliverance does not come by focusing on what is wrong with us, but on the glory of the Lord that will transform us. We must see what is wrong with us so we will have the godly sorrow for sin that is the evidence of true repentance. But then we must turn our attention to the only remedy for sin, the cross of Christ, and the only deliverance from sin, which is to behold His glory and be changed by it.
After doing the study on the works of the flesh, I have had many tell me how convicted they have been, just as I also was by writing about them. Conviction is a work of the Holy Spirit and is evidence that He is working in us. However, for conviction to have its proper results, we must go on to provision. This is what we are going to study next.
When Israel crossed the Jordan, immediately the manna stopped and they started living off of the fruit of the land. We will therefore take a bit of time to also study the fruit of the Spirit. In many ways, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the firstfruits of the Promised Land, and walking in His resurrection power is evidenced not just by the power gifts of the Spirit, but also by the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.