"THREE DAYS' JOURNEY"
February 7, 1999 pm

Rev. MF Blume

Exod 4:1-9 And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The LORD hath not appeared unto thee. And the LORD said unto him, What [is] that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the LORD said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand: That they may believe that the LORD God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee. And the LORD said furthermore unto him, Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand [was] leprous as snow. And he said, Put thine hand into thy bosom again. And he put his hand into his bosom again; and plucked it out of his bosom, and, behold, it was turned again as his [other] flesh. Exod 4:8 And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign. And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour [it] upon the dry [land]: and the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry [land].

Exod 5:1-9 And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who [is] the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go. And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword. And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works? get you unto your burdens. And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land now [are] many, and ye make them rest from their burdens. And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish [ought] thereof: for they [be] idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go [and] sacrifice to our God. Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words.

This Christian life is a journey.

It is not a thrill of the moment hype that a preacher directs you to grab hold of God and then you can add that to your collection of experiences and say you took care of the issue of heaven, and go on you merry way.
As a child one friend said to us he was baptized as a baby and you need to be baptized to go to heaven, so he had it made.
His family were not serious believers.
Social christianity maybe, but nothing serious as the bible talks about.
And we felt bad that we were 't baptized as babies.
He had no choice in the matter, and neither did we, but we were on the out's and he was in.
That is just how many people look at this christian life.
Get heaven taken care of and then go on your merry way and concern yourself with the more important things of life.

But christianity is actually the most important thing in the universe!

And it is not something you collect an experience from and walk away from, having taken care of that problem.
It is a never-ending journey.
It will take eternity to discover all He has in store for us.
Live in this thing full tilt right now!
You are missing minutes which could be packed full of revelation of Him.

Exodus is showing us that it is a journey.

The ones who forget about God all week and spend no time chatting about Him and seeking His face and putting forth efforts to know Him better simply do not see the concept of a journey.

Israel was in Egypt, and were slaves to the Pharaoh there.

They were involved in making temples for his glory and were beaten and whipped and made to do so.
Imagine God's people being forced to build pagan temples and idols of the Pharaoh for him to gloat over and pride himself with.
God wanted them to leave the land and get into Canaan and build a temple to the Glory of God!

Lives are being used by the enemy today because the people are unaware of their freedom granted right there in Christ for them 2000 years ago.

So the word of the deliverer comes to us.

Moses was sent by God to deliver Israel from this and come to a place in God where they would build up a temple.
When Moses hears of his duty, he notes the need for signs to be given that Israel might believe.
Cast down the rod and after it becomes a serpent, pick it up and it will return to a rod.
Put your hand in your bosom and pull it back and see its leprosy, and put it in again and remove it to see its cleanliness.
If they do not believe these then take the river's water and pour it out on dry land that I turn it to blood.
These are the signs God gave for Moses to show His people.
God's people must receive these signs.
And there is the possibility that they will not.
So God gave a third sign.
Notice the words and tone used in Exodus 4:9
If they disbelieve you, then there is no other alternative, we see in the sense of the tone.
But the first sign of casting down the rod and it becoming a serpent and picking it up again is a sign for us today, and a message.

FIRST SIGN

Man fell.

The serpent came into the Garden and tempted humanity to sin and humanity sinned.
Humanity came under the control of the serpent so to speak.
Sin began ruling man.
And as the rod was thrown down and became a serpent, man's fall caused him to become like the serpent.
God's temple became a den of thieves.
Dens were dwelling places of serpents.
The devil is a thief and liar.
He came and made his home and came to steal, kill and destroy. (John 10:10).
Jesus came that we might have life.
But God's hand was going to reach down and pick man up and restore man into the state he was in the Garden.
Jesus is said to be the right hand of God.
He is the means of God's power to save.

Pharaoh is indicated by the serpent as much as Satan is indicated by the serpent.

Ezek 29:3 Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I [am] against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river [is] mine own, and I have made [it] for myself.

Reve 12:3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

Reve 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, ...

Pharaoh is said to be the very thing Satan is called, "the great dragon."

Jesus wanted man to become a temple of God.
But Satan thwarted that plan and made man a den of thieves.
When Jesus saw the temple filled with money changers, he thought of what the real temple was and how this picture perfectly indicated what was going on in the Spirit.
Mankind had become a den of serpents due ot sin.
And we read :

John 2:16-17 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.

(See Rev. 18:13).

His love for mankind ate him up to a rage to cast out the devil and set man free.

SECOND SIGN

Then the second sign was that the hand reaching into the bosom and coming out leprous shows that man's heart is sinful.

Leprosy represents sin in the Bible.
Not only did man become a habitation of spirits, but became sinful.
God was saying he would cleanse the heart of men after the devil's hold was broken off them.
Inside was sin, but He would cleanse them inwardly of it all.

And if they would not hearken to these two signs, then a third sign would be given.

If people do not believe the message of deliverance, it is as though God was saying what you deem as life in Egypt, the NILE, will become death and you will die in your sins.

So Moses goes and speaks to Pharaoh the message of the Exodus.
And Pharaoh rises up and makes their labour worse.

Moses told him to let the people go three days journey in to the wilderness and sacrifice.

The message is that we must go three days and sacrifice.

You see it was three days in which Christ died, was buried and resurrected.
The third day He rose again.
The message today is that we must die, be buried and resurrect with Jesus.
And we are presenting ourselves, plural, as a single living sacrifice to God.
Ro. 12:1.
Many people, one sacrifice.
This is what is preached
This is the message.

But the serpent in the people, this twister of truth, gets people to work harder, instead, and to commit more good deeds than ever before.

In actuality their slavery becomes more bitter.
People hear of grace and mix it all up and think you have to work so hard to be a christian.

Folks, it is a total reaction of the carnality in you that makes you try to make yourself better when you hear the Gospel.

It is the lies from the old "Pharaoh," the devil.
You missed the sign!
You did not have faith in the word.
God would cast the devil out and return you to what He originally made you as.
And He will remove the sin.
These are the signs that confirm the message about three days' journey.
Jesus died as you.
You fell into sin and Jesus became sin for us.

2Cor 5:21 For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Recall the serpent raised on a pole that Israel might look to it and be healed of the serpent's venom that was killing them.

The serpent's venom of sin has been killing man since the Garden of eden.
But Jesus became what was killing us.
He was made sin for us.
The serpents were killing the people, and Christ became what was killing us.
So Jesus said as Moses lifted up the serpent, so must He be lifted up and he would draw all men into Himself.
That serpent represents Jesus taking all the sin poison from the original serpent into Himself and dying so sin would no longer kill us.
And if we look to that, and believe in that, we shall be healed!

So the throwing down of the rod and it turning into a serpent represents the fact that we fell into sin, but Jesus came down to where we were, took our sin into Himself, and through him we are raised by God's hand and healed!

The sign represents the death, burial and resurrection.

Jesus died as us by taking our sin.
The soul that sins must die.
So He took our sin and died our deaths, and fell into the ground's grave.
And He was raised by the Spirit and resurrected to be once again without sin.

But so many of you have reacted outside of faith.

You were told to work harder now that you know about Jesus.
The false understanding was pumped into you that you have to make yourself live more strenuously.

The reason people do not give their lives to God and experience deliverance, is because they misinterpret, at the devil's prompting, this message and think they have to work harder.

Moses, it would have been better if you never told us this message!
They think they have to live an impossible good life that nobody has enough energy to live.
That is the serpent twisting that.

Moses says go three days' journey, and Pharaoh says work harder!

The true message is that your journey is to die with Christ and be buried and rise with Him.
He did the work.
Just get in Him and realize He did the work for you.
Unite to Him and His death.

The serpent has counterfeited it until people are afraid to hear it.

Sinners run away and believers work harder to please God.
Satan is deceiving again!
That is why I ask God to let a spirit of revelation be in you to properly understand these sermons.

Jesus is not only the Author, folks, but also the FINISHER.

He did not start you out and expect you to work your way to glory.
He will finish it as much as He started it.
You are having a struggle believing.
IT IS ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE A THREE DAYS' JOURNEY
But we complicated it.
We believed the devil's lies about it.
The three days' journey is simply dying, being buried and resurrecting with Jesus!
But we added works to that.

As we said this morning, Moses was supposed to strike the rock once and then speak to it from then on.

Once was Christ stricken in death, and that was the means to become one with Him.
We are united to Him through His death.
That is the only part of His life that opened it up for us to unite to Him.
And then we are part of that Rock from then on.
But then Moses struck the rock again to get water from it.
And as much as Moses was impatient with the people, and struck it again, we can get impatient and beat ourselves, thinking we must suffer like this again and again.
People distorted Jesus' sufferings and made it out that they have to be crucified daily, rather than know THEY WERE ONCE CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST, to never die again.
And they misunderstand and beat themselves.
Self-crucifixion.

When Paul said he died daily he did not mean dying with Christ daily.

He meant he risked his physical life by being beaten and so forth due to preaching the gospel amidst persecution trying to stop him.
But Paul said we died ONCE with Christ to never die again.
That is Pharoah-serpent lies that we die daily with Christ.
We died once and must deny ourselves daily.
There is a difference.

Here we are wandering around the wilderness due to lack of faith.

Israel only had a three day journey to Canaan.
Three days and go for sacrifice, Moses said.
But their unbelief and complaining when tests came their way to check out their faith, moved them to stay an entire generation - 40 years - in the wilderness.

Moses had to go 40 years to get the wrong concept out of himself, too.

All there is is to believe there is a three day journey.

From death to burial to resurrection.
Acts 2:38.
And all the work has been done to give us all the blessings we need from God.
But we missed the message.
And we wondered where God's care was when things went bad after we were saved.
We did not have confidence that His work on the cross was all we required to get us in the "IN" with God.
And we started to worry and spin and toil, instead of being like the lily and drawing from the strength of Christ in whom we are planted.

And God saw we missed it, and said this old part of you still thinking like the world has got to die.

There's an older way of thinking in you that needs to go.
The older generation who doubted they could enter Canaan represents the reasoning part of us that doubts.
The younger generation under 20 represented the new man, the part of you that is born again.
You have flesh and you have the born again new man!
The younger part of you never knew the doubt and unbelief in Egypt.
But the older part recalls Egypt, and often wants to go back there.
But God said until the older is diminished and gone and buried, the younger cannot go in.
When that part of you that doubts and complains, and misses the whole purpose of freeing you, so that you think you are still so bound and weak, dies, then you are free to enter into all the blessings.

When we can get rid of the fleshly unbelief that does not "get" what the message is all about, and begin realizing by revelation that "Nothing can stop me and I am not so weak as I thought since I am one with Christ," then we will walk on into what scares so many believers.

When we get out of this mentality that we are not good enough to enjoy all the spiritual blessings in heavenly places just by being in Christ, and the false notions that we must do so good that we simply could never do it...

We will enter the fullness of Christ.
The promised land!

This type of works-thinking is running a treadmill going nowhere.

You'll work yourself nowhere until you quit thinking like that and rest in the finished work of the cross.
All my attention is to be directed to being rooted in Him and His death.

"THREE DAYS' JOURNEY" February 7, 1999 pm

FIRST SIGN

SECOND SIGN

"THREE DAYS' JOURNEY"
February 7, 1999 pm