Complete in Him

From Numbers chapter 11. The people of Israel also wept again and said, Oh that we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing.

The cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. The manna was Christ.

And the fish and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic were Egypt. It didn't take God long to get the people out of Egypt. When the moment came, they marched through the parted waters of the sea and then looked back and saw the waters closing in over the Egyptians and they were free.

But what a long, long time it took for God to get Egypt out of the people. They had Egypt in their hearts. They were constantly going back to it in their minds.

And the thing which caused the Egypt which was down in their hearts to rise to the surface and show itself was trouble. Any kind of trouble. Unpleasantness, stress.

If they were hungry or thirsty or if they felt lost or if they got bored with the monotony of that wilderness, it was Egypt that would well up in their minds and lure them back. Sometimes it would appear in the form of lust for the food of Egypt. The melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic and the fish.

And sometimes it would rise up as idolatry. As when Moses went up in the mountain, he was gone for such a long time and they demanded a god that they could see. Aaron gave them the golden calf.

All this was so easy and so natural to do because it was Egypt. But there was no way these people could ever possibly go in and take the land of promise until the land of their bondage was removed from their hearts. And so the months rolled on into years and more and more years until they reached the point where their hearts were truly fixed on God and Egypt was behind them.

Now the easiest part of entering the kingdom of God is that first step of walking through the door. We repent, receive forgiveness, and begin to feed on the mercy of God, which is Jesus, the manna. And now we're out of Egypt.

But we soon discover that Egypt is far from out of us. As soon as there's some kind of trouble, we revert. We tend to go back to our old tendencies, our old fears and anxieties and bitterness and lust and greed and all these things which we know so well about ourselves.

Somebody jars me. All of a sudden, out of my mouth spews this garbage which I thought was gone long ago. Wickedness.

Bitterness. I get into a financial jam. Now my mind begins to finagle again and the things that I figure out are all straight out of Egypt.

My feelings get hurt. What I should have done was allow those words that were spoken by that person to go right by like a cloud of dust. But instead I find myself grabbing hold of a grudge and nursing it just like I used to do before.

Meanwhile, the promised land waits over there on the other side of the Jordan, waits to be ripped out of the hands of the enemy. The captives are still in bondage. The sheep are still hungry and unfed.

The harvest rots in the sun while we go round and round in our little circles in the wilderness with Egypt firmly in our hearts. And the people of Israel wept again and said, Oh, that we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing.

The cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. And now our strength is dried up and there is nothing at all but this manner to look at. The whole purpose of God taking the people through the wilderness was to bring them to the place where they would see Him, God, as the manna, where they would get to know God, not only as their deliverer but as their friend, their God, their very life.

Every night they look up and see the pillar of fire. Every day the luminous cloud hangs over the tabernacle. Every day they eat that manna.

How pale are all the pleasures and the riches of Egypt by comparison with the privilege of walking hand in hand with the God of the universe if they could only see Him. And where better for us to learn the all-sufficiency of our Lord than in the wilderness where Egypt is not only taken out of our circumstances but brought up out of our hearts and we begin to appreciate that He, Jesus, is everything. Colossians 2. For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have come to fullness of life in Him who is the head of all rule and authority.

In Him also you were circumcised with the circumcision made with our hands by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ. And you were buried with Him in baptism in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead. In our minds we understand that in Jesus dwells the fullness of the Godhead, the deity bodily, and that we are complete in Him.

We get that in our minds while our hearts still hang on to Egypt. And so God takes us into a wilderness to teach our hearts and our wills that we are indeed complete in Him, in Jesus, that we have come to fullness of life in Him. In each of our lives, even in the lives of those of us who appear to be quite happy and prosperous, there is an area which is identical to that no man's land the Israelites had to pass through when they left Egypt.

An area where there are problems, there is loneliness, disappointment, stress. This is the place where God forms in us the miracle He worked with His own suffering 20 centuries ago. He takes us through this wilderness to accomplish three things.

First, to cut, literally cut Egypt right out of our hearts. Second, to bring us to the place where in fact we are dead to Egypt, no longer susceptible even to this delusion that keeps throwing itself at our mind. And third, to raise us up into Jesus in such a way that He becomes our life and our everything.

Now the first thing that happens as we travel through this wilderness is that Jesus begins to cut Egypt out of our hearts with an invisible knife. In Him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ. This is the circumcision of the heart, the cutting away of Egypt from the heart.

These attachments, these things that we think we can't live without, the things that are so important that gave so much meaning to our lives, but they are in fact empty idols. These are the chains that have been binding us to Egypt and now as we walk through the wilderness, He begins to cut them. Jesus begins to cut.

Sometimes with pain. But He's doing the cutting. And we begin to, praise God, by the light of the Spirit, understand that this is not a coincidence, this is not a mistake.

God's not messing up. This thing we're going through, this trial, is exactly what we need in order to be delivered from our bondage. What He's doing is circumcising our hearts and setting us free from our bitterness, our self-righteousness, our critical attitudes, our self-pity, our lust, our continuous anxieties.

But not only does He have to cut Egypt out of our hearts, He also has to bring us to the place where we are in fact dead. No longer even capable of being sidetracked by these delusions that come from Egypt. And you were buried with Him in baptism.

And that's what this means. A whole outlook has to die, a way of life has to go down into the grave. There's no possible way there can be any kind of resurrection without a death.

We don't only reckon ourselves dead with Christ theoretically, but we go beyond that. We do that indeed, but beyond that we begin now to actually go down into a death with Christ in an actual way. And the way this works is that we begin to experience death.

Our dream is shattered, our vain hope is dashed. Sometimes we even experience the draining of our strength. And we're walking around doing our daily work, getting things done, functioning in some way, but inside we know we're nothing but a corpse.

How well we know that. See, but we're not alone. We're dead with Christ, we're buried with Him so that we can be raised with Him.

See, but this death with Christ is exactly what is needed in order for us to accomplish what God has for us. We begin after a while to see that God knows what He's doing and that there is only one way we'll ever come up in a resurrection, and that is if we first go down in a death. Now, for many of us, we die very slowly.

Some of us, a few of us maybe die quickly, but most of us fight it all the way. We don't want to die. We don't want to go down and be that grain of wheat with Jesus going into the ground and bearing much fruit through death.

And until we're ready to do that, everything else seems to be stymied and stopped. And then finally one day we begin to trust God. And we say, okay, okay.

And we go down into this death, and there we begin to experience the life of God. There is no other way. And finally, after those two things, we begin to experience number three.

We come up out of that grave with Jesus into a life such as we've never known before. And you were buried with Him in baptism in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead. Brought up into a union with God, just as God took the Israelites across that wilderness so that they came to the place where Yahweh, the God of Israel, was everything.

So we are taken through this wilderness until we come to the place where Jesus literally is everything. Egypt has been cut out of our hearts. And now we have been spoiled for the world, crucified, we have died.

And we have this wounded thigh, we limp around. There's something out of joint now in us. And now we begin to taste that Jesus is in fact the living water and the living bread.

And that Jesus is not a means to some end, but He is the end. He is the life. He is our life.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse in order that I may gain Christ, that I may know Him in the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering, being made like Him in His death. Most of us are tasting these things.

But one day soon, if we keep going through the wilderness, it will be more than a taste. Jesus will be in fact the consuming passion of our lives. That's not just for certain famous saints of old, but that's for every believer.

The day will come when Egypt will be gone and our hearts will just be inflamed with the mercy of our Lord as we go forth into the promised land and begin to bear fruit for Him in ways that we never dreamed possible. Meanwhile, may God just keep us going through the wilderness, even if it's rough going. Keep us going until we come to the point where it's no longer Jesus and Egypt in our hearts, but it's just Jesus.

Let's take some time in prayer.