The New Testament uses the journey of Israel from Egypt to Canaan as an illustration of the process of redemption, of the transition from sin and death to eternal resurrection life.

Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: (Hebrews 3:8)

I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. (Jude 1:5)

Clearly, the Holy Spirit intends that we should consider the movement of Israel from Egypt to Canaan as an example of our movement from death to life.

Notice that the Lord destroyed the Israelites because they "believed not."

If we can look at what it was they did that brought about their destruction we can understand what it means to "believe not."

Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it: (Numbers 14:22,23)

If the current emphasis were true, that the Christian redemption consists of our sitting in Egypt and believing we are in the land of promise because Christ is in the land of promise and we are in Christ, then all the Israelites would have had to do was to wait in Egypt and claim they were in Canaan. This is a spiritual fantasy, a withdrawal from reality.

The reason they tempted God in the wilderness ten times is that they were wandering in a barren, inhospitable wilderness and they were miserable. They were following the cloud by day and the fire by night. They were not sitting in Egypt and exclaiming all they had to do was believe. Such indeed would be a dead faith.

So it is in the Christian life. We must follow the Spirit of God. The Spirit is leading us from death to life. Every day we must follow the Spirit. To do otherwise is to neglect our salvation. It would be as though an Israelite were to sit in the wilderness of Sinai and wait for God to save him by his acknowledgment of God's promises.

God already had put His fear on the Canaanites. Their protection had departed from them. They were bread for the Israelites.

But the Israelites lost faith in God. They murmured. They complained. They wept in fear. If they had believed in God's trustworthiness God would have led them in battle against the Philistines and they would have conquered every village and city. But instead God directed them back into the wilderness to die there.

It is important to note that God did all the fighting against the Egyptians. The Jews had only to make their exodus. But when Israel entered Canaan the Jews had to fight their way into their possession—city by city. God did not do all the fighting for them on that occasion.

In fact, we find in the Book of Judges that God would not deliver all the cities into their hands because He first wanted to prove their worthiness (Judges 2:22,23).

To be continued.