Jeremy L. Berg

Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

Another excerpt from my manuscript Spirit on the Water. This chapter explores crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land, throwing off an identity as slaves and a “scarcity mindset,” and embracing our new identity as children of God and an “abundance mindset.” Here’s a snippet. Join us Sunday nights at 5PM for worship where I am teaching these lessons.

The account of God’s recently liberated children wandering in the wilderness is painful to read. They are filled with ingratitude and grumbling. A few days earlier, God had miraculously parted the Red Sea and made a path to freedom through waters of redemption, drowning their enemies in pursuit. Now they’re complaining about today’s lunch menu:

“If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost (except for the 400 years of slave labor!)—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this (miraculous gift from Heaven!) manna” (Num 11:4-6)! 

They had apparently forgotten the “minor” details I have added in italics! 

We are tempted to look down our noses and wag our fingers at such childish ingratitude and petty grumbling after such a remarkable display of God’s provision and rescue. But are we really that much different? We receive God’s forgiveness as we partake of the Eucharist on Sunday, but keep holding a grudge with someone on Monday. We’ve been given Heaven at great cost to our Savior, but we give others Hell when loving them demands too much. We give God the silent treatment on all our good days, and turn to Him only when a bad day arrives—often to grumble.

The shackled pleasures of Egypt often sound more attractive than the unknown joys that await us in the land of plenty where God wants to lead us. “Just give me a warm bowl of familiar misery,” we say, “I don’t want to bother acquiring a taste for the strange and unfamiliar life of God’s Upside-down Kingdom.” 

On our better days, we are grateful for what God has rescued us from. We acknowledge the misery of our own Egypts in the rearview. We remember the slave-masters that once held us in bondage. We express gratitude to God for parting our own Red Seas and making a Way where there was no way. But we must not remain in the wilderness, staring back at the Red Sea redemptions in wonder. God calls his people to turn around, face forward and prepare to cross another body of water. With the Waters of Liberation behind us, we now make our way to the Jordan River where we behold the Waters of Inheritance. 

Seeing It From A Distance

American gymnast Simone Biles, winner of 30 Olympic and World Championship medals, is regarded by many to be one of the greatest and most dominant gymnasts of all time. Biles shocked the world during the Tokyo Olympics when she  suddenly withdrew from the competition for mental health reasons. Many people were moved with compassion watching Biles, who had labored so hard and so long for this moment, sitting on the sidelines while others went on ahead of her to gain the prize she was destined for.

One of the most tragic plot lines in the Bible is Moses being sidelined and not allowed to enter the  long sought after Promised Land. I can imagine a sad violin playing in the background as Moses climbs up Mount Nebo and takes in the view: 

There the Lord showed him the whole land…Then the Lord said to him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said (Deut 34:1-5).

This aim of this chapter is to bring us up that spiritual mountain with Moses, to glimpse the good and spacious land God wants to give to all of His children, and to weep with Moses over how many people only glimpse it from a distance but never taste its fruit in this life. Such people are stuck wandering between two great spiritual waters.

Between Two Waters

The Christian faith many of us inherited tends to focus far more on what we have been saved from, than what we have been saved for. Jesus’ miraculous healings saved people from their afflictions. Jesus cast out evil spirits, setting people free from the Devil. Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins. Jesus rose again on the third day rescuing us from the power of death. But God has saved us from all of these things in order to prepare us for a new and abundant life with Him and for Him and His Kingdom! “I have come that they may have life, and have it in all it’s fullness,” Jesus says in John 10:10 (Berean Study Bible). 

If we continue staring back at our redemption, we will never get on with living into and out of our new inheritance as God’s beloved children. If we make permanent camp by the Red Sea, singing songs of past deliverance, we’ll never cross the Jordan into the Promised Land of future glory. We need to move on from the Waters of Liberation in order to cross the Waters of Inheritance.  

Imagine a race car that has veered off the track and got stuck in the mud. What a tragedy if when the tow truck pulls it out of the muck and mire, placing it back onto the track, the rescued car just sits there idle, revving its engine out of gratitude to the tow truck for the next 50 years, but never moving on. That car has been rescued in order to get back into the race!

God rescued the Israelites from slavery in order to make them a royal priesthood in the Promised Land. God rescues us from our sins in order to make us kings and queens who reign with Christ and help manifest His Kingdom “on earth as it is in Heaven.” As Paul tells one of his churches, “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves” (Col 1:13).

Are we so busy singing about The Old Rugged Cross on that hill far away so long ago, that we forget to sing about the Garden of New Creation we’ve been enlisted to cultivate here and now? 

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There’s a soul-engine revving in every redeemed heart, fueled  by high octane Holy Spirit power. Let us get out on the track, “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” and “run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Heb 12:1). Kingdom faith doesn’t consist of repeatedly walking the aisle, praying the prayer, and getting “born again” again. Kingdom faith invites us to cross over the Waters of Inheritance into the Promised Land where we are given a new master, a new mindset, and new mission. Let’s take them one at a time…

Read more in this series here.