DO NOT GO TO EGYPT!

Last week after an engrossing Bible Study that God had taken me through, I felt an urgency from Him to delay my next job (getting my kids up) so I could read my Bible reading for that day. What it led to was so deep it has taken me a few days to work through and write up…

I turned to my Bible in anticipation of what He wanted to show me that was so urgent, and opened it to where I had finished the day before. I started reading from Jeremiah 41. I’ll share a brief potted recap, for context…
Jerusalem had only been captured a couple of months previously, and most of the Jews taken into captivity in Babylon. A governor was appointed to oversee the remnant of Jews left behind in Judah, but he was killed and the remnant taken away to be delivered to other enemies. The remnant were rescued by a warrior who had avoided captivity, called Johanan, who they looked to for leadership. However he didn’t take them back to Judah for fear of their enemy there. Instead he started to take them towards Egypt (v15-18)

In Chapter 42, Johanan and those with him came to Jeremiah and asked the prophet to seek God’s will for them (v1-6). In verses 7-22, Jeremiah repeatedly prophesied that if they remained in their homeland, Judah, God would protect them from the enemies there, and would give them peace, but if they allowed fear to cause them to flee to Egypt, what they feared would actually happen there, and they would be destroyed. In chapter 43 Johanan’s ‘proud men’ (v2) accused Jeremiah of lying for ulterior motives, and took everyone (including Jeremiah) to Egypt.
But it was Verse 19 of Chapter 42 that jumped out at me as I read, and it resounded in my spirit as if God Himself was shouting it to me: “The Lord has said concerning you, O remnant of Judah, ‘Do not go to Egypt!‘ “And as the words echoed around me like the most passionate plea from the heart of God, I knew He was wanting to call to us today with a loving warning. So I asked Him for understanding…

What I saw was that Jerusalem is a representation of God’s people, his holy Bride. They had been taken captive by Babylon which is a representation of all those opposed to God. Babylon was the physical manifestation of the Jews’ sinful, worldly choices: they had repeatedly chosen wickedness, so were eventually and inevitably taken captive by it. It was true of them as it is with us: whatever sin we indulge in will eventually become our captor.
Their captivity to Babylon was the inevitable result of centuries of pursuing idolatry, and God allowed it. However as with all evil consequences allowed by God, it was allowed with the true intent of purification and restoration. The night Jerusalem was overthrown, God already had His eye on the day they would return. Such is also true of all He permits as consequence of our sinful choices: everything we go through – usually as a result of our persistently shunning God’s call – is only ever allowed for the greater purpose of bringing us back to a more pure relationship with Him.

And just as Babylon was a physical manifestation of the result of centuries of Israel choosing her own way, being God’s people in name only while chasing their own desires, so I believe the season that we have been in – lockdown etc – has also been a physical manifestation of our choices as the Church.
If we are honest and open to conviction, we can see that we the Church had shut our ears to absolute Truth, preferring to discuss our opinions and ideologies. We shut our hearts to the demands of absolute holiness, preferring to compromise and be benevolent and non-threatening to all. We shut our doors to those who were different, preferring to stay in our exclusive clubs of those who thought and acted the same as us. We shut our churches to the uncontainable power of the Holy Spirit, preferring to have neatly contained meetings with just a trickle of goosebumps to placate our need for some kind of God-connection. And so God allowed our total shutting-down, through the physical manifestation of a highly infectious, potentially fatal sickness.
The comparison between the coronavirus and the invisible spiritual disease permeating the Church surely could not be more horrifyingly clear? Covid 19 stole our ability to breathe, it caused us to lose our taste, it left us weak and barely functioning. What does that say about the state of the Church? Are we still wilfully deceived or have we woken up to the terrible truth that the powerful breath of the Spirit was so absent from our meetings? That we had ceased to be the salty flavour that the world needs to taste? That we the Church had become weak and barely functioning compared to the fullness that God created His Bride for? And that all the time this debilitating sickness of compromise was running rampant among us, spreading underneath our radar while we believed the illusion that we were spiritually healthy? Put simply, we have not been the Church who Jesus created us to be. No wonder the Church was declared to be non-essential at the start of lockdown! We were the problem, not the answer that a healthy Church would have been.

It’s been a sobering wake-up call, for sure. That is assuming we are really awake, and not just hitting the snooze button, wilfully believing that the worst is past and we can just ‘go back to normal’ soon. Lord, may we not be like Johanan and his friends, accusing You servant of lying just because they didn’t want to hear the truth, choosing instead to believe a more palatable but falsely comforting message.

The good news is that God has reserved a remnant for Himself in these days too, who are humble and open to conviction – who will pursue Him over the old religion, and pray for the return of their nation (the Church).
But as in Jeremiah’s account where the remnant didn’t just get to live in peace but had to deal with repeated attempts at capture, so too do we need to be on guard against ongoing attempts to take us away from God’s promises. These attempts came in the form of ‘friendly fire’ – Jewish leaders they had known before who you would think would be on their side, but clearly weren’t. The first leader, Ishmael, quickly revealed his own hostile agenda for them, but Johanan initially appeared as a rescuer who was helping them to flee from danger and find a safe haven… and later turned out to be utterly self-serving and deceitful, worse than an openly hostile enemy!
So too in this season do we need to be on guard among ourselves against the familiar. I’m not saying all our old church leaders are bad – far from it! But our enemy wants to use the fake comfort of the old to keep us captive in fear or clinging to what is finished. Looking to what used to be familiar to guide us is just going to lead to more trouble. The only safe course of action is to listen to God – and then when God speaks, to obey. We must not be ‘proud men’ that falsely accuse God’s prophets of lying just because we don’t like/ understand what they say. We must heed His word!

So why was God so vehement this morning over “Do NOT go to Egypt?”
Well, we know that Egypt in the Old Testament was a clear picture of Israel’s past slavery. God had delivered them from slavery before, through the Passover lamb’s blood (a clear picture of our deliverance from captivity to sin through Jesus’ blood). So for Israel to go willingly back to the land of their original captivity in order to escape a fear that God had promised to protect them from would be worse than unbelief – it would be a wilful return to captivity by the enemy. God had a plan to destroy Egypt, and a plan to allow captivity to Babylon for a season only. A return to Egypt would be a rejection of His plans, thinking that they knew better.

Egypt represents the remnant refusing God’s call to trust Him.
Egypt represents running in fear of the enemy.
Egypt represents the comfort of the known over the discomfort of the unknown
Egypt represents the illusion of control
Egypt represents wilful return to the captivity that God delivered us from
Returning to Egypt is the ultimate rejection of the blood of the Lamb.
Egypt is sin.

DO NOT GO TO EGYPT!

We are not looking to return to a geographical land – that would be so much easier to spot than soulish temptation, and therefore easier to resist, you would think. But it’s a picture of what is inside each of us, and inside the Church at large: for us, as with the Jews, it’s the temptation to pursue safety, control, certainty – and it is usually the voice of the old and familiar that promises it can get us those things. And to pursue those would be to return to Egypt. It would be sin.

The consequence of years of sinful compromise within the Church has been our wake-up call of captivity to lockdown (our ‘Babylon’) Now we have a choice: do we humble ourselves and receive the call to be purified by the consequences of our sin, allowing God to cleanse us and trust in His promise to turn us into His holy people – or do we run in fear, try to pursue our own safety and certainty through the persuasive voices of the familiar, calling us backwards to take control of our own lives?

If we want to avoid Egypt, we must trust God. We must stop looking for certainty and control, because those are an illusion and a sin. Only God can bring us to safety, even while we are being purged by what looks like the enemy’s actions. And He will… if we will trust His Word, resist the old & familiar, and stay away from Egypt.

Lord, give us ears to hear and hearts to respond in humility. May we not comfort ourselves with the false hope that we ourselves haven’t sinned, but be open to Your loving conviction. Thank You for the blood of Jesus that washes us clean of all sin – you are not condemning any of us. But we know You do have a vision of a spotless Bride, and we can see that we are not there yet. So Lord, we humbly submit to whatever it takes for you to cleanse us and conform us to Your image. We reject our ‘Egypt’ and all the sin of the old season, and commit to trusting You, whatever this new season brings. Amen.