THE NATURAL MAN
In
the Old Testament, Israel has always been a type of the Church. We read about
natural warfare being fought out against a people who have been taken from the
nations of the world to ‘be a people consecrated to God’ (Deut 7:6).
Concerning
the Church, Peter picks up this same theme when he says ‘you are a chosen
race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart’. (1 Pt
2:9).
Israel’s
wilderness journey was to deal with their natural man.
What
applied to Israel also applies to the Church. ‘You cannot belong to Christ
Jesus unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires’. (Gal
5:24). Man is born with five natural driving forces.
·
The 1st
natural drive is ‘self-preservation’.
They
said ‘were there no graves in Egypt that you had to bring us out to
die in the desert? What good have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Did
we not say to you in Egypt, ‘leave us alone; we would rather work for the
Egyptians than to die in the desert’? (Ex 14:11). There you have the same
reaction that you see today. Many people want to follow the Lord but at the
same time they want to hang on to their old way of living. You can’t serve two
masters. Serving the old master will keep you bound, serving the new master
will set you free, which is not a license to do what you want to do, but it is
having the freedom to do what you ought to be doing, that’s the difference.
·
The 2nd
natural drive is ‘hunger & thirst’.
They
said, ‘what shall we drink?’ (Ex 15:24). They had witnessed their
miraculous deliverance three days earlier, there was great rejoicing but now
there was a problem. The water was so bitter that they could not drink it. This
hardship caused them to remember their hardships in Egypt, and the Lord allowed
it so that they could deal with their bitterness, their murmuring and their
complaining, but they didn’t know how to handle the situations or the painful
memories. Then they thought about the good things of Egypt and that brought
them painful memories because they were now denied those things. ‘You have
brought us out into this wilderness to kill us all with hunger’. (Ex
16:3). They were still psychologically
and emotionally linked to their past by their thoughts and so those
imaginations as Paul writes can become ‘strongholds in the mind that have to
be torn down’ otherwise we can’t move forward. They had been slaves for
four hundred years and those scars needed to be dealt with before they could
enter into the blessings of the Promised Land, otherwise those scars would
cause them to be unfruitful in the land of Canaan. It’s interesting to note
that it was in this place of bitterness that the Lord revealed to them that ‘I
am the Lord who heals you’. That tells me that the Lord will allow certain
situations to happen to us, in order free us from memories of the past. As far
as the Lord is concerned he has freed us from the past, but in our own minds
and hearts this may not be so.
·
The 3rd
natural drive is ‘gain of possessions’.
They
said, ‘Why did you bring us out here to destroy our livestock’. (Ex
17:3).
When
the Israelites left Egypt they plundered the Egyptians of their gold, silver
and clothes. Now there were no supermarkets to buy or trade in, but the one
thing that belonged to them in Egypt was their livestock. It was at this place,
Horeb, that they tested the Lord by saying ‘is the Lord with us or not?’
In the Beatitudes when Jesus said, ‘blessed are the meek for they shall
inherit the earth’, he was saying that the people who would inherit the
earth were those who had a right attitude in their minds and in their hearts
towards those things that God had created. The house that I live in and all the
possessions that are in it belong to the Lord. My wife and I have four
children, they are not our children, and they belong to the Lord. I drive a car
it is in my possession but it belongs to the Lord. Everything that we possess
has only been entrusted to us, because ‘the earth is the Lord’s and
everything in it’. (Ps 24:1).
When
I cut the lawn I say to myself ‘I’m looking after your lawn Lord, praise you’.
No matter what we possess, if we keep in mind that everything belongs to the
Lord, then if the Lord asks us to give up something it won’t be a problem for
us, we will be able to let go with no regrets.
·
The 4th
natural drive is ‘spiritual intuition’.
They
said, ‘Come, make us a god to go ahead of us’ (Ex 32:1).
They raised up a golden calf; because everyone has
something in their lives that causes them to worship something. They looked for
a god that they could see, so they turned to idolatry. When you lose your
attachment to God then idolatry comes in, and then they turned to the occult
and spiritualism like King Saul. Why do you think people today are turning to
the occult? Because they have lost their communication with God. Then they
turned to Egypt, which is outside sources for help. This is what happens when a
Church or congregation are missing the guidance of good spiritual leadership. ‘Where
there is no vision the people get out of hand’. (Pro 29:18). If the Church
has no vision and the people are not being led, it’s not going anywhere so the
people get disillusioned and start to wander off. There is the story of David
just after he had been anointed king of Israel. David wanted to bring the ‘ark’
to Jerusalem, so they built a new cart to carry the ‘ark’ and on the journey
the cart tilted causing Uzzah to reach out and steady it; and the Lord struck
him down on the spot. (2 Sam 6:1-7). It is possible for a spiritual leader to
recognise the need for the glory and the presence and the blessing of God, but
a right thing must not be done in a wrong way. According to the word of God (No
4:15-19), the sons of Kohath were to bear the ‘ark’ on their shoulders.
Anything introduced into the worship of God, contrary to his ways, is deserving
of judgement. A ‘new cart’, can be any man made religious gimmick, contrary to the
word of God, which is used to get the ‘ark’ of God’s presence back into a
spiritually decadent congregation. New carts or golden calves must be burnt.
Seek God’s face, study his word for his order and anything done in God’s way
will never lack God’s blessing.
·
The 5th
natural drive is in the ‘sexual area’.
‘After
eating and drinking, the people got up to amuse and indulge themselves in
revelry’. (Ex 32:6). This is what happens when people turn away from the
word of God and no longer retain the knowledge of God in their minds. Then God
gives them over to a depraved mind.
‘That
is why God has abandoned them to degrading passions: why their women have
turned from natural intercourse to unnatural practices; and why their men folk
have given up natural intercourse to be consumed with passion for each other,
men doing shameless things with men and getting an appropriate reward for their
perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the
knowledge off God, he gave them over to a depraved mind; to do what ought not
to be done.’ (Rm 1: 26-28).
If you are looking for an answer to all the
sexual problems that are flooding society today, it’s because when people turn
away from the word of God and no longer retain the word of God in their mind;
then God gives them over to a reprobate mind such as a homosexual or a
paedophile which is a twisting of the personality. Our personalities can be
deformed by our obedience or our disobedience to the word of God. You could say
that a person’s problems are related to their obedience or disobedience to the
word of God.
For
example, how does a root of bitterness form in a person’s heart?
It’s a
rejection of the word of God that says ‘forgive one another’.
Why do
people suffer from worry and anxiety?
It’s a rejection of the word of God that
says ‘don’t worry or be anxious for anything’.
If God said it, then we
should believe it and that should settle it.
The
wilderness experience was for them to learn that‘Man does not live on bread
alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’. (Deut
8:2-3). Israel entered the Promised Land but they did not enter into their
rest. The reason they didn’t have any peace was because they failed to drive
out the enemies that inhabited the land. Those enemies: The Amorites; The
Hittites: The Hivites; The Canaanites; The Perizzites; The Jebusites; The
Midianites and The Girgashites we are told, became for them ‘Thorns in their
sides and a snare to them’. (Judges 2:3).
These
physical enemies to the Jew now become the spiritual enemies to the Church.
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