In Bible college, you are eventually taught that everything in the Old Testament of the Bible is actually a portrait of Jesus coming to Earth in the New Testament. Some of them are quite obvious such as Abraham offering Isaac as a sacrifice. The words that Abraham spoke to his son when asked "Where is the lamb for the sacrifice" are both prophetic and chillfully foreboding: "God will provide Himself a lamb for the sacrifice." God will provide Himself....unbelievable, isn't it?

These Old Testament pictures are called "types" - short for the phrase "a type of Christ." It's an ancient picture of a coming truth.

One of my favorite types has always been the story of the Exodus. Recently, I have journeyed in my reading of Scripture back to the Old Testament and have been reminded again of the great personal Exodus of my own life. Consider this - God's people, Israel, were in bondage and slavery; oppressed by Pharaoh - at that time, the ruler of Egypt. The Lord said to Moses in Exodus 3:7-8, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land..."

Do you see the type? I was in bondage, enslaved to my sinful nature and held captive by Satan, the ruler of this age. When Jesus Christ announced His public ministry, He read from Isaiah 61 the following words: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting."

I am reminded here, the day after we celebrate Jesus' coming that the reason for His arrival was my affliction. I was born into slavery and demonic taskmasters oppressed me. My life was empty - I was brokenhearted, shameful, and worst of all - I didn't even know it. After all, if you're born into slavery - slavery is all you know, so it gets comfortable. But then, Christ came and proclaimed freedom for my captive soul. On the cross, He stretched out His arms and in essence said, "Satan, let my people go."

And from the moment I said yes to Christ, I began my own personal Exodus - leaving the life of slavery that was all I had known and following my Redeemer to a "land of milk and honey."

I notice some interesting things this early afternoon that I thought worth sharing:

1) It didn't take long for Pharoah to mount up his forces and begin pursuing the Israelites again. He let them go, but then he pursued them with the intention of bringing them back to captivity.

Application: When we leave Egypt, it doesn't take long at all for Satan to mount up his forces and begin pursuing us with the intention of bringing us back to captivity - to a life of slavery.

I had a question: What if the Israelites had stopped following Moses? Pharaoh would have soon overtaken them and taken them back to Egypt. I thought - If we stop following Jesus, even if we simply stand still - our old life is chasing us and will soon overtake us. We must follow hard after Him.

2) The Israelites had to cross the desert to get to the promised land. Don't make the mistake of treating the current place in your journey as if it's the destination. We have to travel through barren lands to get to the promised land. The way of bountiful blessings is often arrived at through a desert of despair.

We often make the mistake of grumbling because the desert sucks. And we think back, even as the Israelites did, that "Egypt is much better than this". But you forget yourself. Sara Groves wrote a song called "Painting Pictures of Egypt" and the chorus says:

I've been painting pictures of Egypt,
Leaving out what it lacks,
The future feels so hard
and I want to go back.

But the places that used to fit me
cannot hold the things I've learned,
and those roads were closed off to me
while my back was turned.

So like us, don't you think, to paint a picture of slavery and leave out the fact that we were beaten down, oppressed, and miserable. That's what we do, though, is it not? We treat this current place like we're staying here and think of our present circumstances as "the way it will always be." It's not. The Lord has rescued us, and is leading us to a land flowing with milk and honey. Stop complaining. Stop insulting your redemption by longing for slavery again. Let us follow hard after Him.

That's all I have today, but I hope you are encouraged to continue the journey. Do not stop - Satan longs for your slavery, but Christ is leading you across the Jordan River to a place of adventure - to new sights and new places. A life of freedom, excitement, and significance. For what could be more significant than for a human being to walk with God?

Follow hard today, believer. Follow hard.