Modern people live a convenient life. Everything is ready. Most of us don’t need to fight to live or eat, and even our cooking, cleaning and travel are made easy by modern technology and infrastructure. But when you are out in the wilderness, life is very raw. We have to do everything by ourselves, and face our beings every day — both the beautiful part and the ugly part. In the true wilderness life, there are no beds and showers to be comfortable and clean. There are no shortcuts, no conveniences to rely on.
The Bible gives us a vivid picture of our “camping life.” During the Israelites’ time in the wilderness, we see that the “ideal” things — including the vision of the tabernacle and all its details in application that are revealed later in Exodus — are tested. There was rebellion, murmuring, and complaining, even at the very start of the Israelites’ 40-year journey; they had physically left Egypt, but not truly come out of Egypt in their hearts. Today, like the Israelites, many Christians have barely started their journey out, yet are already craving for the convenience of the world they supposedly left behind. We say we are believers — God’s people — but have we even come out of Egypt?
When we were saved, we came to a higher calling of our life. So we declared, “I believe in the Lord” and we were baptized. But after we come into the church life, in our day-to-day life, we find ourselves often in hunger and sickness, just like the promised land suffered plagues or famine. If you look at the Bible, there is a reason that Christians suffer from plagues and hunger. Although we have been given such a rich source of supply — endless riches — for some reason, we are experiencing a shortage. For example, we are short on love. We should be able to love and be loved. But for some reason, our love is very confined. For example, we should experience forgiveness. We should forgive and be forgiven. If we have the life of God, how can we not have the grace to forgive? Everyone believes that once we do some religious practices of “love” or “forgiveness,” we will be okay. But in the end, religious appearances are misleading and empty. That is because although we may have experienced Genesis, we have not gone on the journey of Exodus.
While we may think it is easier to stay and enjoy the amenities of Egyptian life, worldly convenience comes at a cost. The world is not a free world. We make treaties with Pharaoh every day. We think life is better when we work for him. We want money and so we work for money. There is a real need for us to see the world exposed. For example, this life of convenience, of comfort, of relaxing, and of working for Pharaoh. When we do this, we are under the illusion that we are mature and successful. Our young people are taught to believe in this Egyptian lie — that you work, you study, you get a car, you get married, you get a career, you do everything to give yourself glory. The young people in this generation are under this current of the world; no one can escape this. Even many parents don’t know any better, taking pride in sending their kids off to impressive schools or careers without truly knowing what they’re sending them off to. The end result is that the spiritual maturity of our young people becomes stunted, and they live their lives — studying, working, playing — without knowing the purpose of life. Many young adults today are able to excel at work yet they have no sense of life; they are just one carbon copy of a billion people today laboring in the same system of Pharaoh. Often among us, we might have many degrees yet remain at the stature of a teenager. How sad that is! Behind academia and behind industry is money. And what is behind money? Sin. Who is sin? Satan. Money is therefore personified. It is clear in the Bible: either we serve mammon or we serve the Lord (Matt. 6:24), and the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).
At the end of Genesis, humankind ends in a coffin: “And Joseph died, being one hundred ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt” (50:26). But the journey of a believer shouldn’t end here. Fundamentally, we need to revisit why coming out of Egypt is so important in the Bible. We should ask ourselves: did we come out of Egypt when we claimed we were saved? Our coming out of Egypt was not for our own entertainment or for our own knowledge-seeking. It was not even merely to save us from a life of slavery under Egyptian rule. What is the purpose, the meaning, and the reality of being out of Egypt? Where is the real life that has come out of Egypt? Where is the churching we see in the book of Acts? Or in other words, where is the realization of the dispensation of the church?
Today, against the rule of the world, there is a time and a place that’s specifically designated for God’s people: the era of grace, or the era of the church. This is a gap specially designated for the church, in between the era of law and the kingdom era — in the wilderness — from the Lord’s first coming to the Lord’s return. We will never find the church if we don’t find grace. Where the church is, there must be grace; where there is grace, there is the reality of churching. What is grace? Grace is nothing from the world. Grace is not a favor from God, or something from man, like a salary raise because we did well at our job or because we’re powerful or good-looking; these are not the meaning of grace. Grace requires no trade, agreement, or treaty; it doesn’t mean that we do something so we get something in return. Grace is not transactional. Grace is not even when we receive something we don’t deserve, which is a common understanding in Christianity.
Grace is dispensational, moving us from one age to the next. From this, we know that grace is ever important and given specifically in this era of the church to His people who have truly left Egypt. Grace is only present — is only experienced, is only obtained — when we have the Lord 100%. In other words, grace is present only when everything we have is from the Lord; beside Him, we have nothing else. This absoluteness is grace. If anything comes out of our own effort, then it is not grace. As believers, we need to be in the era of grace. Our corporate life in the church is based on this grace. When we exited Egypt, we entered into this zone of grace, completely and utterly leaving the world and its supply behind to rely on Him alone. We are able to see our old, Egyptian life for what it is, and live a life that totally refuses any tie or dependency on it. In this zone, the real churching is made possible.
For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies (Eph. 6:12).
Do you know that what we ought to experience today in the church is a camping life? On the surface, life in the wilderness is barren and harsh. In our experience, however, we see that it is a purposeful time and space designated for all His believers to live in grace. That is the meaning of our churching together. In Ephesians 6:12, we see clearly that we are “against” — we are against, we are against! Our wilderness life is not just against the outward symptoms or rules. But we are by nature against the ruler who is behind the outward system and rules. Further, we are against that evilness and darkness behind that ruler in that system. That’s the power of our wilderness life, or really, the real churching life we share: to provide a space for another in life that exposes the systems of the world, and to sustain the believers apart from and against all the systems and the ruler of the world. We were once cultivated in the world and accustomed to worldly conveniences, but now we are experiencing a life in the wilderness. This camping life exposes everything good and bad in our flesh. On one hand, this camping life tests us to see if we complain or murmur; on the other, it compels us to gain more grace. The flesh will not survive this camping — this churching life! Oh Lord Jesus, we are in the church era, in the era of grace. How wonderful! Today, we can live a life unto the Lord. In the church, we refuse our flesh, we refuse the world, we refuse the Pharaoh who used to claim us, until all the flesh is consumed to nothing. Then we are able to cross the river of Jordan as a people set apart from the world.
In the New Testament, when all of God’s people were under the Roman Empire, the world marveled at the church on the day of Pentecost. What did they marvel after? They marveled that this group of people were not Jews or Greeks! They were supposed to be and act certain ways, but there they were, neither Jews nor Greeks. That’s the reason why they asked, “Who are you?” or “What is this?” (Acts 2:7-8, 12). The first church people were outside any religious, cultural, or systemic box. They were living by something that was not Roman or Egyptian! This living — not a good religious look — is what caused those around the church to exclaim and to wonder. And today, we are living in America, in the modern world, which is the continuation of the Roman empire and also the continuation of Pharaoh — they are all part of the satanic system. When people come into the midst of the church, people often marvel too: “Are you nuts? How can you live under such constraints? Are you brainwashed? You should enjoy your freedom in the world!” This is why the Lord Jesus had to come out of the Herodian empire; Joseph and Mary fled because they knew there was something that must continue apart from the system of this satanic-ruled world. Everything behind the Lord’s hands is so that one day we are able to come out of Egypt, and live a life with 100% nothing to do with the world. This is what sustains our churching testimony.
Our testimony today is not money or fame or worldly success. Our true testimony is to not be successful in worldly terms. It’s not to give in to what the world demands. Our testimony is to give others something they can’t have, something that cannot be obtained through wealth or abiding by Satan’s rules, which is this life of grace, of experiencing everything 100% from our Creator. Our testimony should bring us out of Egypt and firmly sustain us as believers. We should say, “Brothers and sisters, we don’t have to live in the palace. We don’t need to live in the pyramids. Let’s go out to live a real life everyday for God’s building. Let’s not be afraid of leaving the systems behind, including how we meet, sing, and pray. But let Him take charge of everything we need.” We have to change, saints — we don’t have a choice. We all are guilty. We all like to rely on the meeting to recharge our batteries. We like to come together singing, because we don’t feel power when we don’t have the saints. Yes, we should meet and we should sing, but most of all, we need to have daily life, too. We can trust the Lord. We can be a real church. We can have real grace. And we have a better country to come. Today, we’re in the process of the 42 stations of the wilderness, and every day is our learning station.
What we should see in Exodus is not just leaving the world, but a people that has been called unto a new dispensation, a new purpose, a divine ministry. This change is not outward but from the core within. The reality of churching begins with our corporate relinquishing of the worldly culture and conveniences to go out with determination and vision into a sanctified, camping life in the wilderness. Here, our physical experiences are crafted by the Lord so that we rely on Him completely. Even if we are not camping in a physical wilderness, we should realize more and more that we need to trust in the Lord from day to day, living under grace 100%, a place where the flesh is exposed and denied, where Satan and religion have no hold. In such an absolute consecration, we can finally experience what the Lord wants for His church — and how He is able to use space and time, in the era of this dispensational grace, to sustain, cultivate, and gain His people. In this way, every day is new to us, everything that we experience is a miracle, everything we see becomes the evidence of the Lord’s hands on us. And every day is another opportunity to testify that we refuse all — to say no! That is our testimony. The more we say no, the further we are from Egypt and the closer we are to the promise.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 9/5/2021, not reviewed by the speaker.)