The Lord gave them that mighty victory to begin with in order to encourage them to go on. The victory of the Red Sea corresponds to the victory of the Cross - the victory of death, and burial, and resurrection with Christ. That was the great foundation. And with that foundation behind them and under their feet, they went on. But there came a time when they stopped going on. You will remember that the tabernacle was constituted for transit; it was not a building to be put down in one place and to stay there forever. It was all made so that it could go on. And the tabernacle was the place where the Lord was. So that the Lord's idea for them was to go on.
I wonder how interested you are in the Book of Numbers. The Book of Numbers is a very wonderful Book. If you have not studied it, I advise you to study it. It can be called the Book of Goings-On, the Book of progress with the Lord. And you will come to one chapter, chapter thirty-three, and in that one chapter, you will find one phrase used forty-three times in one chapter. Now if one thing is repeated forty-three times in one chapter, it must mean something. Numbers, chapter thirty-three, and in that chapter, this phrase occurs forty-three times - "And the people of Israel journeyed." It says, forty-three times the people went on. They took their journey. And that is the Book in which you find the Lord so mightily with His people.
Now you know that when they came to the other side of the wilderness, they came to Kadesh-barnea, they came to the border of the promised land, they stopped. You do not read again - and they journeyed. They stopped. All, but two men, of that whole generation died in the wilderness. That is not the idea of the Lord for His people, for His people to die in the wilderness is not the Lord's idea. The Lord is not in that. Indeed, as we have read in Hebrews, the Lord is against that. So the term on which the Lord is with His people is that they keep going on. We have read in Hebrews, chapter four, the terrible warning that the Lord gave because they did not go on. He said, "I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter into My rest." They lost everything because they did not go on. So we read in chapter six, "Let us go on." Do not let us stay with our beginnings, but let us go on.
Now what does going on mean? Well, of course, for us it is a going on in a spiritual way. We are in a new dispensation, and this is a spiritual dispensation. But there is one thing that I want to suggest to you as meaning our going on. It is true of Israel in the wilderness, although it was an earthly thing with them, the same thing is true with us in a spiritual way. If you look again into this letter to the Hebrews, you will discover this, that going on spiritually is a matter of putting into practice what the Lord has said. Do you realize that we never go on by being told things by the Lord? Now that sounds like a very strange thing to say. The Lord can speak to us Himself. We may have His word, we may have all the teaching that He can give us, we may know all the truth of God, we may have had it all, we may be standing still. No, it is not a matter of knowing what the Lord has said. It is a matter of putting that into practice. Doing what the Lord has said, that is the only way of going on.
How are we to go on then? We are to sit down quietly and say, "Now what has the Lord said to us?" Perhaps it may be over these past four or five weeks, or it may be over years past. The Lord has spoken in this place, or to you through the ministry of His many servants. Now through the reading of His Word you may have a great mountain of truth, and yet you may not be going on, and the Lord may not be with us, as He wants to be with us. The Presence of the Lord is power! The Presence of the Lord is life! The Presence of the Lord is holiness! Oh, the Presence of the lord means much, but it is all very practical. The Lord does not believe in theory. He does not believe even in textbooks. The Lord is a very practical Lord. And His attitude toward us is this: Look here, I have said this to you, you have heard it. Perhaps you have rejoiced in it. Perhaps you have believed it to be true. Perhaps you thank the Lord for it. But what have we done about it?
Have we taken each thing that the Lord has said, and brought it up and said, 'I have got to do something about that. We, as the Church, have got to do something about it. We have got to put that into effect. If we do not do that, we will not make progress. And the power of God will not be manifested among us.' We may go on for years, and we may fill the years with teaching, but we may still be years behind. We may not be coming into what the Lord means that we should be in. Why all these exhortations in the New Testament to go on? What is the New Testament just made up of exhortations and encouragements and warnings to the people of God about going on? And why is the New Testament such a practical Book? Because real spiritual progress and the Presence of the Lord depends upon bringing everything that we know right up to date.
I wonder if you could tell me the number of times in the New Testament that that one thing occurs. It is a quotation from Israel's life in the wilderness. And it is this: "Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your heart." Again and again, those words are put in the New Testament. Today! Today! Today! You see, all this is got to be brought into "now." All our progress for the future depends upon what we are doing with what we know "now." So the Lord says to us: I am with you if you are going on. And going on means putting into practice and effect all that I have said to you. Our growing knowledge of the Lord depends entirely upon our daily obedience to the light which we have.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 3)
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