Hi All
I am looking for some insight into the scripture in exodus.
I have been given this word twice in the last couple of weeks and I am wondering whether anyone has gone through this experience or has any other scriptural insights that will help me,
Thanks Staff
What do you mean?
What experiences and scriptural insights are you looking for?
Thanks.
Scripturally, they might be referring to Ex 16:2
The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
I think there is a scripture that alludes to the Israelites only wandered for 40 years because of their attitude. If the Israelites looked through the eyes of heaven, the eyes of faith, then God would've given them the promise land, instead He gave it to the next generation of Israelites.
I hope this helps.
Hi Enid,
I guess I am looking to sse did anyone on SI experience this in their lives i.e did anyone experience going around the mountain over and over and then what happened to take them off this path and go North
Yours Staff
Hi Staff
If you study what happened in "Kadesh Barnea" that might help you find what you are looking for.
This was such an important moment in Israel's history that you will probably find quite a few Sermons and studies about the topic.
Deuteronomy 9:23 When the LORD sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, 'Go up and possess the land which I have given you,' then you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God; you neither believed Him nor listened to His voice. 24"You have been rebellious against the LORD from the day I knew you.…
"The first failed attempt to take the land was made from Kadesh (Num. 14:40-45)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadesh_(Israel)
Let us know if that helps a bit so we can all learn a bit more from that passage.
"These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age." (1 Corinthians 10:11)
An important study indeed!
Hi Thanks LoveMeekHope,
I will look at that scripture,
Yours Staff
It appears the proper scripture reference is Deut. 2:3.
In the context of the word you were given, it would seem to mean "time to move on."
I would recommend this sermon by Tozer that deals with this very subject/ scripture.
https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/visit.php?lid=2383
It is part of a series you can download from SI.
The audio of Tozer is not the best quality, so here is a transcript of what I think is the first part.
The Christian's Greatest Enemy - by A. W. Tozer
Article excerpted from Rut, Rot or Revival
East of the Jordan in the territory of Moab, Moses began to expound this law, saying:
The Lord our God said to us at Horeb, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Break camp and advance into the hill country of the Amorites; go to all the neighboring peoples in the Arabah, in the mountains, in the western foothills, in the Negev and along the coast, to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the Euphrates. See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore He would give to your fathers - to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - and to their descendants after them." (Dt. 1:5- 8)
In the Old Testament, the enemy that threatened Israel the most was the dictatorship of the customary. Israel became accustomed to walking around in circles and was blissfully content to stay by the safety of the mountain for a while. To put it another way, it was the psychology of the usual. God finally broke into the rut they were in and said, "You have been here long enough. It is time for you to move on."
To put Israel's experience into perspective for our benefit today, we must see that the mountain represents a spiritual experience for a spiritual state of affairs. Israel's problem was that they had given up hope of ever getting the land God had promised them. They had become satisfied with going in circles and camping in nice, comfortable places. They had come under the spell of the psychology of the routine. It kept them where they were and prevented them from getting the riches God had promised them.
If their enemy, the Edomites, would have come after them, the Israelites would have fought down to the last man and probably would have beaten the Edomites - Israel would have made progress. Instead they were twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the customary to keep on being the customary.
What is the worst enemy the church faces today? This is where a lot of unreality and unconscious hypocrisy enters. Many are ready to say, "The liberals are our worst enemy." But the simple fact is that the average evangelical church does not have too much trouble with liberalism. Nobody gets up in our churches and claims that the first five books of Moses are just myths. Nobody says that the story of creation is simply religious mythology. Nobody denies that Christ walked on the water or that He rose from the grave. Nobody gets up in our churches and claims that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God or that He isn't coming back again. Nobody denies the validity of the Scriptures. We just cannot hide behind liberalism and say that it is our worst enemy. We believe that evangelical Christians are trying to hold on to the truth given to us, the faith of our fathers, so the liberals are not our worst enemy.
Neither do we have a problem with the government. People in our country can do just about whatever they please and the government pays no attention. We can hold prayer meetings all night if we want, and the government would never bother us or question us. There is no secret police breathing down our backs watching our every move. We live in a free land, and we ought to thank God every day for that privilege.
Dictatorship of the Routine
The treacherous enemy facing the church of Jesus Christ today is the dictatorship of the routine, when the routine becomes "lord" in the life of the church. Programs are organized and the prevailing conditions are accepted as normal. Anyone can predict next Sunday's service and what will happen. This seems to be the most deadly threat in the church today. When we come to the place where everything can be predicted and nobody expects anything unusual from God, we are in a rut. The routine dictates, and we can tell not only what will happen next Sunday, but what will occur next month and, if things do not improve, what will take place next year. Then we have reached the place where what has been determines what is, and what is determines what will be.
That would be perfectly all right and proper for a cemetery. Nobody expects a cemetery to do anything but conform. The greatest conformists in the world today are those who sleep out in the community cemetery. They do not bother anyone. They just lie there, and it is perfectly all right for them to do so. You can predict what everyone will do in the cemetery from the deceased right down to the people who attend a funeral there. Everyone and everything in a cemetery has accepted the routine. Nobody expects anything out of those buried in the cemetery. But the church is not a cemetery and we should expect much from it, because what has been should not be lord to tell us what is, and what is should not be ruler to tell us what will be. God's people are supposed to grow.
As long as there is growth, there is an air of unpredictability. Certainly we cannot predict exactly, but in many churches you just about can. Everybody knows just what will happen, and this has become our deadliest enemy. We blame the devil, the "last days" and anything else we can think of, but the greatest enemy is not outside of us. It is within - it is an attitude of accepting things as they are. We believe that what was must always determine what will be, and as a result we are not growing in expectation.
The Progressive Stages
As soon as someone begins talking like this, the Lord's people respond by getting busy. What I'm talking about, however, is internal. It is a matter of the soul and mind that ultimately determines our conduct. Let me show you the progressive stages.
I began with what I call the rote. This is repetition without feeling. If someday someone would read the Scripture and believe it and would believe what is sung in the great Christian hymns, there would be a blessed spiritual revolution underway in a short time. But too many are caught up in the rote, repeating without feeling, without meaning, without wonder and without any happy surprises or expectations. In our services God cannot get in because we have it all fixed up for Him. We say, "Lord, we are going to have it this way. Now kindly bless our plans." We repeat without feeling, we repeat without meaning, we sing without wonder, and we listen without surprise. That is my description of the rote.
We go one step further and come to what I will call the rut, which is bondage to the rote. When we are unable to see and sense bondage to the rote, we are in rut. For example, a man may be sick and not even know it. The doctors may have confided in the man's wife instead, "We don't want to frighten your husband, but he could drop any minute. He is critically ill, so just expect it any moment." The man himself does not know he is seriously ill. He goes about his business as if nothing is wrong. He may play golf or tennis, maybe even go on a hunting trip. He is sick, and yet he does not know how sick he really is. This may in fact hasten his end. Not knowing is risky business and full of danger. Spiritually speaking, the rut is bondage to the rote, and the greatest danger lies in our inability to sense or feel this bondage.
There is a third word, and I do not particularly like to use it, but the history of the church is filled with it. The word is rot. The church is afflicted by drive rot. This is best explained when the psychology of non-expectation takes over and spiritual rigidity sets in, which is an inability to visualize anything better, a lack of desire for improvement.
There are many who respond by arguing, "I know lots of evangelical churches that would like to grow, and they do their best to get the crowds in. They want to grow and have contest to make their Sunday school larger." That is true, but they are trying to get people to come and share their rut. They want people to help them celebrate the rote and finally join in the rot. Because the Holy Spirit is not given the chance to work in our services, nobody is repenting, nobody is seeking God, nobody is spending a day in quiet waiting on God with open Bible seeking to mend his or her ways. Nobody is doing it - we just want more people. But more people for what? More people to come and repeat our dead services without feeling, without meaning, without wonder, without surprise? More people to join us in the bondage to the rote? For the most part, spiritual rigidity that cannot bend is too weak notice how weak it is.
What Is the Church?
For clarification, what is the church? When I say that a church gets into the rote and then onto the rut and finely to the rot, what am I talking about?
For one thing, the church is not the building. A church is an assembly of individuals. There is a lot of meaningless dialogue these days about the church. It is meaningless because those engaged in the dialogue forget that a church has no separate existence. The church is not an entity in itself, but rather is composed of individual persons. It is the same error made about the state. Politicians sometimes talk about the state as though it were an entity in itself. Social workers talk about society, but society is people. So is the church. The church is made up of real people, and when they come together we have the church. Whatever the people are who make up the church, that is the kind of church it is - no worse and no better, no wiser, no holier, no more ardent and no more worshipful. To improve or change the church you must begin with individuals.
When people in the church only point to others for improvement and not to themselves, it is sure evidence that the church has come to dry rot. It is proof of three sins: the sin of self-righteousness, the sin of judgment and the sin of complacency.
When our Lord said, "One of you will betray Me," thank God those disciples had enough spirituality that nobody said, "Lord, is it he?" Every one of those disciples said, "Lord, is it I?" If they would not have so responded there could not have been a Pentecost. But because they were humble enough to point the finger in their own direction the Holy Spirit fell upon them.
Self-righteousness is terrible among God's people. If we feel that we are what we ought to be, then we will remain what we are. We will not look for any change or improvement in our lives. This will quite naturally lead us to judge everyone by what we are. This is the judgment of which we must be careful. To judge others by ourselves is to create havoc in the local assembly.
Self-righteousness also leads to complacency. Complacency is a great sin and covers just about everything I have said about the rote and the rut. Some have the attitude, "Lord, I'm satisfied with my spiritual condition. I hope one of these days You'll come, I will be taken up to meet You in the air and I will rule over five cities." These people cannot rule over their own houses and families, but they expect to rule over five cities. They pray spottily and sparsely, rarely attending prayer meeting, but they read their Bibles and expect to go zooming off into the blue yonder and join the Lord in the triumph of the victorious saints.
Is Simply Self-Deception
I wonder if we are not fooling ourselves. I wonder if a lot of it is simply self-deception. I hear the voice of Jesus saying to us, "You have stayed long enough where you are. Break camp and advance into the hill country." This would be a new spiritual experience that God has for us. Everything Jesus Christ did for us we can have in this age. Victorious living, joyous living, holy living, fruitful living, wondrous, ravishing knowledge of the Triune God - all of this is ours. Power we never knew before, undreamed of answers to prayer - this is ours. "See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of [it]." The Lord gave it to you in a covenant. Go take it - it's yours. It was given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all their seed after. Jesus prayed, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message" (Jn. 17: 20). That embraces all those who belong to the church of Jesus Christ.
If we call Him Lord, how dare we sit any longer in the rut! The Lord has called us to move on. But when people are in a rut, not even the angel Gabriel can help them if they will not come out of it. This is not an accusation but a suggestion. If you are not in a rut, don't get mad - somebody else is. But if you are in a rut you ought to get out of it.
The difference between a wooden leg and a good leg is that if you prick a wooden leg the person would never notice. The difference between a church that has dry rot and a church that is alive is that if you prick the live church it will respond. If you prick the other kind, it is already dead. The tree that stands alive has lush, green leaves. Take a knife, scar the bark deeply and the tree will bleed. It is alive. The old dead tree just stands there, a watchtower for old sentinel crows. Take your knife and dig in as far as you want to, and nothing will happen because the tree is dead.
So it is with my message. If you'll get neither mad nor glad nor sad under my preaching, I know nothing can be done. But there are some who are alive, and I believe it is the majority.
- A. W. Tozer
I don't think that Brother Tozer was speaking about the same thing.
He is speaking about being in a rut, being immobilised, being stagnant, whereas the verse the OP is referring to is
2And the LORD spoke to me, saying, 3You have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north,
which is speaking of going around in circles, that is to say, seeking something but not finding it, which is a rather different proposition to the one where one settles down in ones lees.
This experience of going round in circles, is for those who are seeking to know Christ in a more authentic way, who are hungering and thirsting for Him, as they circle the mountain, meaning the journey where one is fully united with Christ at the summit, yet are getting nowhere.
Something is preventing them from having the Christian experience that they read about in scripture, and from the writings of many saints before them. Watchman Nee wrote about it in the Normal Christian Life, which is not normal if one can only skirt the mountain instead of climbing it ie heading north.
God said that they had circled the mountain long enough, which means that He is calling them out of their frustrations and lack of power, but also that it is a necessary part of the journey. Myself, I spent many a year there until the day I was called to go north with the guidance of some like Oswald Chambers.
The experience of circling was one where I felt many times like giving up, thinking 'Is this all there is to it?' as there seemed to me to be a shield that I could not pierce to get through to the same sense of God's prescence and the joy I felt at my first love or conversion.
It had given me a taste and I could not settle for anything less than more of it. So I went round in circles. But there were times when I stagnated as Tozer describles. I lost the will to seek as nothing was coming forth so I began to rot and lose sight of the heavenly kingdom.
It is a great blessing when the Lord calls us out of it and every possible effort should be made to make it our priority because the Lord does not call out for long - He will pass us by if we do not respond and we will be left like the children of Israel in the wilderness.
The calling from God for me was the realisation that Christ had done it all and my efforts to please Him through obedience were works of the flesh. It is by the Spirit.
As much as I love my wife, I cannot know her more by my acts of love. I cannot love her more by my acts of love. But, sure enough, the more I act lovingly, the more I know her and love her. Because it is she who is the object, and not my knowledge or my love of her. She naturally and gladly comes closer to me, entrusts herself to me and becomes more known.
We are --- I am --- guilty of treating God as someone less than Himself and not even a person whenever I look to my obedience or loving acts as knowing God, per se. In this era of hyper-grace, hypo-grace, works righteousness and other errors, we who already see through a glass darkly wrestle too with the fog of false teaching. It influences us whether we want to admit or deny it. At the very least, this chorus of dissonant voices is a distraction, and the melody of His Spirit bearing witness in us is assaulted and harder to discern.
God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. The prize is the knowledge of Christ. He gives Himself in greater measure because it is who He is, and it is His heart to do so.
I feel the circling sensation. I am ready to move north.
Hi Krautfrau,
That was very good thanks.How did you get off the roundabout?
It also ties in with Heydavs sermon on stagnation.I can associate myself with 90% of what you experienced thanks Staff
Greetings staff and thank you.
The key that enabled me to be delivered from the bondage that kept me circling the foot of the mountain, was in having a revelation concerning a fuller understanding of what Christ had done for me on the cross.
Before that I went round and round and round. Turning over new leaves and making fresh starts whenever I heard the heavenly calling. Seeking and seeking for an answer. It went on for years. Years of feeling disconnected from heaven with unanswered prayers and dryness and frustration. Guilt was easily triggered. I was letting Christ down, I was failing Him after all He had done for me.
I would think that I had made progress, then suddenly it all fell away when circumstances changed or I was faced with an extremely irritating person or illness and I was faced with the sad fact that I was still the same inside, following the initial joy of sins forgiven which lasted three weeks, despite all of the doctrine I knew and all of the books I had read.
I thought that all I needed to do was to try harder, and in fact plenty of teaching was on this level. I would hear something that would trigger my guilt and I would respond emotionally and determine to myself that more resolve was required. Often I would be told that perhaps I wasn't saved, but I knew I was. There are many masters doing this in the church often pastors, wielding their whips to make us shape up and perform better - just like the masters in Egypt making the children of Israel work harder.
One day however, it was revealed to me that this was the wrong approach. It might help you to read Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian life as it deals with this. I am not saying that Nee is 100% on everything, but the Lord used that book on me. Satan did however try to stop me reading it when I first began. I could not take it in at first, but soon the light fell from heaven and I was released from my bondage. The chains fell off and I was free! Oh glorious day! Revival had come!
I hope I have been of some help. Listen to what God is saying to you.
Hi Again Krautfrau,
Thanks Again that has been really helpful and insightful.Could you comment more on your last qoute.I want to be free but I know the pathways around the mountain so well that I feel I'l never leave them.The majority of what your saying is me and for a while I was like that in church but I left rather than be unsuccessful over and over again.
Quote:
One day however, it was revealed to me that this was the wrong approach. It might help you to read Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian life as it deals with this. I am not saying that Nee is 100% on everything, but the Lord used that book on me. Satan did however try to stop me reading it when I first began. I could not take it in at first, but soon the light fell from heaven and I was released from my bondage. The chains fell off and I was free! Oh glorious day! Revival had come
Thanks Again Staff
Hi Staff
From Nee's book:
"When God’s light first shines into my heart my one cry is for forgiveness, for I realize I have
committed sins before Him; but when once I have received forgiveness of sins I make a new
discovery, namely, the discovery of sin, and I realize not only that I have committed sins before
God but that there is something wrong within. I discover that I have the nature of a sinner. There
is an inward inclination to sin, a power within that draws to sin. When that power breaks out I
commit sins. I may seek and receive forgiveness, but then I sin once more. So life goes on in a
vicious circle of sinning and being forgiven and then sinning again. I appreciate the blessed fact of
God’s forgiveness, but I want something more than that: I want deliverance. I need forgiveness for
what I have done, but I need also deliverance from what I am"
http://www.thewichitafoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/watchman-normal-christian-life2.pdf
I can't seem to find it on sermonindex.
He goes on to say that we need the blood for forgiveness but we also need the cross for delieverance from the sin nature. That is, the cross needs to become active in us. And it is through faith. Please let me know if there is any further way I can be help.
krautfrau wrote
"The key that enabled me to be delivered from the bondage that kept me circling the foot of the mountain, was in having a revelation concerning a fuller understanding of what Christ had done for me on the cross."
This is so true! Start by looking to the PERFECT law of liberty and see what He has already done for you and in you.
James 1:25, "But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."
Gal. 5:1 "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
From the Watchman Nee's The Normal Christian life
At the beginning of our Christian life we are concerned with our doing, not with our being; we are distressed rather by what we have done than by what we are. We think that if only we could rectify certain things we should be good Christians, and we set out therefore to change our actions.
But the result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay that it is something more than just a case of trouble on the outside””that there is in fact more serious trouble on the inside. We try to please the Lord, but find something within that does not want to please Him. We try to be humble, but there is something in our very being that refuses to be humble. We try to be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. We smile and try to look very gracious, but inwardly we feel decidedly ungracious. The more we try to rectify matters on the outside the more we realize how
deep-seated the trouble is within. Then we come to the Lord and say, ‘Lord, I see it now! Not only what I have
done is wrong; I am wrong.’
Good word from Nee.
All I would interject is that I believe it is more than a realization of the cross, but an experience of the cross in our lives. Or maybe a combo of both. A realistic, experiential cross in our lives.
When I read this verse it seems to me like they are people who are hungry for more but have almost become distracted/content with just circling and not advancing. It reminds me of myself being so caught up in "ministry" that you do what you are "supposed" to do when you minister, but there is no advancement of the Kingdom. God is not angry when we circle around, or dis-pleased with us per se, but He has more to give-that circling will not provide. But it is almost as if we have raised a standard in ministry of who can be the best "circler".
But back to what I was originally saying....
It says they were walking around this mountain for many days. So I am assuming some fatigue was setting in from all the walking. Some depression of making no advancement. Some defeat from walking around an unconquerable mountain in their lives. But yet it almost seems as though that was God's will for them for that season. It seems to me that this was the cross that they needed to experience which gave them the ability to head north. You must be brought down to the depths before you can reach the heights. In vs. 7 God tells them that I have seen your wanderings in this great wilderness, almost like a proud Father saying "YOU'VE ENDURED!" God says: "I have been watching you and I have been with you this whole time. We have had some down times and some times of grumbling, some times of dis belief, but you have continued to endure. I have seen you walk around this mountain defeated and tired for many days now, and I can see that this has changed you. My whole desire this whole time was for you to head north and get past this mountain, but you weren't ready yet. But now is the time to head north."
I see that in my own life right now. God has me in a place under His refining fire which he must do before I can ever reach the height He desires for me to reach. It is a cross or death that needs to take place for those who are truly hungry. I think most people will never experience this or if they do- never allow it to have its perfect work in their lives. Most won't experience because they are hungry for things elsewhere outside of God. And others cannot endure His testing and fire so they will walk away all together. Some just stay in the valley for years and years not ever understanding what God has been trying to do in their lives. They become despairing Christians. But I firmly believe that deliverance comes to the extent that you desire it. And that extent will be tested in our lives.
Thank you for posting this. A huge word to me right now, very encouraged.
Travis
Travis
Yes, it is necessary for the cross to become active in us, as the blood became active, but that happens once we see the truth of our inability and weakness and we are so fed up with ourselves that we consent to the death of our old man.
The circling around the mountain is I believe a necessary stage for us to get to know ourselves, and for us to build up that despair that is needed for us to call out like Paul 'O wretched man that I am'. Many sadly do not reach that stage, they just settle down and rot. They find a way to excuse their sins so that they no longer bother them too much.
I completely agree Brenda. We either experience God's hand and repent unto life, or we rebel unto death. Not everyone who is in a despairing place in their lives is in sin or backslidden.
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