Exodus 23

God put His thumbprint on the Promised Land. In that place that He gave to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He expected that His Law would be followed. That meant that it would not be a place of religious pluralism, though sojourners would be cared for. It would not be a land where they would be able to sacrifice to other gods, but it was a place where they could expect to receive help in their various situations of distress.

The Lord's directives for His people in The Land were not just about spiritual practices that were prohibited. There was a public morality, a way of justice and mercy, that God demanded. In that land it would never be right to spread a false report in order to defraud a weak individual or a despised minority group of their possessions. The Promised Land was a place of truth.

The Promised Land was also a place where the lost were found. In that land you did what was right even for a man who hated you. You looked out for his property, not to secretly steal it, but to return it to him intact.

In Israel, the poor received a just verdict. You didn't have to be able to pay in order get a judge to do the right thing. The God of Israel hated injustice. It was a land where even a foreigner must not be oppressed.

In Israel, time was marked by God's calendar. Living by His time required faith. You needed to enter into His blessing, and let your fields rest in the seventh year. In God's time, there were also seven days in every week. Six were for work, and the seventh was a day of rest for you and for all who were in your charge, even your animals.

In God's time, there was never a special day for calling upon the name of other gods. There were festivals where all gathered in the Name of the Lord. There was a week of Unleavened Bread at the time of the Passover when the Lord brought His people out of Egypt. There was a Feast of Harvest, when you brought forth some of the fruits of your labor to the Lord of the Harvest. At the end of the harvest time there was a great feast of Ingathering where you celebrated before the Lord the great fruitfulness of His provision. These were great feasts for the people of the Land. All the men needed to appear before the Lord God on these special days.

There would be other feasts in the nations all around Israel, but the children of God were not to bring the ways of those nations into the Promised Land. They used leaven. That was not for Israel. They let the fat of their offerings remain until the next morning. That was not in accord with the Lord's Law. They kept the first and best of their produce for themselves. Israel was not to do this. Israel needed to have faith in God. Other people undertook all kinds of ceremonies that they imagined to be for their safety and help. Israel had a God who had established a different way of worship and life for His people.

God would send an angel, a Messenger from heaven, to protect Israel on their way to The Promised Land. They needed to hear His voice. They needed to follow Him. Who was this great Messenger of the Lord? Certainly the Lord would send prophets, and the Commander of the Lord's Army would appear to Joshua. But who was the Angel of the Lord, so closely associated with God Himself? We do know that when Jesus came, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” He was the final Messenger of the Lord. Any earlier messenger prepared the way for Him. Any later messengers were His ambassadors.

Israel was to hear the voice of the Messiah in any of those earlier messengers that the Lord granted to them. They needed to carefully obey Him. That was the only way of safety and life in the Lord's covenant community. It was the way of faith; believing in the voice of the Son of God.

When Israel considered what it would be like to be led by the Lord's Messenger into The Promised Land, they needed to resist two powerful temptations. They needed to reject the religion and morality of the people who were in the land before them, and they needed to forget about their own former practices that came from their contact with others, whether the Egyptians to the south, or the Syrians that were their ancestors.

There could be no continued presence of Canaanite religion or ethics in Israel. Their holy places needed to be destroyed. The Lord Himself was casting them out of this land. He would not tolerate His people following the practices of foreign worship or imitating there ways of life. Israel was to be different. If they would follow Him in the Land, He committed Himself to great blessings for the nation; blessings of bread and water, future generations and healing, long life and security.

The true Messenger of the Lord has won all of these blessings for us. He has the best and most secure Promised Land reserved for us in the heavens. There we will have food and friendship beyond anything that we experience in our lives now. Our healing of body and soul will be complete, and we will live forever with the Lord and His people in the safety of God's eternal kingdom.

Jesus has placed more than His thumbprint upon His kingdom in heaven. The indelible mark of His wounds have claimed for us the new heavens and earth. All of what Israel could have been here below was only a shadow of what God has now for His chosen people in Christ.