Led by Angels Ex 23:20-33

Listen to these words and the hope and promise that are found in them. Remember who they were spoken to. A people emerging from generations of slavery in Egypt. Lifetimes of oppression, indignity, boundaries, limits, forced labor, sorrow, and suffering. A people without their own land. Worshippers of God, who live among one of the most religious/cultic people of all time. A land of gods, temples, idols, rituals, sacrifices, and cultural values and practices shaped by the idolatry of Egypt.

The Hebrews heard these words as families that lost babies to the genocidal slaughter of Pharaoh. The Hebrews were a people delivered by the One true God who declared his judgments were not only on Pharaoh and the Egyptians that refused to obey His commands to let His people go, but also on all the gods of Egypt. We must gather up all these things and listen to these words through that lens.

But along with that foundational understanding, we can let those understandings inform our own hearts and minds as we connect the covenant of Christ and its promises to a people delivered from enslavement to sin and self and from all the power of Satan. We too are a people bruised and battered by this world that has multiplied and exalted its own godless religion, philosophies, values, practices, and idols. We worship among worshippers as well.

Our own land is soaked with the blood of generations of children sacrificed through abortion. Our idols, temples, priests, and superstitions plague us from the cradle to the grave through the various channels of education that seek to produce a people who no longer know the Lord or desire to serve Him. 

Christ is the great Deliverer that all these words speak of in the fullest sense for time and eternity as revealed in the New Testament. 

CONTEMPLATION & EXPOSITION

20-24 “Now get yourselves ready. I’m sending my Angel ahead of you to guard you in your travels, to lead you to the place that I’ve prepared. Pay close attention to him. Obey him. Don’t go against him. He won’t put up with your rebellions because he’s acting on my authority. But if you obey him and do everything I tell you, I’ll be an enemy to your enemies, I’ll fight those who fight you. 

Guard, lead, and protect…Listen to these words as a child abandoned, a woman abused, a son who’s lost his way home. Hear them as light in the darkest places. Ponder them as people more familiar with the slavery and oppression of powerful people who made them do what they didn’t want to do and be who they never imagined they’d be. Find your way behind them like a strong and sure shield lifted over you by stronger arms. Welcome the promise in the face of what you were so sure would be the smashing blow of what you have feared. Let these words lift you off the ground before whatever or whoever has been your enemy. See the bully and the beast flee before the Angel sent to guard you in your most vulnerable moments. 

New Testament Echoes

 (Matthew 28:20) ”I am with you to the end of the age”

(John 14:16-17) “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.” 

(John 17:12) “While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name, which You have given Me; and I guarded them, and not one of them perished except the ]son of destruction so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.” 

23-24 “When my Angel goes ahead of you and leads you to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, I’ll clear the country of them. So don’t worship or serve their gods; don’t do anything they do because I’m going to wipe them right off the face of the Earth and smash their sacred phallic pillars to bits.”

Could you not take a thousand lands, and crush the intimidating hoards of earth’s horrors with Heaven’s mightiest warriors at your side? Can you start to believe in the hopeless victories again? What has God marked out in time, from eternity, for you? What great assistance is granted, if the reward isn’t assured? What false fears, mirages of meaning, and pillars of pleasures that leave palsied souls lay before you to tear down? Your deliverer has set you free from building other people’s gods, in order to clear the land of its high places, where the hungry starve in empty pantheons and deserted tents. The land of long parched hearts welcomes the fire or your passionate holiness to consume briar and thorn, illusion and lie. 

(Rom 12:19) “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.”

(John 14:3) “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” 

(2 Thess 1:6-10) “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.”

(1 Cor 10:14) “Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.” 

(2 Cor 10:4-6)  “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete. 

25-26 “But you—you serve your God and he’ll bless your food and your water. I’ll get rid of the sickness among you; there won’t be any miscarriages nor barren women in your land. I’ll make sure you live full and complete lives.

In this freedom given to you, use it to explore all the ways you can give your life to the One who has unlocked your chains and opened the cell doors of your forced servitude. Let grateful love bond you willingly to His will. He is restoring the good table back to you again. Drink like there’s more than enough to quench your thirst. Be at peace in the place of memory and meaning, where you feast not for labor, but for life, love, and laughter. 

Open the windows and see the dawn of health and healing break over your land, home, and heart. Feel the fear of death diminish. Be warmed by the hope of a better day, a stronger you, and a body that works with you and not against you. 

Hear the quiet of homes where the loss of little lives has been forgotten because the stories of such things have long passed from the memory of your people. 

Revel in the songs you hear spilling out of hearts enlarged and revived by the young and old who welcomed the arrival of the child. 

Let these elixirs of heaven fill you like bulging grapes about to become wine. Drink, dance, sing and swoon in bliss and beauty, till you tire of earth’s joys and are finally brave enough for eternity’s long prepared festival of welcome.  

(Eph 1:3) “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”

(2 Cor 1:20) “For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.”

27-31 “I’ll send my Terror on ahead of you and throw those peoples you’re approaching into a panic. All you’ll see of your enemies is the backs of their necks. And I’ll send Despair on ahead of you. It will push the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites out of your way. I won’t get rid of them all at once lest the land grow up in weeds and the wild animals take over. Little by little I’ll get them out of there while you have a chance to get your crops going and make the land your own. I will make your borders stretch from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Wilderness to the Euphrates River. I’m turning everyone living in that land over to you; go ahead and drive them out.

The terror and despair that has battered and driven you all your days are about to yield to the work and wonder of God’s name-bearing winged ones. Ministering flames will take the clouds from you and cast them before you like horse-driven chariots. They will scatter all your evil potentials and possibilities that lurk in your future dreams. Good days lie ahead of you, fruitful places, seasons of having more left over than your needs demanded. Space to breathe, a place to call home.  The edge of your blessings won’t be able to be seen. You will have to travel to get to your good borders. You will laugh at the abundance, the expanse of safe pastures, the beauty of space, given to lay down, to rest and sleep without fear, without end. 

-Sanctification & Victory: 

(Hebrews 10:14)  “For by one sacrifice, he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”

(2 Corinthians 3:18) “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

(Ephesians 1:13–14 ) “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

32-33 “Don’t make any deals with them or their gods. They are not to stay in the same country with you lest they get you to sin by worshiping their gods. Beware. That’s a huge danger.”

The eviction notice has been given and you no longer need to fear their return. They are not coming back, if you don’t invite them back, don’t mail the vitiations, forget the number to text or place the call.

The choice is yours. 

(2 Corinthians 6:14-16)

“Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.”