Living After the Spirit, Not the Flesh

One of the things that has amazed me beyond description for the entire time I've been in Christ is the utter blindness of the carnal mind. It is absolutely mind staggering. The scripture plainly tells us of the matter: "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8:6,7). The truth is if we are holding to some sin, and we refuse to let it go, we are going to be deceived by Satan. We will be blinded and if we fail to repent then we will fulfill the old saying that says, "You'll walk straight into hell with both eyes wide open." We simply cannot see the works of God for what they are, OR the works of Satan, unless we remain pure in heart. To me that is where the fear of the Lord is at. Peter said very pointedly in his second epistle that the pure would be the only ones who would not be deceived by the false teachers: "For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error" (II Pet. 2:18). Indeed it will take being clean in our hearts to not be blinded and taken unawares by those who are following after heresy and apostasy. Judas is the classic example of someone who was close to Jesus, but yet holding to a sin; in his case stealing, that led to him being deceived by Satan to commit the greatest sin in the history of the world, in the betraying of Jesus. But I would like to show an example of this blindness of the carnal mind from the Bible that really illustrates this sobering reality in a major way. After the children of Israel left Egypt they could have entered the promised land very quickly, but the majority of the congregation believed the report of the ten unbelieving spies whom Moses sent to spy Canaan's land; rather than Joshua and Caleb, the other two spies who believed that God would deliver the land into their hands because he had promised he would (Num. ch. 13).

Because of their unbelief the children of Israel were cursed by God to wander forty years in the desert, when they could have possessed the land immediately (Num. 14:33,34). So why did the majority of Israel not believe the report of Joshua and Caleb, preferring instead the report of the errant spies? And why did Joshua and Caleb believe they could possess the land, in spite of the giants that inhabited the land, and the great walled cities? Simple. It's the same reason that Abel's offering to God in the beginning was accepted, and Cain's offering was rejected. Oh yeah, and it had nothing to do with the 'blood offering' of Abel. God told Cain very plainly why he wasn't accepted: "And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door" (Gen. 4:6,7). Cain was deceived because he was holding to sin, rather than 'doing well' like Abel. That is plainly what God told him. The beloved apostle clarified it even more for us: "For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous" (I Jn. 3:11,12). So Cain killed Abel for the exact same reason that God told him why his offering was rejected, that being sin. Cain was deceived to think he could worship God acceptably while holding to practices that were against his conscience which God created in his own image. Since he did not repent at God's rebuke he was then deceived to think he was doing the right thing by killing his brother. That was the beginning of a process that has repeated itself over and over through the generations, Jesus himself being a victim of it. In fact Jesus made it clear that this process would continue till the end, and as his followers we are not exempt from being victimized by it: "They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service" (Jn. 16:2).

So with that understanding let's go back to the book of Numbers. Joshua and Caleb believed God because they were following hard after righteousness, and the majority of Israel, along with the ten spies; did NOT believe God because they were NOT following hard after righteousness. It's never a complicated mystery. It is always the same answer as to why someone will allow themselves to be deceived by Satan to do contrary to what God has established, and is establishing. Shortly after this great display of unbelief, and being sentenced to wander forty years in the wilderness, another major test of the congregation's faith came to pass. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who were Levites; meaning ministers of the Lord's covenant, along with two hundred and fifty men of renown in Israel, rose up to challenge the authority of Moses and Aaron (Num. 16:1-3). Moses met that challenge by the word of the Lord: "And he spake unto Korah and unto all his company, saying, Even to morrow the Lord will shew who are his, and who is holy; and will cause him to come near unto him: even him whom he hath chosen will he cause to come near unto him. This do; Take you censers, Korah, and all his company; And put fire therein, and put incense in them before the Lord to morrow: and it shall be that the man whom the Lord doth choose, he shall be holy: ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi... And they took every man his censer, and put fire in them, and laid incense thereon, and stood in the door of the tabernacle of the congregation with Moses and Aaron... And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me to do all these works; for I have not done them of mine own mind. If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men; then the Lord hath not sent me. But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord...

And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation. And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also. And there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense" (Num. 16:5-7,18,28-35). Okay, so this is one of the most graphic events of God's judgment against his people in all of scripture, but it is what took place the very next day that so plainly illustrates the blindness of the mind of someone who is not following hard after the righteousness of God: "But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord" (Num. 16:41). Wow! The people of Israel who witnessed this mighty and fearful judgment of God against the rebels, the next day blamed Moses and Aaron for "killing the people of the Lord!" Now that is blindness my friend, and those were human beings like you and me that were deceived very quickly and very grossly about what had clearly happened in their sight just one day earlier. What this tells us is that they did not heartily repent of their sins that they were holding to, even though they had seen this fearsome judgment of God against the dissenters. Like the passage from Romans 8 says, if we are going in the opposite direction from God's will, with something in our lives, we simply cannot be subject to the law of God's Spirit in our lives. Neither do we know our left hand from our right in such case. Well, as far as the Israelites, God was hotly displeased with their reaction the next day about what had happened, and he killed fourteen thousand of them with a plague that day before Aaron was able to make an atonement to stave off God's wrath (Num. 16:44-50).

The evident moral of the story is that we cannot afford to hold onto any kind of sin in our lives. The result of doing so is inevitable and catastrophic, being graphically depicted for us by the rebels against Moses and Aaron going directly to hell physically in the sight of all Israel. That should tell us what the outcome and end of all opposition to God has to be. The Bible clearly tells us the same: "For the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). Jesus suffered a terrible death for us so that we could be literally free from sin and death, and if we waste that divine opportunity by finishing our course opposed to that act of love and grace, our end will be worse than the end of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and company, who resisted Moses and Aaron. And so the scripture confirms: "For if we sin wilfully [without repentance] after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people" (Heb. 10:26-30). The same God who sent his Son to die in our place still knows how to judge his people, even as he did with the rebels in the wilderness. In fact the same Son who suffered that death for us all will return to judge without mercy all who refused his mercy, or departed from it after having obtained it. And so we have the following admonition from the great apostle Paul: "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:28,29). Surely it pays to have our eyes 'anointed with eyesalve,' and to know what is what and who is who (Rev. 3:18). No wonder Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God" (Mat. 5:8). Amen.