We must remember, as we go forward with Yahweh, that we are to love Him, and obey His commands. We are to remember what He has won for us.

Though we cannot see with our physical eyes our deliverance from Egypt, nor our escape from slavery which we were not aware we were trapped in, the spiritual oppression we lived under which is invisible to our mind's physical eye, we must know and remember that this is indeed what God has done for us and to rejoice in Him for our liberation.

The thief doth not come, except that he may steal, and kill, and destroy; I came that they might have life and have [it] abundantly. John 10:10

Following our baptism, there will be threats to the abundant life that God promises us but God will dispossess them of any hold they have on what He wills to give to us, if we follow Him and do not go ahead of Him outside of His authority and command.

God does not say that what stands before us is little and easy to overcome. He says: "Hear, Israel, thou art passing over today the Jordan, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself; cities great and fenced in the heavens, a people great and tall, sons of Anakim, whom thou - thou hast known". (Deut 9:1,2)

But we are to know that Yahweh 'thy God is He who is passing over before thee - a fire consuming He doth destroy them."

And we, we do not go forward with our eyes closed, but aware and prepared for battle, dressed in the full armour of God and knowing that God is the one who dispossesses and not us. We are to remain in God and with God, we are to engage in the spiritual battle ahead.

What is the city? It is the gathering of people in spiritual agreement where they oppose God. What is the greatness and mightiness of the nations? It is their power over others, their control and dominance, their control over the minds and lives of the people, who consume the lie of greatness , - the powers and principalities of this dark world. What are the people who are great and tall, whom thou, thou has known (and thou hast heard Who doth station himself before the sons of Anak?) Are they not those who make a name for themselves, who make themselves god in their own eyes?

But God laughs for He is the judge of all the earth and their time is short.

We are to proclaim God's truth and stand for God's justice and do what is right in His eyes and not to be afraid nor daunted nor put off nor silenced by the opposition we may find ahead. The apostle Paul prays that he might speak as he ought.

"Through prayer and supplication praying at all time in the SPirit and in regard to this same, watching in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints - and in behalf of me, that to me may be given a word in the opening of my mouth, in freedom, to make known the secret of the good news, for which I am an ambassador in a chain, that in it I may speak freely - as it behoveth me to speak. " Ephesians 6:18-20

When we have done all, we are to stand and see the deliverance of the Lord.

"I never said it would be easy. I said I would be with you always." This was the word spoken to me when I first turned back to God to walk with Him as my light and saviour, complaining in my soul that giving my life to Him had not taken away all the difficulties and deterrents I had been facing and was still facing. God spoke to me: "I never said it would be easy. I said I would be with you always"

When we have chosen to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength and we follow Jesus through baptism into the land which He brings us into which we are going in to possess, then God will cast out many nations from our presence.

This is not a physical taking of land nor dispossessing of nations in the world, but is a spiritual truth. These are the lies, abominations, false worship and evil carried out in our world. There are those in our world who spiritually sacrifice their own children in their pursuit of the gods they have made to be gods in this life: which are not gods but idols and invented things which draw us away from the holiness of God.

God will cast them out but we have to smite them: it has to be our determination to root out of ourselves everything that is not of God and to follow Him and Him only.

Do not make any covenant nor favour those who follow a different way. Do not marry another of a different belief nor any person who follows a different god for they will draw you away from the God who created the heavens and the earth. Him only shall you serve.

"For a holy people [art] thou to Jehovah thy God; on thee hath Jehovah thy God fixed, to be to HIm for a peculiar (set apart) people, out of all the peoples who {are] on the face of the ground."

This was not because we had any merit of ourselves but "because of God loving you, and because of His keeping the oath which He hath sworn to our fathers,"

God brings us out with a strong hand and ransoms us "from a house of servants, from the hand of Pharoah king of Egypt."

When we are baptised, a spiritual separation takes place which God alone carries out, with a strong hand and with a declaration to the powers of darkness, that the ransom of the life of Jesus, who is killed for our sake, has been paid so that the Pharoah, who represents Satan, the deceiver, the thief and the murderer, can no longer control us, nor command our lives, nor lord it over us, nor make us slaves with no right to choose for ourselves our path.

For before we are baptised, we are controlled by invisible forces of evil, though we are unaware of it, and deceived, considering life to be sweet and under our control and consider ourselves free but we are not.

In our baptism, we are cut off from this spiritual power over our lives and rise to new life in Christ.

'What must we do?' the people cried out to the apostle Peter at the first Pentecost after Jesus had been crucified, being convicted by the Holy Spirit of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.

Repent and be baptised. Turn from your wickedness and live.

Do not make light of our sinfulness, thinking that we have not done any wrong in our lives, for our eyes are blinkered, blinded to the truth by the prince of this world, the deceiver, and only a willingness to know that there is One who is greater than you, who is the true judge, to humble ourselves before Him and throw ourselves on His mercy which He readily gives to us, and cry out to Him to deliver us from the control of the Pharoah, who is Satan.

There is a better way to live. Choose life. Jesus gives you life in all its fullness. He gives you the promise that He is always with you and will never leave you nor forsake you.

Baptiism is not optional. If we are to be freed, we must let Jesus lead us out of darkness and into His glorious light, we must let Him open the waters before us and go through in His death the separation from our former life and enter into resurrected life in Him.

"And thou has known that Jehovah thy God, He [is] God, the faithful God, keeping the covenant, and the kindness, to those loving Him and to those keeping His commands" Deuteronomy 7:9

When we have turned to following Jesus, we cannot take with us anything of our past life which will lead us away from Him and our obedience to His teaching.

We have to be utterly ruthless to cut off every thing that is not of God and not of His teaching, every influence, every input, every teaching however appealing, however attractive and benign they might seem to us. Everything that is not of God and not of His teaching will draw us away from Him and from the fullness of life He wants to give us.

The Bible is not a history book. It is a God-breathed, God-inspired, God given book.

It is no good bringing our world taught thinking to the Scriptures: we must read with the help and wisdom of the Holy Spirit: "the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of Jehovah"

We must understand in the Spirit what God is teaching, otherwise we cannot understand.

We must be born of the Spirit. Nicodemus could not understand this.

Many of those who heard Jesus say that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood, left off following Him because "this is a hard saying".

The disciples who heard Jesus say, "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees," understood this as being because they had not brought bread with them.

The disciples asked Jesus to explain the meaning of the parable, the simile, of the sower of the seed.

Jesus says: Do you still not understand?

We must understand that "we have not the wrestling with blood and flesh, but with the principalities, with the authorities, with the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, with the spiritual things of the evil in the heavenly places" Ephesians 6: 12.

Elisha prayed for his servant, "Jehovah, open, I pray thee, his eyes and he doth see"

"and Jehovah openeth the eyes of the young man and he seeth, and lo, the hill is full of horses and chariots of fire, round about Elisha."

We are so unaware of our spiritual environment. We walk around with our eyes closed. But Jesus says, "Stay awake! Be alert!"

The apostle Paul exhorts us to "Be on guard!"

"Be sober, be vigilant, because your opponent the devil, as a roaring lion, doth walk about, seeking whom he may swallow up." 1 Peter 5:8

Be sure to put on the whole armour of God. Gird your emotions with the belt of truth. Read the Word, this is the only truth and the truth will set you free from fear, from false thinking, from deception, from lies, for even our imagination can lie to use to keep us trapped.

Put on the breastplate of righteousness, by which you know that you are a forgiven child of God, no more in condemnation as the accuser of the brethren, the devil, would have you believe for he is a liar and a thief, a murderer and a false accuser.

Put on the shoes of the preparation of the good-news of the peace,

"above all, having taken up the the shield of the faith, in which ye shall be able all the fiery darts of the evil one to quench, and the helmet of salvation receive, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the saying of God

How can you take the sword of the Spirit unless you know the Word?

Be watchful. Be on guard. Do not be naive but aware.

"Because we have not the wrestling with blood and flesh, but with the principalities, with the authorities, with the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, with the spiritual things of the evil in the heavenly places,

because of this, take ye up the whole armour of God that ye may be able to resist in the day of evil and all things having done - to stand." Ephesians 6:12-13

Those who do not believe in God, who have not received of His Spirit, who are determined to persevere in the thinking of their own minds, who are not open to hear, who harden their hearts against God and His truth and His Son and all that He has done for us, prevent the truth from setting them free.

They are captured in a time warp, in a world of ignorance and foolishness, as Proverbs 12:8 says

"According to his wisdom is a man praised: and the perverted of heart becometh despised"

And what is foolishness to human beings is God's wisdom. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The understanding that we need is only given by the Holy Spirit and He will dwell in us as a gift from God if we will hold God's truth in our hearts.

Those who do not believe cannot believe that what God can do is according to His power and not ours. He is the God who creates, the God who speaks, the God who hears, the God whose arm is not too short, whose power is not limited.

It is not possible in such human thinking for God to create the heavens and the earth and everything in them, nor that Mary should conceive in her womb by the power of God for the messenger from God says: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also the holy begotten thing shall be called Son of God."

We in our vanity and pride think that we are God, that we are wiser than He is, because we do not believe Him so we are the supreme being, the god we bow down to, the be all and the end all.

But it is not so.

God is God and there is no other and no amount of denying and thinking otherwise will make that change. And our place is to love the Lord our God. He is our God: not a foreign and remote God, one that does not love His creation and all humankind within it. But one who loves who created us, knit us in our mother's womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

And this God who is good and faithful and just and full of mercy and loving kindness, slow to anger and swift to bless is our God.

Hear O Israel, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah; and thou hast loved Jehovah thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might Deuteronomy 6: 4,5

God will destroy evil from the world by the word of His mouth.

Our fight is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual powers that oppose God and seek to interrupt and interfere and negate what God seeks to plant and grow and nurture.

God tells us not to fear for, as with Sihon king of the Amorite, Og, king of Bashan cannot stand against God "into your hand I have given him" and we have the power to smite till there hath not been left to him a remnant.

In the Spirit, as Jesus did, we use the Word of God to defy the opposition to God and God's ways and do not give an inch, a moment, a remnant of our past, nor any person, to take precedence in our lives over what God's word says, to make us hold onto such ways which draw us away from God and His commands or to be led into a different path other than God's.

We can't leave even a tiny scrap uncleansed from us.

We must be utterly determined to worship God, to bow down to Him and Him alone because any chink in our armour can give a way for a lie, a deceit, a hatred, an evil thought to destroy us and our future in God.

We must know the Word, read the Word, meditate on the Word, be filled with the Word day and night, for it is no fiction or light thing to ignore that the enemy of God and our enemy is perpetually at work to deceive, steal, destroy. Pray that we will always be on guard.

"Be sober, vigilant, because your opponent the devil, as a roaring lion, doth walk about, seeking whom he may swallow up. I Peter 5:8

We do well not to take this lightly as if walking into a battlefield with no armour on.

"Be on your guard." "Keep watch" "Be sober and vigilant"

We are not to live our lives sleeping but awake and watchful. Every moment. Be aware.

Heed the warnings. Do not brush aside or treat lightly what we walk in.

The enemy strikes suddenly but we put on the armour of God daily, spiritually, the breastplate of righteousness, for when we are out of God's will and have not sought forgiveness, we are vulnerable, the belt of truth which straps about our emotions and keeps us in the truth, our feet shod in the preparation of the good-news of the peace, we have been reconciled to God through Christ, we have peace with God through Him, this is good-news indeed, and above all take up the shield of faith knowing that the defeated enemy cannot touch those who are in Jesus. Abide in Him.

Receive the helmet of salvation which guards our thinking, for we know that those who are in Christ Jesus are in His hand and nothing can snatch us out of His hand. use the sword of the Spirit which is the saying of God. Ephesians 6: 10-20

And thus we are to stand. Stand. What we have won, what Christ has won for us, is not lost. Guard it carefully. For what profiteth it man if he win the whole world but lose his soul?

Deuteronomy begins: "These are the words which Moses hath spoken unto all Israel".

No-one has an excuse for not hearing unless they do not have the opportunity to hear.

"How then shall they call upon Him in whom they did not believe? and how shall they believe on Him of whom they did not hear? and how shall they hear apart from one preaching?" Romans 10:14

"So then faith is by a report and the report through a saying of God" Romans 10:17

We are to communicate God's truth by speaking it. But we live in an age when writing is our usual means of communication and we choose to write more than to speak.

By this omission to speak, many are kept from hearing the truth and from responding to the truth. It is encumbent upon us then that we should speak and also write. For the spoken word is fleeting but the written word is lasting. But the spoken word enters the heart while the written word confirms and consolidates the truth in our heart.

The word written by Moses not only records the words of God which Moses spoke to the people of Israel but is filled out with detail which gives such evidence of accuracy and record keeping and precision and reason to believe it is authentic and true: it is a sound report, fixed and believable and rooted in real time and place.

Here the details of the names of places in the wilderness beyond the Jordan establishes God's word as being real, in real geographical space, on the earth, with specific people many of whom are also named. This is the substance of reality.

"Faith is of things hoped for a confidence, of matters not seen a conviction" Hebrews 11:1

The huge number of Levites who will serve God are provided for by the sons of Israel. Their food is from the offerings to God and in Chapter 35 of Numbers God commands that they are provided with 48 cities, including 6 cities of refuge, and areas of grazing land around them of a specific measurement, two thousand cubits east, south, west and north of each city.

Imagine that a nation was so served by those whom God calls His how great the influence of Godly people would be on the whole community of the nation!

The provision of cities of refuge is unique among civilisations: that someone who has killed a person unawares, without enmity, hatred or lying in wait, may flee to and must remain there until he faces judgement by the company, as to whether he is a murderer or a manslayer. The one found to have killed without planning in advance, without hatred, without planning in advance, not using a weapon or killing in enmity must remain in the city of refuge until the council judges him and if found not to have murdered, must remain in the city of refuge until the chief priest at that time dies. There is no atonement possible for him.

This is a limitation on their freedom for an unknown length of time, a form of imprisonment but also a safe place from the revenge which can be carried out by a manslayer for if he leaves the safety of the city, then they can justly be killed by the redeemer of blood who will not be guilty of their death because the limits of their imprisonment had been set and the manslayer ignored them.

The one found to have murdered, as evidenced by using an instrument of metal or wood or stone against another, as also in killing in enmity or hatred, planning their death in advance, will lose his life.

No single witness may testify against a person to die.

How much more justice would be served if we took God's righteous and just laws as our own legal system.

Note how the sanhedrim, the high priests, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the teachers of the law, hated Jesus, planned his death in advance with enmity, could not find two witnesses to agree in testifying against him to die, could not accuse him of murder deserving of death, nor did they meet their own conditions of a just trial, for it was conducted during the night, with no 24 hour interval which a person accused of a crime with a death penalty was entitled to under Jewish law, but was delivered over to the Roman governor before day started, for a death by iron nails through his body nailed to a wooden cross.

Pilate rightly said that he found no fault in Jesus.

Peter rightly told the people who gathered at Pentecost to hear him speak that they had murdered Jesus.

"And ye profane not the land which ye are in for blood profaneth the land; as to the land it is not pardoned for blood which is shed in it except by the blood of him who sheddeth it, and ye defile not the land in which ye are dwelling, in the midst of which I do tabernacle, for I Jehovah do tabernacle in the midst of the sons of Israel." Numbers 35: 33,34

No atonement was possible for the murderer or the manslayer. The city of refuge where the Sanhedrim remained in Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70. The blood of those shedding blood paid the price of pardon.

How astonishing it is that the journeys of the sons of Israel are recorded with such precision and extant now in the writings of the Bible - 'and Moses writeth their outgoings, by their journeys, by the command of Jehovah: 42 journeys and 40 years of journeying from the morrow of the first Passover to the border of the Jordan.

It may take us many years to come to a knowledge of the truth, the truth that sets us free and we go through baptism through the river Jordan into the land over the Jordan where we must dispossess the inhabitants of the land before us - for there is work to be done to attain to the fulness of Christ which God intends us to live in. If we do not continue to defeat the enemy of our souls, "then it hath been, those whom you let remain of them, are for pricks in your eyes and for thorns in your sides and they have distressed you on the land in which ye are dwelling (Numbers 33:55)

For the Scriptures are written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the age have come, the age since Christ, the age of the Holy Spirit, "For as many things as were written before, for our instruction were written before, that through the endurance and the exhortation of the Writings, we might have hope (Romans 15:4)

And we do well to pay heed to the Scriptures for "we have more firm the prophetic word, to which we do well giving heed as to a lamp shining in a dark place, till day may dawn and a morning star may arise - in your hearts" 2 Peter 1:19

"Every writing is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for setting aright, for instruction that is in righteousness" 2 Tim 3:16

Remembering that the Bible is written by the Holy Spirit by the hand of human beings who are filled with the Spirit, and is to be read with understanding given by the Holy Spirit and in no other way, we must know that the war that we are in, is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of this dark world.

Therefore, in our growing into maturity, into perfection in our Christian life, if we harbour or retain or cling to anything of our past life, anything that has led us into evil in our past, then we are in danger of returning to that life. Therefore in our baptism, we leave behind all spiritual opposition to our life in Christ and are raised into a new life in Christ. Behold! I am a new creation. No more in condemnation. Here in the grace of God I stand.

When we are baptised into Christ, we leave what was behind and run the race ahead with our eyes fixed on Jesus, the redeemer and perfecter of our faith. "But I pursue, if also I may hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by the Christ Jesus; brethren, I do not reckon myself to have laid hold; and the one thing - the things behind indeed forgetting, and to the things before stretching forth - to the mark I pursue for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:12-14

Know this, that baptism is of the utmost importance spiritually. Through baptism we are separated from the power of this world, we die to it, and are raised into freedom and forgiveness in Christ. Jesus commanded in his last command as recorded by Matthew, that disciples should make disciples of all nations, 'baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you".

In Hebrew 6: 1-2 one of the foundational teachings of Christ, is the doctrine of baptisms. It is essential we understand and take this to heart. We must be baptised to be freed from our past and to move into our life raised in Christ - this separation is complete, but we can turn back to that past: today's Old Testament passage about the Midianites (Numbers 31 ) demonstrates to us spiritually how determined and complete that separation must be.