We are Pilgrims. Yes we have an eternal hope, which means we are on a heavenly journey. This journey is pictured in scripture as, going up to Zion and going up to Jerusalem. It is growing in the understanding and the internal likeness of our risen Lord.
He said to “follow me that where I am you may be also”. He said “tell the others that I have ascended to my God and your God, to My Father and your Father.” This is our journey and our pilgrimage. This is seeking the things that are above. “Where Christ is sitting at the right hand of the Father”. This should be our focus. As Paul said “to lay hold of why Christ laid hold of me.
For the spirit and purpose of prophesy is the Revelation of Jesus Christ. “Lo the volume of the book is written of me”. To shine the eternal light on the Son seated now with the father in Glory, as being our objective of faith.
The purpose of the Holy Spirit according to Jesus is to “take what is mine and declare it to you”. “To tell you things to come” as it pertains to the invisible Kingdom. If I may translate, “to take what is mine, break it down in small enough pieces for human consumption”, divided up in feast days and priestly services, better seen in the life of Jesus on earth as the bread of life, to understand our sanctification and heavenly calling.
We being called both Priests and Kings in His Kingdom need to understand both the sacrifice and the reward. The resurrection and the ascension. Our flesh may be deprived of these things but as we are instructed to “recon our bodies dead”, to be alive in the Spirit so we can recon other things also.
If we don’t learn this one tool “to recon”, meaning to consider and appropriated by faith, then we might as well throw away the first 8 chapters in the book of Romans. “It is God who gives life to the dead and calls those things that do not exist as though they do. Paul’s point is our body is dead because of sin but alive because of His Holy Spirit who now dwells in us.
This is the premise of our faith. He calls things into existence we cannot see, and this is what we will be judged by as believers. If we believe or not. “Hath God really said?” Our flesh always sides with the Devil because “The carnal mind is enmity with God. It is not subject to the laws of God and neither indeed can be so then those who come to God in the flesh cannot please Him”. Meaning the carnal demands are at war with The Father. As Christ rebuked Peter saying “get behind me Satan for you are not mindful of the things of God but of man”. Showing us that Peter was still operating off his old nature.
But “we by the Spirit thus judge that if one man died for all then all are dead”. We live in Zombie land. Now what do we do? We judge some more and we recon some more, we believe some more. Faith being the substance of things not seen that we collect in the Spirit of our minds.
I believe that is what overcomes the obstacles pictured to Joshua and Caleb. Yep we saw the great deliverance from Egypt, and we saw our enemies drowned by the water of the Red sea, but that’s it. If we can’t see it with our eyes we won’t believe it? Our carnal mind will lay things out on a time frame and call it “dispensations”, then we will see it and believe it? Like Thomas said, “Unless I put my fingers in the wounds”. Or of Mary regarding Lazarus, “Lord if you had only been here, by now he stinketh. And Jesus wept”. But not over Lazarus death, but because that is not an obstacle for Him, but our unbelief is. That is Christ wept.
From 1st John, What overcomes the world? Our faith. Not the facts or our deeds.
Let us define the initial topic of “pilgrimage”. This being the journey from when we first stepped into “the promised land” shown in the book of Joshua. The passing over into it though baptism, which portrays us being baptized into Christ, now being in Christs promises. This is the true promise land being His Word, we now journey to The City of God. We now grow in understand by revelation of us seated with our Lord in his Kingdom that is “not of this age”, meaning not of this creation, being the place we are called. The heavenly, invisible one. The one that some in this age experience now by faith.
Hebrews 12.22
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect (of which they acquired while they were in the flesh). 24 to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.”
Hear the Heavenly Voice
25 See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, how much more shall we NOT escape, if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, 26 whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” 27 Now this, “Yet once more”, indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.” So we should know what composition to expect.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear (not to be mistaken for an Adam like, self preserving fear. 29 For our God is a consuming fire.”
Now we will see that the mindset of pilgrimage is a key to the kingdom now, by faith, from Psalms 84.5-7
Blessed is the man whose strength is in You,
Whose heart is set on pilgrimage.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
They make it a spring;
The rain also covers it with pools.
7Â They go from strength to strength;
Each one appears before God in Zion”.
Even Moses understood the pilgrimage and the heavenly place for us that the Lord built with His hands, meaning not of this creation. Here from the song of Moses in Ex 15, which if you remember it was also sung in the book of Revelation.
Ex 15. 17 You (God) will bring them (His people) in and plant them
