- My Angel will Bring
Exodus 23:23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.
God promises Moses an Angel to lead him and bring to the land where these pagan Canaanites are dwelling. The Lord will cut these people off. This promise came mostly to pass in the Conquest under Joshua. But Joshua did not complete the job, and the subsequent years under judges were plagued with “thorns in the side.”
The spiritual aspects of this promise for us believers in Christ is that God sends His Angel to us to lead us against our enemies who are claiming authority to rule the “land” of our hearts. But, since Christ, we have the Lord to cut them off. We daily need to trust the Lord and His promise to cut off our spiritual enemies from trying to control the heart. Because we are born in sin these enemy spirits rule the human soul under the authority of Sin, Death and the Devil. These enemies use the world and our own flesh to attempt to lead us into bondage, fear and despair. But we have the Lord Jesus Christ who will cut them off. The cross has canceled their claim to rule our lives and destroy our souls.
We have the promise of an “Angel” to lead and bring us into the kingdom of God and drive out the enemy usurpers of the soul. This war rages on as long as we live with two worlds within us: sin and forgiveness, life and death, Spirit and flesh, angels and demons. The object of the warfare is for the authoritative control of the soul. Thankfully, we know the outcome of the war in the end: We Win! Meanwhile, while we fight we have the promise of an Angel. This could refer either to the Messiah or to a real angel commissioned by the Lord to lead us and fight for us. And it is true: just like the devil is always close by to put thoughts into our minds, so also is the angel of the Lord close by to quench these lies and evil thoughts and replace these with thoughts of God and of good. We may receive this promise with faith. We are not in the struggle alone.