The impossible had happened.

Moses stood before a mountain - in the place where God had spoken to him from a burning bush just months before. In that earlier encounter, the LORD had promised, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain" (Ex. 3:12).

Moses had left the burning bush to go to Egypt. There, God intervened repeatedly, forcefully to open the way for the enslaved Israelites to leave. Finally, at God's command, each Israelite household killed a Passover lamb and smeared its blood on the top and sides of the doorframe. That same night, death took all the firstborn of Egypt's sons. That same night, Pharaoh told the Israelites, "Go!" They went out carrying much Egyptian wealth, freely given by their former masters.

Now the entire nation camped before Mt. Sinai. Exodus 19:3 says, "Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain. . . ."

What happened next had huge implications for Israel - and for us.

We've only just begun

The impossible happens whenever anyone exits Egypt by the shed blood of the Lamb. God has made a way where there was none. He has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. "He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves" (Col. 1:13).

"For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Cor. 5:7).

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Cor. 5:17).

And yet, exiting Egypt, we haven't arrived. Rather, as the Carpenters once crooned, "We've only just begun to live."

Standing on the far side of the Red Sea, the newly freed Israelites sang and danced for joy. As one, they celebrated with all their might. Then they turned toward the desert.

Within days: They had no food. They had no water. An enemy nation attacked them, unprovoked.

Suddenly, the "new" they'd entered didn't seem so grand.

God's message to grumbling people

Hungry, "the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death'" (Ex. 16:2-3).

God miraculously fed them with quail and manna. Providing the manna daily, he told the people how and when to gather it. Some tried to ignore his rules and make up their own.

Thirsty, the Israelites "grumbled against Moses. They said, 'Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?'" (Ex. 17:3). God miraculously provided water from a rock.

Next, the Amalekites attacked. God miraculously gave the Israelites victory. Afterward, camped before Mt. Sinai, the Israelites had such trouble getting along with each other that Moses spent all day every day trying to sort out their disputes.

Three months after leaving Egypt, Moses took his father-in-law's advice and enlisted other leaders to decide the disputes. Then Moses set out up the mountain to meet with God.

You'd think that people who have seen God work miracle after miracle - in Egypt and in the wilderness - would realize God was fighting for them, not against them. At least, you'd think that until your own needs rise up screaming in your face.

Within days of exiting their old life, the Israelites faced threats of starving to death, dying of thirst and being decimated by an attacking army. Decades after giving my lift to Christ, I can still find myself grumbling at God over matters a whole lot less critical. Then I feel shame for my lack of faith - along with something akin to certainty that I'll never get it right.

Funny thing, both the doubting thoughts and feelings and the taunting thoughts and feelings masquerade as me. Yet none of them comes out of the new identity God has given me.

Which makes me unspeakably grateful for the message God gave Moses during the first of seven mountaintop meetings. God did not say what we might have thought he would say, given the situation. His words were brief, but powerful. He addressed people who had come into the new still clutching hard to the old. In essence, God introduced them to themselves. He invited them to become who he had created them to be.

"Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, ‘This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: "You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites'" (Ex. 19:3-6).

The identity not taken

The God who freed the Israelites also provided them a new identity. He summarized it in three phrases:

• My treasured possession
• A kingdom of priests
• A holy nation

The God who frees us has also provided us a new identity. He summarizes it in 1 Peter 2:9, using the same three phrases plus one: "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession."

The Lord didn't look at the newly freed Israelites, scratch his head, think, "Whatever am I going to do with them?" - and then come up with a plan. Five centuries before the exodus, God made promises to Abraham regarding his descendants. Now, the Lord offered to Abraham's offspring what was, at once, a new identity and their true identity.

In Christ, God has given you, at once, a new identity and your true identity. He prepared this identity for you a lot longer than 500 years ago. "For he chose us in him [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight" (Eph. 1:4).

The Israelites had no clue who they really were. All their lives, they'd lived as slaves. Generations before them had lived as slaves. Even after the Lord God went to no small trouble to set them free, they still saw themselves as rejected and oppressed.  Their accusations against Moses and God - "You've brought us here to kill us!" - reflected what they still believed about themselves. Facing lack, they assumed: "This is how we've always been treated. And look! It's still happening!"

Seeing themselves as slaves, they cried out to return to Egypt, where bondage was both dreadful and comfortable. Seeing themselves as slaves, they considered every new wilderness challenge the cruel act of a cruel supernatural taskmaster. They accepted God's miraculous provision at every turn, yet never did see his goodness in providing it. In Psalm 95:10, God assessed that generation: "This is a people whose hearts go astray, they don't understand how I do things" (CJB).

So, wow. How often do we do the same? I don't know about you, but I'm tired of living out of a slave identity that the enemy has put on me. I'm tired of accusing God of treating me the same way Pharaoh treated the Israelites. I want to understand how God does things. I want to live, fully, consistently, out of my new and true identity.

Put on what God holds out

God told the Israelites what they had to do to embrace their God-given identity: "obey me fully and keep my covenant" (Ex. 19:5). "Oh, but that's Old Testament!" you cry. Yes, it is.

I like the way Hebrews 10:1 describes the Old Testament law: "a shadow of the good things to come." A shadow doesn't fully show, but it gives us the idea. The Israelites had left Egypt by faith in God and the blood of the Passover lamb. As  they crossed out of bondage, God had their new, true identity already waiting for them. More than that, he himself was waiting for them. But they didn't yet look like the royal priests and holy nation he had created them to be. They still had to put on what God held out.

So do we. "So far as your former way of life is concerned, you must strip off your old nature, because your old nature is thoroughly rotted by its deceptive desires; and you must let your spirits and minds keep being renewed, and clothe yourselves with the new nature created to be godly, which expresses itself in the righteousness and holiness that flow from the truth" (Eph. 4:22-24 CJB).

As we make the choice, God makes the way. "If you [really] love Me, you will keep (obey) My commands. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, and Standby), that He may remain with you forever -  The Spirit of Truth. . . . He will be in you" (John 14:15-17 AMP).

Still today, the saved can live like the enslaved. Still today, God says, "Obey me fully," not to earn salvation, but to live out our new and true identity. This obeying is not re-enslavement to another cruel taskmaster, who tortures us with rules no one can keep. This obeying is the spirit-to-Spirit response of people living in covenant with the God who carried us on eagles' wings and brought us to himself.

Know who you are

Tragically, the generation of Israelites that left Egypt never entered the Promised Land. They didn't receive the inheritance God had waiting for them because they never stepped into the identity he had given them.

For us, as for them, inheritance hinges on identity. Identity hinges on covenant. Covenant hinges on relationship.

God promised Abraham: "I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you" (Gen. 17:7-8). Centuries later, God delivered Israel to bring them to himself.

When God enters covenant, whether with Israel or with us, he isn't making a business deal: "You do your part; I'll do mine." He's entering a marriage: "I pledge myself fully to this relationship. Will you do the same?"

Every aspect of our new identity hinges on intimate relationship with our Lord. We are his "treasured possession." We belong to him - and he never, ever treats us like slave property. Oh no! He cherishes, treasures and protects us as his own Body.

We are "a kingdom of priests." If that sounds formal, ritualistic, it's not.  Deuteronomy 10:8 describes the priests' duties this way: "to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister and to pronounce blessings in his name." We carry the Presence of the Lord! We stand before our Lord to minister to him! We pronounce blessings in his name! We're priests of the King!

Just as amazing, we are "a holy nation." We may think of holiness as restrictive, tying us to a mental checklist of right and wrong. But holiness doesn't hold us back (from all that we really want to do). It calls us up (into who we really are). Holiness has everything to do with relationship.

The Lord is holy. He is utterly "other than." He has set us apart to himself. As we cooperate with what his Spirit is doing within us, we "match" the unmatchable. We begin to mirror, first a little, then more, and more of him. We have "put on the new self, which is continually being renewed in fuller and fuller knowledge, closer and closer to the image of its Creator" (Col. 3:10 CJB).

We were created to look and act like him who brought us to himself. Yet as we pursue holiness, we don't turn into a ream of carbon copies. We look and act like a nation of unique, beloved human beings whose true identities the Lord designed before the world began.

Be who you are!

Recognize that, in Christ, the new has come!

Realize that ungodly patterns that have plagued you all your life - and may have plagued your family for generations - do not reflect the true you.

Give the Spirit permission day by day to uncover and replace every destructive and debilitating thought, feeling or behavior not compatible with the new you.

Know that, by this process, your Father is not hemming you in and holding you back. He is not calling you to labor rigorously to become something you're not. He is teaching you, Spirit-to-spirit, to be who you truly are.

Choose to obey him, not out of your own frail resources, but out of the covenant of love he's made with you. For in that covenant, that new covenant, he promises you all himself - Father, Son, Spirit - to finish what otherwise you never could do.

"God the Father has his eye on each of you, and has determined by the work of the Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus. May everything good from God be yours!" (1 Peter 1:2 MSG).