In the Wilderness

Hungry, thirsty, and tired. To think that anything but bitterness can grow from such a place would be hard-pressed. But life is exactly what God can grow in the human heart in an environment so hostile. Yes, here where you are reminded just how vulnerable you actually are, can you be brought to trust in God’s sustenance. I think the hustle of making a good life can distract us from who we really are, creatures affected by rain, sun, light, and bread. In the wilderness of Sinai, the Israelites were brought to the end of themselves. Three tests failed. How naturally human. But there is another way. Perhaps we can learn to be more than human in a place designed to kill the body but strengthen the spirit. Here, we can become wellsprings of living water, sustaining the hope of others in this wilderness world around us.

The story of Israel’s wilderness wanderings begins after the famous exodus triumph: 400 years of slavery under the Egyptians, 10 plagues of judgment by God, a split sea rescue, and a victorious song by all of Israel. As Israel left Egypt, they were elated; now they could be taken to the land of milk and honey. Off with the yoke of suffering, onto the promised land. Not quite;

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.”  So, God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. Exodus 13: 17-18

God was aware of the limitations of his people; they were not ready to face armies far greater than themselves. They needed to be formed into a people who could trust God and not turn back in the face of danger. So, into the dangerous wilderness they are led.

The wilderness is a dry, rocky, and hostile land uninhabited by humans. The heat of the Middle East environment will dehydrate you; the lack of groundwater makes any farming impossible, and there are desert creatures that actively harm you. In the wilderness, we are not allowed to depend on anything else. All at once, everything that makes us secure is stripped; no field to plough and no wall to keep out danger. Here, we cannot grasp our tools of success. Yet in this vast uncertainty, we can find the solid ground. Only when our reality of security is shaken can we truly see that our life has really been held by powers far greater than us. When all other resources of life were stripped away, God showed himself to Israel as the true source of life.

Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days, they traveled in the desert without finding water.  When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?” Exodus 15: 22-24

If I went on a one-day trip without water, I would also start a fight with the person in charge. Shouldn’t they have planned this better? While the Israelites' response seems valid, we must remember what happened just 3 days before this. God split a 10-kilometer sea into two so they could walk on dry ground; ‘by the blast of his nostrils’ they sang. Surely the arm of God was not too short to save, but faced with the reality of a bitter lake right before them, it was hard to feel anything but their thirst. Moses prayed to God, and he turned the waters drinkable. Then God gave them the key instruction that would see them through this temporary wilderness: to listen carefully to his voice. Much more testing was on its way, but if they knew the sound of their God and heeded it, they would find life in a place of bitter waters. Shortly after this, Israel proceeded further into the desert, and this time, they went hungry;

In the desert, 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.” Exodus 16:2-3

When I first read these verses, I thought; Well, if God had simply given them everything they needed at the beginning of this journey, none of these complaints would have happened. You know if I got the paycheck, bills paid, and job, then I wouldn’t be angry with God. If God just gave me all I need to retire at 60, then I wouldn’t need to cry out. If I had every insurance and security against an uncertain future, then I would be at peace. If I could just create some sort of paradise for myself apart from God, then God and I would be fine. But the problem is that there is no world in which we can self-sustain ourselves.  We cannot create Eden apart from God; we cannot sustain ourselves apart from his grace. All we need is famine to hit our land, and we realize it is not our hard labor that makes crops grow, but God. He gives the good soil, he brings the rain, he germinates the seed. Even our very lives were given to us by someone outside us, our parents.

It is the word of God that spoke everything into being, so how can anything live apart from him? That is why Christ, borrowing Moses’s words, said, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4). It is the word of God that spun the earth into being. It is the word of God that keeps time from being wound back up. Indeed, we do not and cannot exist apart from his word. And so, when we are at the onset of our life’s journey, what we need is the word of God. There is no other assurance to be found apart from it. Israel should have known that God was with them just as he promised he would be; therefore, they had all they needed to do his will.

In response to Israel’s quarrelling about bread, God provided Manna from heaven, which they could grind into flour to make bread. Israel needed to learn that it was not Egypt that gave them pots of meat, but ultimately God. Yes, Manna from the sky is a miraculous provision, but so is daily bread from our storehouses. All these are gifts from God. However, His provision also comes with crucial instructions, another test.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. Exodus 16:4

When the Israelites were given manna, some of them hoarded it, collecting more than they needed for one day, and it ended up getting infested with worms. The test was this: Can you trust that God will give you today your daily bread? The more we focus on hoarding provision, the less our focus is on the one who provided. That is why the Israelites were also commanded to rest on the sabbath and not collect anything, to remember the one who gave them all. Many of the New Testament teachings of Christ draw heavily from this moment.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear…Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they are? Matthew 6: 25-16

If we can learn to depend on God for something as basic as food, then we will be free of worry because we trust he will take care of us. This doesn’t mean that we should be lazy or careless. Our agency to work hard is real, but it is also really limited. We must know deep in our hearts that provision comes from God alone. If God can take care of needs as basic as food, surely, he shall cover us in our modern complex needs; tuition fees, mortgage payments, and even AI replacing our jobs; these are not hidden from him. Just as you trust that the sun will rise tomorrow, trust that his mercies will be new every morning. That is why Christ taught us to pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ not our monthly or yearly bread, not even our weekly bread. It is the needs of today that we are to ask for. Israel needed to learn that God would provide enough bread that they needed every morning, and he did until they reached the promised land (Exodus 16:35). Trust that God has given you enough for today, even though you may be in lack or hungry. This is a profound paradox that Paul affirms to be true;

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do all this through Christ, who gives me strength. Philippians 4: 12-13

Having failed these first two tests, I hoped Israel would finally learn their lesson to trust in God. Instead, this third test revealed why trust, in spite of all they had seen God do, could not come from their hearts.

The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” Exodus 17:1-2

Israel comes to demand from God this time. Same words as a request, but an entirely different posture of the heart. They ask from a place of mistrust. They believe that God is secretly trying to kill them, so they dare him to prove otherwise. To ask is to humble yourself; to quarrel is to raise yourself above the other person. God indeed provides water for them, but he is after more than their words or actions; he is after their hearts.

In these seemingly basic tests of food and water, God was forming the hearts of his people. The posture of the heart is what God is after. A heart that knows his voice and is tender to his leading. Know in your heart that it is God who is the giver of all life; apart from him, no good thing is to be found. Know also his voice, his words, and his promises. Trust in what he says, for it is true. The wilderness is not a place where you settle. It prepares you for the promised land. What you learn in scarcity will sustain you in plenty. In the wilderness, our hearts are put to the test, revealing our desires; in a place where we cannot engineer our own provision, can we trust God to cover us as he promised he would? In the garden land, the question is the same: In a land where I have everything, can I remember that it is God who gave me everything, and so obey his word in how I should use the blessing? In the promised land, we must keep before us what we learnt in the wilderness, just as Moses cautioned in Deuteronomy 8. Without listening to the word of God, even the garden land will not be good, just ask Adam and Eve.

We do not go into the wilderness of life’s struggles alone. If we did, we would truly not survive, but God has a way of meeting us there, carrying us through every difficult moment until we come to the promised land. Like meeting an oasis in a desert, so does God miraculously provides for us when we are surrounded by hopeless circumstances. This is exactly the God Hagar and David met when they were forced to flee into the wilderness.  Hagar, a non-Israelite, was personally comforted by God; She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the one who sees me.’ Genesis 16:13. David was protected by God against his enemies in the wilderness, “Because you, Lord, are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings” Psalms 63:7. There is a special way we experience God in the wilderness; when we are in need, unemployed, hungry, attacked, unable to help ourselves. Somehow, the words of scripture become more real to us than anything we experience. There in the dryness, our hands reach out and touch the life of God. Yes, we are not alone here. Trust that you will be fed and watered with every new day. With every difficult step on barren ground, your feet will be guided towards the wellspring of life.

Israel could not pass the tests set before them, but there was a son of Israel who could. In Matthew 4, Jesus was tempted 3 times in the wilderness just as the Israelites were. He passed the test. When I pass through my wilderness tests, I can depend on his victory. He who was hungry yet did not quarrel with God. He was God himself, yet he did not test the hand of God. Even when he was offered the kingdoms of the world apart from God, he rejected them. Yes, I depend on him. On my own, I will falter in the wilderness, but Jesus is the image I am being made into. One who can walk through the testing and into the promised land. Christ shows us the only way to survive in Sinai and thrive in Eden: listening to the voice of God. Just as Moses said to the Israelites on the cusp of the promised land in Deuteronomy 30: 19-20;

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before your life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life…

Through Christ’s life, I can be sustained in the wilderness and prosper in the promised land. He is the bread of life, the spring of water welling up into eternal life. What he offers is a better way to respond to the wilderness. A way of trust, that even when we don’t understand, we acknowledge God in all our ways. A way of hope, that because we know he cares for us, we need not worry about tomorrow, for we know that paradise is coming soon. A way of faithfulness, obeying every word of God today. Christ offers us the way, truth, and life through the wilderness and into the promised land.

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For further study, listen to the Bible Project’s Podcast series on the Wilderness here: https://bibleproject.com/podcasts/series/the-wilderness/