We have been thinking about what it means to journey through the wilderness all week, and to help us we have been thinking about what it meant for the Children of Israel to travel through the wilderness in their journey to the Promised Land. Monday we looked at the idea of the wilderness as a place where we undergo intense experiences, like trials or hard times. Tuesday we saw that the wilderness is a place where God actually reveals Himself to us and that there are things we learn about God that we can only learn in a wilderness experience. Yesterday, Wednesday, we saw that the wilderness experience is filled with pitfalls and traps, temptations like fear, apathy, impulses to act out of a spirit of self-preservation, or as a time to desire comfort more than anything else. The wilderness is a time where the Devil would like to capture us and convince us that it would be better to return back to Egypt than to preserver and move toward the promises of God.
Yes, the temptations in the wilderness are great. So great that the prophets and later Biblical authors look back at the time Israel spent in the wilderness as a time of failure. Their refusal to trust God in the wilderness, even after He has revealed Himself to them and established them as His people, led to their death in the wilderness. If you can remember back to the story, 12 spies were sent to the Promised Land, they came back with reports about great giants and massive threats, and the Israelites did not trust that God would protect them. So, God allowed them to die in the wilderness and instead brought the next generation into the Promised Land.
This is a sobering thought for us, the reality is that the pitfalls we are tempted to fall in to will destroy our lives. Our fear, self-preservation, apathy, self-medicating, and overwhelming desire for control and power in our lives are all paths that lead to death.
Hebrews 3, this is a quotation of Psalm 95 that is itself a reflection back on the wilderness journey of the Israelites. It is an encouragement to us to persevere in these times of intense trials. Hebrews 3:7-11 says:
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’
As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
My encouragement to you this morning is to continue to open your heart and continue trusting in God. You may be asking, like the Israelites, “Has God brought us here to kill us!? Does God care!? Is God even there!?”
And His answer is “yes.” He loves us and He is leading us to a promised land where the wilderness will be turned back into ga rden. Our labor, our struggle, our pain, is not in vain! Though we live under the curse, we have the same hope that God has always given His people, the hope that one will come and has come to release us from this curse. Remember the last verse of Joy to the World when it says, “He comes to make his blessings known, far as the curse is found.”
We are going to look at Jesus’ wilderness journey tomorrow and see how He is the fulfillment of this journeying through the wilderness picture, but for now I hope you can find hope in this poem from Isaiah 35. He is speaking to our current situation now, but also of a future when the Kingdom Jesus came to proclaim will be brought in full.
Isaiah 35
The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the Lord,
the splendor of our God.
Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.”
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool,
the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
And a highway will be there;
it will be called the Way of Holiness;
it will be for those who walk on that Way.
The unclean will not journey on it;
wicked fools will not go about on it.
No lion will be there,
nor any ravenous beast;
they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
and those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
If you have another minute today, I have included a link to a song called “Your Labor is Not in Vain” in the description. I encourage you to listen sometime today and be reminded of God’s love toward you, even in the wilderness.
