IN THE WILDERNESS WITH GOD
Angus M. Gunn
"Thou wentest after me in the wilderness" Jeremiah 2:2
"I did know thee in the wilderness" Hosea 13:5
THE wilderness journey of the people of God only began after they had experienced three fundamental crises. These are Old Testament illustrations of three great New Testament experiences of being sheltered by the blood, led of the Spirit and delivered by the power of the cross.
For the Israelites the sprinkled blood was God's means by which the entire problem of sin was removed. It represented the sum total of the whole answer of God to the problem of guilt. The blood on the door was all that God had to see for full protection from wrath. It did not matter how they felt about it; they could not even see it, for they were shut inside the door at the time.
Secondly we read that immediately they were freed, they were led onward by the Holy Spirit, as symbolised by the cloud and the pillar of fire. The leading of the Spirit is not for some select few who have had a special experience; it is for all those who have entered into life by the redeeming blood. It is the birthright of every child of God to be led by the Holy Spirit from their first moments of pilgrimage.
Then there was the Red Sea. We read that there God said to them all: "Fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The Lord shall fight for you, and you need only be still" (Exodus 14:13). The position was that even though they had been delivered from the guilt of sin, they were still in bondage to its power; they were afraid of Egypt, under Egypt's grip. It was the Red Sea which brought them deliverance from this bondage and from the world power over them. And look what they had to do to experience release from it all -- simply to accept divine deliverance. God did it all. In the same way, when Jesus Christ died on the cross, He delivered every committed Christian from all the sinful habits which could hold him down. He did not just promise something which might happen in the future: He did it then, when He died on the cross. When we accept what Christ has done for us on the cross, then we can know full deliverance from fear and from the power of sin.
So Israel came through these three fundamental crises, and then went right on with God knowing, as the first chapters of Exodus tell us, how the entire power of sin -- past, present and future -- are dealt with by God's redemption. [27/28] All that follows, in Exodus and the following books, represents their moving forward in the will of God. We read of their joyful and free expectation in the song which came with their deliverance in Exodus 15. They looked forward to being led on and right in to the land of promise: "Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them ..." (v.17). As a redeemed people they now had a sense of purpose, of destiny; they were going somewhere and they knew what it was all about.
The full realisation of redemption is dealt with in the same song which is to be found in the book of Revelation where the saints in glory sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb (15:1-5). Those who sing that song will no longer have to face the wilderness; it will all be past. In Exodus, though, the redeemed throng of singing Israelites found that as they moved on with God, they had to face the wilderness. And so do we. But we go into the wilderness with God.
We are not here dealing with the wandering life of those who are trying to live without God or who have strayed far from Him, but with that way of testing and learning which is the way of His will. In the Bible, "wilderness" is not the sort of bucolic, holiday notion that we associate with the word, but it is desert, a place without life, a place of barren emptiness and hardship. We find now that the Exodus image of the Christian life reminds us that wilderness experiences are absolutely essential for our spiritual growth. Wilderness experiences are inevitable for every Christian on his way forward to the promised land, for something is to be done there which can be done nowhere else.
At the end of their journey, the Israelites were informed that God had led them through the wilderness "to know what was in thine heart" (Deuteronomy 8:2). The truth was that there had to be a sorting out, and God made use of the wilderness for doing this most important work. The wilderness is essential for fullness. After all, the Lord Jesus Himself was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. We know too that Paul had a wilderness experience, and so did David and others. Perhaps the most notable of God's servants who were so tested was Moses, the man who was now at the head of God's ongoing people. He had deep and drastic trials in the wilderness to prepare him for his task. The wilderness is not a chance happening; it is an essential experience under the hand of God. It is His Winter, the time in which He causes His people to put down deeper roots in preparation for the Spring of spiritual growth and the fruitful Summer of fullness.
Not that Israel needed to spend all that time there. Most of what we read took place at the beginning and end of that journey, with the long middle period an unrecorded waste of time. After a little over a year at Sinai they were only eleven days journey from the land. In God's purpose the trial was meant to be much shorter; nevertheless it was absolutely necessary, as part of His will for them. The same applies to us. There is no other way through into the promised land.
This can be an enormously beneficial experience; it can be the very thing that makes you, as it certainly was for Caleb and Joshua (Numbers 32:12). The wonderful spirit found in these two men was born out of the wilderness. They were what they were not because of some special experience of blessing nor because of the support and fellowship of hundreds of others. No, they went through the wilderness with God, and so they learned to triumph. The purpose of the desert is to sift us and bring up to the surface hidden weaknesses. God has no use for 'phoneys'. He needs to deliver us from a world of pretence into a life where we are wholly committed to His will. What He does in us is infinitely more important than what He purposes to do for us in an outward way. It is clear in Israel's case that while He had brought them out of Egypt, He now had to get Egypt out of them. It was deeply rooted in their system as a result of long history. And there is a long history of this world's spirit and ways in you and me. In the wisdom of God He plans to prove His delivering power from it not just by meetings and seminars, but in the trial and testing of daily life.
It can be one of the great reassurances of God's care for us when we find how He engineers and overrules circumstances in our everyday lives which bring to the surface things which we never suspected were in us. So often this is done not by some special Bible message but by the situations in the home or on our job, the clashes which we have with those who are in close contact with us. The test then is as to whether we are going to accept God's verdict on the things which needed to be uncovered, or whether [28/29] we will try to dig in our heels and do what Stephen called "turning back to Egypt" in our hearts. If we are irked or if we are deprived, does this mean the outburst of old nature? Basically what it comes down to is the question as to whether we are in this thing for what we can get out of it; or are we there for the crown rights of Jesus Christ and His authority over our lives. It is in the wilderness that the Lord tests us by depriving us of the things that we prize, to show us what He already knew -- what was in our hearts of self interest. A friend who had been in a Japanese prison camp told me of how horrified she had been at the behaviour of some fellow prisoners who were keen Christians and yet acted so badly when the bread ran short. Things began to surface which she had never expected. So it is in one way or another with us all.
In the Scriptures we are given a frank exposition of the things which were disclosed by the wilderness. Items are pulled out of that story of Israel's history and highlighted in the New Testament also, in order that we might realise how true to life this all is. There is a passage in 2 Corinthians 10:1-13 which pulls these matters out into high relief so that we might realise that this is not just something in ancient history but that which applies to us today. We are told by Paul that there were those who had a genuine experience of deliverance and a taste of the Holy Spirit, yet whose lives in the end became a complete disaster. They never reached God's goal for them. In the wilderness testing they forsook God instead of moving closer to Him. Paul wrote concerning problems in Corinth, but under God he wrote for us all, reminding us of Old Testament illustrations of abiding possibilities. The five-fold warning here lifted directly from the story in the book of Exodus deals with:
1. Lusting. "to the intent we should not lust ... as they also lusted." We find the reference in Numbers 11:4. A mixed multitude of fellow-travellers were in the party. They had felt that things were going Israel's way and had joined the crowd, and now they were surfacing as soon as the wilderness brought them into a time of testing. They felt aggrieved that those who had never left Egypt should be having so much better times than they. It was not enough for them that they had the Lord; they compared themselves with the people of this world who were doing fine and they demanded to know why it should not be the same for them. They were not satisfied with God's way in their lives, not being able to see beyond to the far greater prospects of God's will for them.
Lust is more than just body appetites; it is the craving for the things which God does not want to give us. I want to say that if you do long enough for something in this way, if you hanker for it, if you keep praying for it, then you will get it! God has a way of answering such prayers by letting you have what you crave for and then discovering what havoc it brings. This is the way in which God has run the world from the beginning. He shows that His wisdom is greater by letting men have their own way and then discovering that it is no good. Alas, there are many who end up as embittered and miserable persons because they insisted in having what they wanted, instead of trusting God's wisdom to give them what He saw was best.
2. Idolatry. "Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them." This is described for us in Exodus 32. Moses had been away in the mountain for a long time and the Israelites got restless. The story tells us of the golden calf and of how the people lost control of themselves and ran wild. Chaos took possession of their lives, and all because something other than the Lord had become their supreme interest and the centre of their activity. Authority over their lives had been to another than God. This is precisely what idolatry is, the allowing of anything or anyone else to take the place of Jesus Christ in our lives. This will bear repetition. It is so important. Idolatry is the allowing of any other thing or any other person than the Lord to have first place with us. Whenever people do this, then they are bound to go to pieces as Israel did.
3. Immorality. "Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed." We probably regard ourselves as very moral people, but we should realise that the whole matter is more subtle than we think and that God's warnings have relevance for us all. There is much subtlety in this permissive world in which we have to live, and we must be wise to another trick of Satan by which he attacks us at some point of weakness to defile the clear testimony we are giving for Christ. Brothers, don't be naive about such defilement. Sisters, don't be deceived by men who are not committed to Jesus Christ. There is a whole world of subtlety in the attempts made to catch us and besmirch the Lord's name through us, and this goes far beyond the more outward forms of gross immorality. [29/30]
4. Tempting the Lord. "Neither let us tempt the Lord, as some of them tempted." We must not try to put God to a test, insisting that He must give proofs of His presence and power. When Satan asked Jesus to demonstrate His relationship to His heavenly Father by jumping down from the temple, he was only repeating his attempts to provoke unbelief as he had provoked Israel to demand something spectacular from their God. Almost within a couple of months of their leaving Egypt, the people were saying: How do we know that God is really among us? Let Him prove it. Let us see a miracle.
You and I do not have the freedom to demand that God should always be proving Himself by showing special signs. That is a childish approach to a relationship with God. As Cowper says in his hymn:
But trust Him for His grace.
We have been given firm promises by God and we must never presume to question Him as to His ability to fulfil them. It is His business to demonstrate His pleasure as and when He so wishes; it is not for us to be always insisting on the sensational.
5. Murmuring. "Neither murmur ye, as some of them murmured." This is an obvious tendency which is deep down in us all. The occasion specifically referred to here is found in Numbers 14:2, and we notice there how the whole people had been affected by the unbelief of ten of the spies. Two of the twelve returned with the assurance that they were well able to overcome, but these others contradicted them, magnified the difficulties and complained of God's call to them. Their murmuring had a ripple effect, as such behaviour not infrequently does. The few can affect the many. This is especially true of complaining and criticising; those who refuse God's Word and God's ways can rapidly spread their influence of disaffection until many are carried away and join in the murmuring.
These, then, were the latent weaknesses in the Israelites. The wilderness exposed them. If such tendencies are in us, the Lord will allow us to come into the kind of experiences that will bring them out. Does this sound gloomy? Let us notice that the passage is not really negative. Having been told to take warning from these examples, we are assured that all of them have an answer: "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it" (1 Corinthians 10:13). What you are going through in the wilderness experience is not private to you alone. Thousands of others have gone through it all.
All the Israelites went through the wilderness, and many failed in the test but there were others, like Caleb and Joshua, who actually benefitted from it. You may wonder perhaps how some people survive in the deep trials through which they are passing. You don't have to wonder. They are finding their answer in God. You, too, may find that answer and be able to "stand up under it", for God's purpose is always positive and His sufficiency not to be questioned.
Against those who were failures, then, we are able to consider those who triumphed, and more than that, who became pioneers to lead the rest on into the land, which speaks of God's fullness in Christ. As we have seen, the prophets were able to glory in the wilderness. Hosea spoke of it as a place of fellowship (Hosea 13:5) and Jeremiah tells of reciprocated love in the wilderness and enlarges on how God brought Israel through that land of deserts "where no man dwelt" (Jeremiah 2:6). It is clear, then, that for some the wilderness brought experiences of great value. It is a place of sifting. So much so that the generation who came out of Egypt were not able to survive. God, however, was moving with another generation who were able to pick up where the others left off and move onward into the land.
This is true now, and has been all through the centuries. God is always moving on with every generation, seeking higher things for the next which follows. We are not to try to re-live the past and dwell on hallowed memories, but to thank God for what He has already given and move on. The new generation of Israel had an opportunity which was not given to most of their fathers, but it was the link provided by the few who did triumph through all those testings which kept the door open for them. They owed so much to Caleb and Joshua, but we must remember that these two were made the men they were by reason of their triumphant faith in the wilderness. [30/31]
Rather than consider these two, we turn again to Moses who led them right through to the land, even though he could not himself enter. The secret of this man's leadership was that he himself had been through a long wilderness experience with God before ever he was given the task of helping God's people. He had been through the cycle himself, and carried its values with him.
The life of Moses was divided into three equal parts of forty years. In the first phase he had tremendous self-confidence and would have faced every problem with the assertion: 'I can!' Then he had to pass through his wilderness experience in which he was reduced to the lowest level and was most emphatic in his confession: 'I cannot!' The final, and most fruitful period was when he was able to forget both his abilities and his failures with faith's assertion: 'God can!' He had been in the wilderness with God. For this reason he was able to be a tremendous help to Caleb and Joshua as they pursued the wilderness journey, and then they in their turn were able to lead and inspire a new generation to go right on with God. This generation had a magnificent record of fulfilment in the purpose of God, as He had promised them they would in the thrilling re-capitulation of the law given in Deuteronomy. Alas. God also had foreseen a further failure when they forsook the discipline of total dependence on God which they had learned in the wilderness. "Then thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God ... who led thee through the great and terrible wilderness" (Deuteronomy 8:14-15). For our purposes, though, they represent a new and victorious generation who owed everything to the faithfulness of Moses, Joshua and Caleb, the men of steel, and they went right on into God's full purpose in the land.
Those of us who are older must remember that there is another generation of believers who are watching us. They are not greatly concerned with our words, they will not be influenced by what we profess to be or by what we suggest that they should be. They are looking for the evidence of Christ's presence in our lives. The Lord Jesus made this whole business so simple. He did not get involved in great theological discussions but just said: "Follow Me". Now none of us is going to ask others to follow us, but we should remember that the unique work of the Holy Spirit is to keep pointing to Christ, and if that is so, then He must be able to reveal Christ to others through us. He cannot point them to the Lord Jesus somewhere out in clouds, but He can make Christ known through us. "Be ye followers of me, as I am of Christ" were Paul's words (1 Corinthians 11:1). This is the ministry to which we are called; it is the only true ministry of the Spirit; it calls and inspires others to follow Christ by what they meet of Him in us.
Moses, Joshua and Caleb all assure us that the emptying of self interest which takes place in the wilderness, and the experiences of being cast wholly on God in every situation of need are neither wasted experiences, nor are they merely selfish achievements. They form part of the divine purpose to bring to the full maturity of Christ, the people who have been purchased by the blood of the Lamb and delivered by the power of His cross.
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