The Wilderness

Lately I feel as if every time I turn around, I’m reminded of Exodus 33. It can be from a song on the radio, something a friend or family member says, etc. Regardless of how it happens, it seems to be a relevant theme in my world. A little bit of context: the Israelites are in the wilderness, and Moses has just recently descended from a literal mountain top experience with the Lord. Out of frustration with the Israelites’ unfaithfulness to the Himself, the Lord commands Moses to take the Israelites up toward the promise land but tells Moses that He will not be going with them. It’s here that Moses begins to plead with the Lord. In verse 15 (NLT) he is even so bold as to say, “If you do not personally go with us, don’t make us leave this place.”

I used to simply think that Moses was a wise man for knowing that the Lord’s presence was the best place for the Israelite people to be. I mean it makes sense, right? Creator of the universe, all-powerful King of everything, the Great Provider, etc… You get the point. God is one cool dude. But the other day I began to realize something about the story I had never noticed before.

The Israelites were in the wilderness.

I know. How could I miss it? It’s only their location… Still I’d only ever considered the story in light of where they were going. I’d never thought about where they were. So lets talk about it for a second.

The wilderness. On my study trip to the Middle East in 2012 I experienced it first hand. It’s pretty depleted of natural resources - at least the ones that sustain life such as water, shelter and food. Lets also keep in mind the Israelites were a huge group of people, requiring a massive quantity of these very basic resources each day.

If you know much about the 40 years of wandering, you are probably already aware that God provided for His people. They ate manna each day and had water miraculously every time it was needed. But it was still the wilderness! It was the same thing for every meal every day of every week. Now I don’t know about you, but there have been enough of these seasons in my life for me to know that God will always provide. Even so, there still remains many a moment in such a season where I am literally just getting by. And I’m going to guess that in the wilderness, the Israelites were just getting by. Where they were headed was a land of prosperity, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land God promised to His people. Where they currently found themselves was a place where everything was directly the opposite.

Yet Moses tells the Lord that he does not want to be sent up from the wilderness into a land of prosperity if the Lord does not go with them. … Just let that sink in for a moment. What Moses truly just said was, “I would rather stay in a place of suffering and know that the Lord is with us than inherit a land of prosperity without the Lord beside us.” What a statement!

This stand that Moses makes has really encouraged me to remain faithful to the Lord through a season of what feels like a version of my own wilderness. The time of wandering for the Israelites was indefinite. There was no foreseeable end in sight. Yet Moses had the wisdom to stay with the Lord in a wilderness instead of walking into the land of promise without Him.