Are You In the Wilderness?
The wilderness, then, is a divine requirement
Looking back at the Old Testament pictures, God's people had to pass through the wilderness to travel from Egypt to Canaan. They also had to traverse the wilderness to travel from Babylon to Canaan. The wilderness, then, is a divine requirement. But it's a detour; it's not home. How long you spend there is mostly your decision.
Leaving the wilderness may come at an obscenely high price
After the children of Israel exited the treasured city of Egypt, they quickly traveled to Mount Horeb. They then wandered in the desert for forty long years. Why? Because of their unbelief (Heb. 3:15-19; 4:1-11). The trip should have only lasted eleven days (Deut. 1:2).
The wilderness is temporary, unless you choose to build a home there. God will eventually make a way out of the wilderness. But when that day comes, your faith will be tried. Leaving the wilderness may come at an obscenely high price. It is for this reason that many do not leave it.
I strongly believe that God's living quarters cannot be built in the wilderness. All that happens in the wilderness is temporary. God's goal is the Land of Promise. (I am speaking spiritually Egypt, Babylon, the Wilderness, and Canaan are all shadows that point to spiritual realities for the Christian.)
Granted, the tabernacle of Moses was built in the wilderness. But it was a movable tent. It was highly temporal, and it was headed toward Canaan to find permanent rest.
I would now like to make several observations about the wilderness.
If you happen to be living there right now, I hope this article will be of help to you.
First, God will always take care of His people in the wilderness.
He will supply them with Christ, even though it's not their natural habitat. However, the Christ that is given to you in the wilderness is notadequate to meet all your spiritual needs. Let me explain.
When God's people dwelt in the wilderness after leaving Egypt, God gave them water from a rock and bread from heaven. The bread was called manna. It was a picture of Jesus Christ, our spiritual
food (John 6:31-35, 49-51; 1 Cor. 10:1--4).
However, it didn't take Israel long to grow weary of the manna. In the same way, you and I will eventually grow tired of the Lord that is given to us in the wilderness. And like Israel, we will be tempted to murmur against him.
There is only one kind of food given in the wilderness. And it's not sufficient for the long haul. The manna is designed to get you and me through the wilderness experience. But we cannot live off of
it beyond that point.
By contrast, in Canaan, the fullness and the superabundance of the land are fully available to us. When we are living on the building site, the produce of the rich and good land becomes ours to enjoy. And that produce is inexhaustible.
Second, if you remain in the wilderness, you will eventually die.
Leaving the counterfeit habitats of Egypt and Babylon is not enough. If you don't exit the wilderness, your bones will bleach in the desert. God always brings His people out so that He might bring them in.
You can chisel that in stone.
He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He had sworn to our
fathers. (Deut. 6:23 nasb)
Third, the wilderness has but one goal: to sift us, to reduce us, and to strip us down to Christ alone.
Those of us who have left Egypt and Babylon need to be emptied of a great deal of religious baggage. The wilderness experience is designed to do just that. It's the place of religious detox.
Consider John the Baptist. He preached in the wilderness. Those who wished to hear his message had to go out into the desert to hear him. During John's day, God was through with Judaism. He was finished with the old wineskin. The Lord raised up John the Baptist to call the people out of Judaism, the organized religion of the day.
Those who followed John in the wilderness were being stripped of everything that the old Judaism had to offer. They were dropping the religiosity of that system and coming up to ground zero. From where did Jesus Christ get His disciples? Most of them were followers of John the Baptist. Therefore, they had a wilderness experience that brought them to ground zero. That experience brought them to a nothing situation. Compared to the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes, they were clean slates for the Lord Jesus to write upon. They were empty wineskins for the Lord to pour His new wine into. John the Baptist stripped them of the old, and Jesus gave them the new.
Please burn this into your mind: We cannot receive the new until we first let go of the old
Old wineskins don't patch well. For this reason, God has never been in the business ofn pouring new wine into old wineskins (Matt. 9:16-17).
In addition to the Twelve, Paul of Tarsus also had a wilderness experience that brought him all the way up to zero. In fact, Paul had to climb a long way up just to get to the bottom.
Everything that Paul knew as a zealous Pharisee bled out of him in the desert
Shortly after Paul's conversion from being a racist, sectarian, self-righteous, bigoted, highly religious Pharisee to a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, God led him to an Arabian desert for three years (Gal.1:17-18). What was he doing there? Detoxing.
Undoubtedly, he was allowing years of human religiosity to drain out of his veins. Everything that Paul knew as a zealous Pharisee bled out of him in the desert. Paul was beyond being reformed. He had to have a spiritual lobotomy. And that's what the wilderness is for.
In that wilderness experience, God came to Paul in a way that he had never before known. He came to him in the face of Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:11=12; 2 Cor. 4:6). Although Paul was given his gospel by
divine revelation in the wilderness, that revelation was limited. It took five years of living in the right habitat, in an ekklesia in Antioch, Syria, for him to learn the fullness of Christ.
So Paul got unplugged in the wilderness. He was sovereignly stripped to ground zero. This experience was necessary for Paul's apostolic ministry. Because in order for him to be a dispenser of the new wine, he had to be drained of the old.
Fourth, the wilderness is a symbol of new beginnings.
After their forty-year stay in the wilderness, Joshua led the people of God across the Jordan into the Promised Land. In Hosea's day, God led Israel through the wilderness to woo the nation back to Himself (Hos. 2:14). After Israel had been in exile in Babylon, the prophets spoke of preparing a pathway in the wilderness so that God's people could return home.
John the Baptist marked a new beginning for Israel by introducing
God's people to their long-awaited Messiah in the wilderness. And Paul of Tarsus began his apostolic ministry only after he spent time in an Arabian wilderness.
Fifth, any time spent in the wilderness that exceeds its purpose of spiritual emptying becomes a waste.
There are essentially four ways you can spend your life. You can waste it in Egypt by living for worldly pleasure and material success (all of which are temporal and fleeting). You can waste it in Babylon by living for the growth and success of organized religion. You can waste it in the wilderness by living your life in transition.
Or you can spend it on Jesus Christ in a building site in Jerusalem.
So where are you living today? Egypt? Babylon? The wilderness?
Let me be blunt: You will never rest, and you will never find home until you pitch your tent in the building site that God has chosen for His dwelling place. You will never properly mature as a Christian,you will never fit into any other environment, and you will never find that which matches your inward parts until you take that step.
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