top of page

The Reason for the Desert - The Provision

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord . Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Deuteronomy 8:3‭-‬4 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/deu.8.3-4.NIVUK Now, this provision was nothing short of miraculous. Let's not even consider anything less than that. There is no natural explanation that can account for the provision of food, water and clothing in the desert for a million people. This is completely out of the ordinary. There are three parts to it. Firstly, God caused them to hunger. How? By removing them from their principle source of sustenance - slavery in Egypt - and by moving them into a position where they could not sustain themselves - the desert. Secondly, God fed them with manna - a new miracle - the provision of food where they could not expect it and in a way they did not expect. Thirdly, God made what they possessed sufficient for the journey. This itself would have been a real miracle. Think about it: the desert is not a kind place for anything, least of all your feet! But why did He do this? Note what the verses say: "He humbled you, causing you to hunger..." Note: the text says 'humbled', not 'humiliated'. God removed their means of supporting themselves to make them realise who it was who was really providing for them. This is often needed. We can so easily become proud of our career and our achievements, like other Bible figures did. Three good examples are the builders of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:4), King Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4: 29-30) and King Herod (Acts 12: 21-22). On every occasion without fail, pride in their own achievements led to rebellion against God because they were not thankful to the One who helped them achieve. In every situation, they thwarted God's purposes and tried to dethrone Him. And look at how it ended for them! Surely a desert experience is an act of grace in comparison! That's not to say that it isn't painful. Of course it is! The removal of our means of support will always hurt. However, this painful surgery is an act of grace that is always for our good, even if we really don't appreciate it at the time. I experienced a time when God completely removed me from my support structures and placed me in an incredibly difficult position. When I was eighteen, I went on a mission trip to Romania. Now, I had been a bit of a home boy. My parents had never had the financial wherewithall to take us abroad on holiday. This was before the days of cheap flights. Travelling abroad was beyond our means. I was quite good at schoolboy French but knew no Romanian. I was a student, but living at home. I know what you're thinking: "Why on earth did you go all the way to Romania?" Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time! It turned out that the trip was badly organised. The student leader we were due to meet in Bucharest, who would be our interpreter, wasn't available. However, our Scottish team leader came up with the idea of heading to the main railway station, Gara de Nord, and then finding somewhere cheap to stay from there. Now, anyone who has ever tried to find somewhere cheap to stay near to a European train station, especially an Eastern European train station, will be listening to this with their head in their hands. Such places are not the most... well... you get the idea. While he hunted round the side streets for somewhere to stay, knowing no Romanian at all and relying on a phrasebook, the rest of us sat on the steps of the Gara de Nord. Now, in most Eastern European countries, heating and hot water were provided to the huge grey apartment blocks by centralised heating systems, meaning that the cities are criss-crossed by huge pipes full of hot water. Homeless children use these heating pipes as refuge in the winter. We sat there on the steps, baking in forty degree heat, choking in the dust and pollution of the busy streets around the station, watching as homeless children, wearing torn clothes and covered with grime, climbed out from under a heating pipe and sniffed solvents to make their dire life more bearable. As my eyes drunk in the awful spectacle in front of me, my heart sank and I only had one thought: "Well, Paul, you are definitely not in Scotland now." Culture shock like that is a desert experience. Shorn of the familiar and the structures we are used to, we find ourselves struggling to find ways to re-establish ourselves. Throw in language learning - which returns you back to being like a baby - and we are in a situation in which we feel like we are in a desert. This doesn't just happen on the mission field. It also happens when we start a new job or change schools or move on to University. It's far more common place than we might think. Learning to live a new way can also happen with a bereavement or a relationship breakdown or any number of common human experiences. Desert experiences happen to us all. But God does not leave us there. The verse continues: "...feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known". God moved Heaven and Earth to supply food for His people. The manna forced the Israelites to literally rely on God for their daily bread - with the exception of the day before the Sabbath, they only ever received enough for one day. And this was a new work of God. It was something different. The manna was "new every morning", just like God's mercies when we are in the hardest of times (Lamentations 3:22-24). God was asking for a different kind of faith from His people. He didn't want them to trust their own skills or abilities to earn an income. He didn't want them to trust to a monthly salary or to savings. No, He wanted them to trust Him anew each day. This can be an extraordinarily tough lesson to learn. When we are down and we have lost our means of support, trusting God each new day stretches us beyond belief. Yet this is what He wants us to do. He wants us to stop stressing about the future and to entrust each day to Him. God had, however, already given the Israelites the means to survive in the desert. He had already invested in them the wherewithall to make it safely to the other side. "Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years." Imagine! Their obedience at times was torn to shreds and their faith was worn, but their clothes and feet were not! What an incredible act of grace! Moses himself got to experience this right from the very day God called him to take his nation into the desert. Exodus 3 and 4 contains a tremendous debate between God and Moses, with Moses seemingly trying to persuade God not to send him. We might be tempted to judge him negatively because of this. However, we need to remember that Moses was eighty years old, was on the run for murder and was being asked to stare down the world's biggest superpower and deliver a million people through the desert! Any volunteers? No? I thought not! Yet when Moses asked God how he could prove his divine commission to his fellow Israelites, God asked him a simple question, "What is that in your hand?" (Exodus 4:2). God didn't ask him to do a twenty slide PowerPoint presentation or show them a nicely edited video clip or any other of the trappings and distractions of modern life. They hadn't been invented yet! God wanted Moses to use what he had in his hand right there and then, which was... a big stick! Yet this is not at all unusual. God has a pattern throughout Scripture of using people when their lack of experience or resources caused either them or other people to be completely intimidated by their situation. He told Gideon to "go in the strength you have" to fight the Midianites when Gideon thought he didn't have any (Judges 6:14-15). When the entire Israelite army was in full panic mode, scared witless by the Philistines, it was a shepherd boy with some stones and a sling who delivered them (1 Samuel 11). And the entire world, cowed into submission by the onslaught of sin, is saved by a Saviour who came as a baby! This is so established as God's working pattern that it is even commented on in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 1:27‭-‬29). Remember how Deuteronomy 8:3 starts: "He humbled you". Every desert experience has this facet. Every desert experience humbles us. All boasting about who we are, what we've done and out status in life is completely done and over with. God does this deliberately to teach us to rely on Him. And when we do so, we learn that we already have all we need because He is always enough. So what can we learn from this? Firstly, when we are forced to go through a desert experience, God knows and is fully in control. Secondly, that He will provide for us. Thirdly, that He has already given us the resources we need to make it to the other side and He will make sure these are enough. The verses here are echoed in some of Jesus' most famous teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25‭-‬34). God has a purpose in every desert experience. He will provide for us, making sure that we are able to make it to the other side of the desert. Every desert experience is given to us to prepare us for the Promised Land on the other side. How He carries out THE PREPARATION comes in the rest of verse 3 and verse 5.


Comments


Thanks for submitting!

bottom of page