The Reason for the Desert - The Purpose

Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. Deuteronomy 8:1‭-‬2 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/deu.8.1-2.NIVUK God's purpose was to prepare the Israelites for their next phase - life in the Promised Land - and to ensure that they obeyed Him there. In 1992, I was good at French. Then I was assigned a teacher who was more bothered with getting pupils who were good at the language to do her job and teach those who were not good than actually teach us more. What happened? I dropped French. In 1998, I was in Romania, working extremely hard in a three month long training programme to learn the language. It was getting the better of me until I realised one thing: Romanian is a Latin language. So is French. The grammar is similar. I could apply the same methods I used to learn French to learning Romanian. So what happened? I got to grips with the language and learned it better. In 2019 my work contract came to an end. Do you know what kept us going as a family? I was paid to translate and interpret Romanian into English. In 1991, my English teacher taught us the structure of a discursive essay and made us use it again and again and again. It irritated me. I'd always thought English was a creative subject, yet here I was, churning essay after essay after essay in exactly the same way. How boring! In 1996, I was asked to prepare my first sermon at short notice for a small Baptist church in Cernavoda, Romania. I used that same structure for a discursive essay that I'd learned five years earlier. If we understood just how useful the things we were taught in school would be later on in life then we'd all pay closer attention, right? But what if God is doing that to us right now? What if God is teaching us things in the darkness of pain and suffering that He wants us to use in the light? That's exactly what He was doing with the Israelites. Yes, if you journey on foot like they did from Egypt to The Promised Land, then you have no choice: you have to pass through the desert. However, you don't have to stay there. God had clearly intended the Exodus experience to teach them of His might in the crossing of the Red Sea and the defeat of the Egyptians, His love for them in providing them with manna and His guidance as He led them by the pillar of cloud and fire. He wanted them to obey so that His people would be a shining example of His glory; that they would live life the right way. But what happened? They were too focused on what they had left behind. They were all slaves, but some of them would have had good jobs, high up positions, careers with benefits and prospects. Moses' mother was herself a wet nurse for Pharoah's daughter (Exodus 2:7-8). Others were midwives (Exodus 1:15-19). They just had no freedom. Now they had the freedom, but had lost their comfort, their benefits and their prospects. This would have been the cause of their constant and unrelenting grumbling and moaning. And it was this that lost them the Promised Land. There is a key lesson in this for us. Where is our focus? Is it on the things we have lost? Is it on the things we have sacrificed? Is it on the things we've had to leave behind? Or is it on now: what God is teaching us now? The groaning and grumping Moses had to endure reached a rather stunning climax when God barred them from entry into the Promised Land and sent them back into the desert until an entire generation - with the exception of just two men - died out in the Sinai sands. Listen to these dreadful words: The Lord replied, ‘I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, not one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times – not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. No-one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. Numbers 14:20‭-‬23 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/num.14.20-23.NIVUK And again: The Lord ’s anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone. Numbers 32:13 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/num.32.13.NIVUK Does this not add extra meaning to verse 2? Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. Deuteronomy 8:2 NIVUK https://bible.com/bible/113/deu.8.2.NIVUK So what was the result of this test? Here is the stunning part: a whole generation failed it. A whole generation lost its place in God's people because it failed miserably to learn the lessons God was trying to teach it - lessons we will look at later on. Maybe when we are faced with a desert experience, we ought not to ask 'Why?' or 'Why me?', but 'What, Lord? What are you trying to teach me?' When I sat my fifth year exams at high school, my grades were not enough to get me into the university course I wanted. I had to re-sit Maths and Physics. I had passed, just not by enough. So I resat them, consolidating what I already knew and learning what I didn't until I improved my grades. It wasn't easy. It was actually a little humiliating, sitting in class with kids a year younger than me, but it worked. Years later, God made me resit another test. I was made redundant and I got another job. However, it happened very fast and, to be honest, I kept comparing the new job with the old one, which was a bad idea as they were quite different. I ended up leaving to a third job, where I made the same mistake again. That contract ended. So God drove me into a desert - a four month long desert - until I stopped comparing what He was giving me now to what He had given me in the past. Then a new job arrived, and I was grateful for what He has given me instead of wistful for the past. We always talk about getting things 'first time right'. This can keep us from a whole heap of pain, but particularly when it comes to the lessons God is trying to teach us. So maybe it's time we asked the question: 'What are you trying to teach me, Lord?'. God sent the Israelites through the desert to prepare them for the Promised Land. Until we draw our last breath, there is always something else to look forward to. God is always preparing us for a new phase, a new stage in life. The problem is: are we listening? Are we learning? Or are we too busy complaining? So we have seen that in every desert experience there is a purpose, and that purpose is to prepare us for what God has for us next. We might not see it. We might not know what it is. But there is always something next. The next aspect of the Israelites' desert experience, and ours, is THE PROVISION.

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