From Egypt to the Wilderness

Introduction
Mt. Sinai
Kadesh
The Wilderness

Introduction

With this post, I begin the second of six legs of a journey through the storyline of the Old Testament. It is important that you understand the story up to this point, so if you have not read the first post, “From Eden to Egypt” please do so first. I pick the story up in the first chapter of the book of Exodus.

Exodus 1:1-14 “These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt. Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them. Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.”

In Exodus 2 a baby is born in Egypt to a Hebrew slave couple. They named him Moses. The king of Egypt was attempting to control the explosive growth of the Hebrews because he feared they might join their enemies and revolt. So he ordered all male Hebrew babies be killed by throwing the baby boys into the Nile. The Egyptian mid-wives who delivered Moses were ‘God-fearers’ and did not kill the baby, but because of the danger to him, three months after he was born, they placed him in a basket and hid him in the reeds of the Nile River and waited to see what would happen to him. Instead of a crocodile eating him, the daughter of Pharaoh found him and decided to make him her son. Moses lived in the palace of Egypt for 40 years. One day saw one of his fellow Israelites being beaten and he killed the Egyptian. Pharaoh found out about it and tried to kill Moses. Moses ran for his life and lived the next 40 years in the dessert tending sheep.

In Exodus 3-4, God came to Moses through a burning bush and told him to head back to Egypt to face the King of Egypt and demand that he let the Hebrews leave Egypt and go to the land of Canaan.

Exodus 5-13 is about the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh through a series of 10 devastating plagues on the nation of Egypt culminating in the 10th plague of the death angel killing the firstborn of all the Egyptians. With Egypt in ruin, the king finally lets the Hebrews leave.

In Exodus 14, Pharaoh changed his mind and went after the Hebrews. God parted the water of the Red Sea to allow the Hebrews safe passage and when the Egyptian army followed he closed the water on them and killed them. Finally free, Moses spent the next 40 years of his life leading the nation of Israel.

Mt. Sinai

Their first stop was Mt. Sinai. This is where God formed them in a nation, giving them their civil, moral and religious laws, including the 10 Commandments; their religious celebrations & sacrificial system, the plans for the Tabernacle and the establishment of the priesthood. If you want to read all or part of the laws and regulations, they are recorded in Exodus 19 through the entire book of Leviticus.

The Israelites stayed at Mt. Sinai for two years. Then it was time for them to leave there and take the Promised Land – a place no descendant of Abraham had stepped foot on for four centuries! The immediate problem was that some pretty nasty people had taken over the land and they would have to be dealt with. There was going to be a fight. So to prepare for it, Moses moved the nation closer to the land in order to spy it out. They traveled to Kadesh, an oasis on the southern edge of the Promised Land and send in some spies to take a ‘look see’.

The story line picks back up again in the book of Numbers.

Kadesh

Numbers 13, “The LORD said to Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.”
“When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, “Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country. See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they un-walled or fortified? How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees on it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.”
So they went up and explored the land…When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs. At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.
They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there.”
Then Caleb (one of the spies) silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

Twelve men had been sent in to do ‘reconnaissance’. It was not a ‘strategic’ mission to find out if they could take it; it was ‘tactical’ mission, to find out how to take it. God had already told them that it was their land and he would give it to them. Ten men came back and said it could not be done. and the net result was a push to return to Egypt! Two said it could be done, Caleb and Joshua. The nation sided with the ten and decided they were going to go back to Egypt; back to slavery!

To put it mildly, God was not happy! Two years earlier he had shown them his power by taking them out of Egypt. He had promised to give them this land. They needed to go to war, but he guaranteed victory.They got scared and demonstrated a complete lack of faith and the consequences were stunning…

Numbers 14:26-35 “The LORD said to Moses and Aaron: “How long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites. So tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you the very things I heard you say: In this desert your bodies will fall — every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me. Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb and Joshua son of Nun. As for your children that you said would be taken as plunder, I will bring them in to enjoy the land you have rejected. But you — your bodies will fall in this desert. Your children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the desert. For forty years — one year for each of the forty days you explored the land — you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.’ They will meet their end in this desert; here they will die.”

The Wilderness

For the next 40 years, the nation of Israel wandered around in the wilderness, as the entire adult population died because of their lack of faith. For four decades this nation knew little else but funerals as the younger generation buried their parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents for one reason: FAITHLESSNESS IN THE FACE OF PROBLEMS THAT GOD HAD PROMISED TO SOLVE FOR THEM. Their problem was not the perceived size of the giants; it was the perceived size of their God! God was insulted at what they thought of him compared to the problems facing them in the Promised Land. He was anxious to show off his power and provision for them, but they wouldn’t give him a chance!

Mark Batterson, writes in his book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.

“According to A.W. Tozer, the most important thing about you is what comes to mind when you think about God. He writes, ‘…the most portentous fact about any person is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, ‘What comes to your mind when you think about God?’ we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that person.’ Most of our problems are not circumstantial. Most of our problems are perceptual. Our biggest problems can be traced back to an inadequate understanding of who God is. Our problems seem really big because our God seems really small. In fact, we reduce God to the size of our biggest problem. Tozer said, ‘a low view of God is the cause of a hundred lesser evils.’ A low view of God and a high view of God are the difference between scaredy-cats and lion chasers. Scaredy-cats are filled with fear because their God is so small. Lion chasers know that their best thought about God on their best day falls infinitely short of how great God really is.”

Every one of us is facing some sort of “giant or insurmountable wall”. How are you looking at it? With a big faith that God is larger, stronger and more than capable of handling it or with a small faith that God is weak and unable or unwilling to come to your aid? Big faith doesn’t mean there won’t be struggles, fights and even some casualties. It may not always turn out as we had hoped, but I can tell you this, God wants his people to give him a chance to ‘show off’ his power and his abilities and it pleases him to no end when we affirm him as the God he is!

Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please God.”

Maybe the biggest demonstration of faith is to tell God that you trust him no matter what; that you will follow him, no matter what; that you will honor him no matter what; that you believe he is ‘good’ no matter what; or that you will stop asking him to get you out of your circumstances and help you get something out of your circumstances.

I know this, in the wilderness over those 40 years; God did provide for the basic needs of his people. He provided them with manna to eat and their clothes didn’t wear out. Those are pretty neat providential miracles from God. I also know this; he saved the big providential miracles for the young people who chose to invade and fight! They saw God work on their behalf and they ended up with the land that flowed with milk and honey! Don’t settle for a ‘faithless’ life – go attack some giants!

Sometime soon, read the story of the spies from Numbers 13-14 and ask God to give you faith like Joshua or a Caleb!