The Wilderness Journey

Did you ever wonder why the children of Israel had to pass through the wilderness before entering the promise land? The Lord took them on a natural journey that we, the church might glean the spiritual principles God would teach us through their experience.

The journey through the wilderness is absolutely, essential to growing in the Lord. It is the process by which God reveals the pride that is in our hearts and the process by which we are humbled before the Lord our God.

The question was asked of Moses, “did the Lord bring us out in the wilderness to die, are there not enough graves in Egypt”? By all appearances, death was eminent, being sandwiched by the pursuing Egyptians and the Red Sea. The natural instinct is to see only the impending disaster, but it is at this very point that God says, “Be still and see the salvation of the Lord”! Death pursued them but life was before them.

To die in Egypt, is to die a slave with the grave being all there was to look forward to. However, the death that the passing through the Red Sea spoke of, was the beginning of a life in God. Passing through the Red Sea on dry land was the end of the life of the Egyptian warrior, the horse and chariot, which depicts mans strength. The death of all the Egyptian, a type of the flesh spoke of, was accomplished at the Red Sea passing, and the remnants of that old nature cannot enter the promised land. The wilderness is a place of temptation, a place of learning to trust God as your total life source, which is true worship unto the Lord. The children of Israel were to go three days journey into the wilderness to worship and sacrifice unto the Lord their God. There is a death to be experienced, it is the death of self sufficiency, as God becomes our life and we truly worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

We must all pass through the Red Sea, which speaks of the blood of Christ and our death in Him. It also speaks of the covenant made with Abraham, when he was yet called Abram and the Lord, as a burning lamp and a smoking furnace, passed through the two halves of the covenant sacrifice while Abram was in a deep sleep. The Lord goes before us and makes a way for us in the sea. In like manner, we see the miracle of God’s own hand of deliverance, in Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and our deliverance from the flesh.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown”. And again he prophesied, “Neither said they, where is the Lord that brought us up out of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt”? The message being conveyed is that no man can pass through the wilderness and live. Certainly no man could survive the wilderness without God to sustain him.

Only in His name can one find water in a barren land and only in His name can one find shelter from the heat and food in a place not sown. It is in His name that there are rivers in the dessert and it blossoms as a rose.

The wilderness is a no “mans land”. It is a harsh environment, where nothing grows that could sustain life. It seems to us strange that God having delivered Israel from Egypt, or the flesh, would immediately take them into a wilderness, to a place not sown? Why not take Israel directly to the promised land, a type of our heavenly destination, because the wilderness is a place where we must realize the Lord God as our total source and provision. It is a place where we are humbled and God is exalted. It is a place where there is no life but the life of God. It is a place where if one desires the fowl of the air and the garlic and leaks of the flesh, they will die the death of the Egyptian. It is a place where we learn that, a life sustained by God is truly life, as we eat of the bread sent down from heaven. It is a place in God between heaven and earth, in which there is mixture, where one must discern between the holy and the profane, a place where our senses are exercised to know good and evil.

The True Bread

The Lord Jesus Christ was the true bread from Heaven. If we eat of him we shall live by him. If we realize our sustenance from this world we will die the death of the world. So it was in the wilderness, when the children of Israel desired flesh to eat, he sent the fowl of the air, and they ate to the full but the result was leanness of soul. The very thing they thought would satisfy, brought death. In like manner, we in this day, must be careful that the things we desire, do not turn out to be of the flesh and not the true manna from heaven. That is why our Lord warned us to “be careful how we hear”. “My words are spirit and they are life”. How we hear, determines what we perceive as our daily bread, or the word of God.

We are to learn that man cannot live by natural bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Jesus Christ was and is the incarnate word of God. He is our daily bread. He is the every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. The Father said, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him.

We seem to hear much of what our Lord said, such as “keep my commandments”, but we fail to hear him say, “I can of myself do nothing”. Our old nature, being sinful, desires law. It is inclined toward outward show, in which the glory is in the performance rather than the performer.

If in this wilderness journey we do not give all glory to God, as the source of our ability to accomplish anything of eternal value, we will and must die there. If by the time we arrive at the promised land, we have not entered into the rest of believing God by understanding that the battle is the Lord’s, even as Israel, our carcasses will fall in the wilderness. The fearful and unbelieving shall not enter into His Sabbath rest. They who will listen and be influenced by the evil report, have seen God’s miracles but have not seen God, and they heard His voice as thunder but have not heard the still small voice that quiets the heart.

The grasshopper mentality of the children of unbelief, when comparing themselves with the giants in the land, was the result of not understanding oneness with God. If we do not believe that by grace through faith we died, by way of the Red Sea, how will we understand the newness of life which causes us to be more than conquerors, through the resurrection life of God. A life by which, even while you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the promises of God are sure and He is more than able to bring to pass, all that he has spoken. Those who’s carcasses fell in the wilderness, did not enter in because of an evil heart of unbelief. They failed the wilderness test. If one has not experienced, through knowing God as their source, the life of the land of milk and honey while in the wilderness, they have a wrong concept of the promised land to begin with. It is a life lived in the power of the Spirit, not a geographic location.

The cross of Christ is a place of entering in through His atoning blood, just as the children of Israel entered in through the Red Sea. They entered in through the type and shadow, we entered in through the fulfillment of the type. They were given the law to fulfill, we were given the fulfillment of the law and by grace, we are delivered.

Both Israel and our Lord, were driven into the wilderness to be tempted. The Lord came out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit. We must come out in the power of His Spirit, which is the resurrection life of God. While in the wilderness we must realize our healing from the serpent’s bite, as we see the symbol of his judgment and defeat on the pole.

We have the scriptural account of Israel’s experience to learn from. Their wilderness journey began with a type of death, our journey began with an actual death. They entered in through the Red Sea, we entered in through the Cross of Christ. The cross speaks of our death in Him and when one passes through the cross, the only life on the other side is the resurrection life of God. The life we once had in the flesh will try to exalt itself by establishing again what Christ came to destroy, but it must die in the wilderness. Surviving the wilderness journey is the result of the grace and mercy of God and believing by faith that what He has promised, He will also bring to pass. Before we cross the Jordan, we will have learned, what it means to follow the Ark of God in the way we have never been before. We will cross over this Jordan as Sons of God who’s purpose it is to cleanse the Heavens of all giants and anything that would exalt itself above the Word of God.

Art Groesbeck