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OLD TRUTH FOR A NEW GENERATION DEUTERONOMY 8 THE WILDERNESS: You can’t Live in It — You Can’t Live Without It In our first look at Deuteronomy 4 we learned that the overarching theme of this book is wrapped up in the words: REMEMBER and BE CAREFUL. We find them paired in the opening two verses of Deuteronomy 8. Deuteronomy 8:1–2 “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. 2 And you shall remember Let’s start with the word REMEMBER. 2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord (YHVH) your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, God did not merely want to jog their memories. Forty years spent traveling through the wilderness is not something you would easily forget. It was pretty much forever etched in their memory banks. But we all have things in our lives we DON’T want to remember — things we’d rather forget. He wants them to recall and think about where He led them the whole way that the Lord (YHVH) your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, God LED them to a place that was totally incapable of sustaining life. No shade from the devastating heat during the day.

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No shelter from the devastating cold at night.

There was nothing but thorns and thirst. There was nothing to eat. God reminds them of HOW uninhabitable it was! Look at verse 15

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15 who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, The water table was incapable of sustaining them. And when rain did come the run off from the heights weren’t refreshing — they were life threatening (Recently 20 children on the east side of the Jordan River were swept away to their death by the waters that flooded down onto the desert floor). We can sum all of that up by saying: YOU CAN’T LIVE IN THE WILDERNESS I’m going to get to the purposes of God in leading His people in the wilderness for 40 years. But I don’t want to pass up the powerful imagery here as it relates to life in our broken world. Israel was in a literal, desert wilderness. But centuries later one of the New Testament letters was written to the descendants of the very people God is speaking to here in Deuteronomy 8. Only they were living — not in a desert wilderness — but in various Greek and Roman cities in the mid first century AD. Yet here’s how the Holy Spirit inspired the author to address them:

Hebrews 3:7–9 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years…. 12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

These people were living in the urban centers of the first century AD yet the author of the letter wanted then to see that they were living in a world that is a spiritual wilderness — a world that is totally incapable of delivering real life! The spiritual water table in our broken world can’t sustain us. The ground water — the things we tap into to deliver our deepest sense of meaning and purpose (what we possess, what we do, your family, relationships, achievements, success and recognition) — they seem great, but they can’t go deep enough. They cannot and will not ever be able to fulfill the deepest thirst of man’s soul.

Psalm 63:1 (NLT) O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.

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The things the world holds out to quench the thirst of your soul either leave you parched or sweep you away like a desert flood. The Bible uses the imagery of the wilderness to describe our broken world to inform us that it is a place of inevitable suffering — but even more than that — it’s a place of inevitable dissatisfaction and a lack of fulfillment. There’s nothing in this world that can deliver the freight of your deepest hopes and joys. We’ll get back to that in a bit. Now to let’s get back to the 3 million plus men and women of Deuteronomy 8 and the very real wilderness they encountered for 40 years. We’ve already noted that: 1. YOU CAN’T LIVE IN THE WILDERNESS (one person can’t live in the wilderness — let alone 3 million men women and children). But here in Deuteronomy 8 we also see that God deliberately led the people He rescued and redeemed from bondage and death in Egypt to teach them (and us) that — 2. YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT THE WILDERNESS Deuteronomy 8:2–4 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. He wanted them to think back on the whole fabric of His dealings with them He wants them to remember — to recall and think about the meaning of those forty years — God’s purposes in those forty years in the wilderness. 2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord (YHVH) your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness,

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The phrase led you means that God directed them to the wilderness and in the wilderness.

2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord (YHVH) your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, THAT Here’s WHY He did that — that he (YHVH) might humble you, Not in the sense of “humiliate”. He led them to and through the place that couldn’t sustain a single life — let alone millions of lives — for 40 years — because in that place they discovered that the same God who rescued them from bondage and death in Egypt was their only hope for life in a place that couldn’t sustain life! The only thing they could do in that place was depend on Him. They had nothing else, and no one else who could sustain them and save them. He also led them into the wilderness for another reason. Deuteronomy 8:2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. There’s something really important for us to think about here. The important thing was not merely the location God led them into. The important thing is where their hearts were while they were in that location. THAT is what God was really concerned about. God got them out of Egypt in a single night — but there was still a lot of Egypt in them. They had no idea what in their hearts as they walked out of Egypt as free men and women. God plunged them in to 40 years of the wilderness to show them what was in their hearts — show them that they were still slaves — still in bondage to their pride; still in bondage to their willfulness; still in bondage to rebellion and unbelief.

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In Psalm 78 we read

Psalm 78:15–19; 40 He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. 16 He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers. 17 Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert. 18 They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved. 19 They spoke against God, saying, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?.... 40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert!

It was there in the wilderness they pretty much said: We’d rather be back in Egypt under the brutality of Pharaoh as slaves with our stomachs full than to be out here with God — who saw our suffering, heard our cries, and delivered us from bondage and death with radical power — parted the Red Sea and destroyed the armies of Pharaoh and gave us water from the rock and manna from heaven! HERE’S THE POINT — The same is true for you and me! You and I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT the wilderness. That location — our unique situations/circumstances in the wilderness of our broken world — is where we discover the location of our affections.

Luke 12:34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The wilderness (the world without God that cannot deliver or sustain life). Our specific location in the wilderness of this world (broken marriage, troubled children, financial crisis, chronic or fatal illness) is the very place God knows we need to be in because that is the very place where he wants to humble us — and show us what our hearts longing. It’s there that we discover we’re not actually longing for and putting our hope in God who rescued and redeemed us — instead we’re actually longing for and putting our hope in a different location. We may be in the exact location God has led us to humble us — and in that location believe that God isn’t enough — or that God owes us something different — and He owes it to us in hurry. WHERE DO YOU FIND YOURSELF TODAY in the landscape of our broken world? The Word of God tells us to remember that where we are is not a mistake. The

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God who led the Israelites those 40 years in the wilderness became man so He could give His life to redeem us — and He is leading us in us into an uninhabitable place because there’s still a lot of Egypt (if-you-would) in all us! Follow me here — Sin has distorted each of us in unique ways. For example, some of us were wrecked by rejection and devastated by criticism, and as a result spend their lives desperately working to be accepted, recognized and loved. Then someone shares the Gospel with you. You hear that you are fully known by God. He knows your every failure and flaw, and yet, He fully loves you. He loves you with a perfect love that you don’t deserve and could never earn. A love so great that He personally paid for every one of your wrong thoughts, actions and words (Isaiah 53). You had been looking for and longing for that kind of love kind — but it was nowhere to be found in the spiritual wasteland of our broken world. The only thing you wanted to do is give your love, your heart and your life to Jesus! Like the Israelites you’re no longer a slave. No longer a slave to the fear of rejection, no longer a slave to living for everyone’s approval. You have a brand identity — You are the adopted child of God. But along the way we all discover that though we are set free from the penalty and power of sin — we can fail to live in and live from that new and true identity. We can still have seasons when we struggle with rejection, or criticism, or failure. And we don’t see it! Without a doubt, you’re saved. Without a doubt you are God’s child. And our heavenly Father does not want His children returning to Egypt. In His perfect love for us God leads us in the wilderness to humble us; show us that we still base so much of our meaning, our identity, our joy and peace, not in what Jesus has done for us; not who God is and how He loves us; not in the promise of the new heavens and the new earth. So He leads us into “the wilderness” so He can humble us — show us that He can sustain us and give us life in this wilderness; to teach us to place our hope in Jesus to shade us and shelter us in the wilderness; and teach us to place our trust in Jesus; be content with Jesus.

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Before I close — I want us to get back to how the Bible uses the powerful imagery of the literal wilderness the Israelites lived in for 40 years to describe the broken world we live in. When God created the world — He didn’t create it a wilderness; right? He created a garden. He didn’t make the world the spiritual wilderness that it is. Sin made the world the wilderness it is. Sin made it the place described in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth — “Each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face …” The Bible is the record of God’s glorious plan of redemption moving from Creation to the Fall, to Redemption and the ultimate consummation of redemption with a new heaven and new earth. Like I noted earlier — just as the physical wilderness doesn’t have the ecosystem to sustain life — even the most sophisticated, cosmopolitan cities and the most luxurious, beautiful spots on the planet are a spiritual wasteland. Just how desperate are men and women — where will they look to find life in this wilderness? In June of 2007 (June 14) a guy named David Brooks wrote an article in the New York Times titled: “The National Pastime.” It was about parents going to websites where they could obtain genetic material in order to incorporate it into their future child(ren).

“At this very moment thousands of people are surfing the web, looking for genetic material for their future children. Shoppers can use these websites and select much better genetic material than would be possessed by someone they could realistically lure into bed, and they can more efficiently engage in our great national pastime, arranging our children’s lives so they’ll be turbocharged for success. People under 5-foot-9, I’ve discovered, can’t even donate sperm to these banks, nor is brain power neglected. An ad in the Harvard Crimson offered $50,000 for an egg from a Harvard woman. A recent ad in the Chicago Maroon at the University of Chicago offered $35,000 for a Chicago egg from a Chicago

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woman and stipulated, ‘You must be very healthy, very intelligent, very attractive, and most of all very happy.’

The article cites a Harris Poll which suggested that more than 40 percent of all Americans would use genetic engineering to upgrade their children mentally and physically. WHY? Because they truly believe you can actually live in this wilderness — actually derive the deepest sense of identity and meaning in this wilderness world if you are smart and/or beautiful! David Brooks says, “Here is the problem: What if it’s experience more than nature that creates greatness? The people who do this pay no heed to the fact that mediocre looks have always been a great spur to creative achievement and outright ugliness is the mother of genius.” He continued “If you look at the biographies of world historical figures, you’re struck by how many of them had their parents die when they were about 12. If that’s what a child needs for greatness, how many super-concerned moms and dads are going to put that in their date book? ‘Die sometime this year. That’s what my kid needs.’ ” NO! It’s not genetics you need for life! It’s the wilderness. We can’t live in the spiritual wilderness — but we can’t live without it because without wilderness we never meet God; we never know God. Yet men and women are doing everything in their power to eliminate, run from or ignore the very place where they encounter God — who alone can supply the LIFE they’re actually longing for — the LIFE they truly need. There’s no shortage of men and women who refuse to believe in Jesus because they think God doesn’t care that their suffering in the wilderness or isn’t able to save them from it. If that’s you — or if you know someone who takes that position — you need to tell them that the Gospel is the record of how God actually joined us in the wilderness. The Gospel tells us that God left heaven and plunged into this wilderness to put break the power of sin and death that created this wilderness. HERE’S THE GREAT NEWS — In the Bible we see time and again that God meets men and women in the wilderness. It is in the wilderness where they have their life changing, life giving encounters with God. Jacob (the progenitor of the twelve

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tribes of Israel) had two great encounters with God in the wilderness (he saw the ladder on which angels ascended and descended and the night he wrestled with God). Moses has his two great encounters with God (the burning bush and on Mount Sinai) in the desert wilderness. A woman named Hagar met God in the desert. The nation of Israel witnessed God at Mount Sinai, where they’re were given the law and essentially became the covenant people of God. The greatest of the Old Testament prophets — Elijah — met God in the wilderness. When John the Baptist began to prepare the people to meet the Messiah he went out into the wilderness to preach and minister. In order to even hear John introduce the coming of Jesus you had to go into the wilderness. We find all of those wilderness encounters in the Bible because God wants to make the point and drive it home! The wilderness is something that you can’t live in, and yet without the wilderness we never meet God. I really am going to close now — by circling back to the way Christians (as individuals and as a community of believers) live in this wilderness. Look at 2 Corinthians 6:10

2 Corinthians 6:10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

Paul was talking about himself and the Christians that accompanied him as he went everywhere proclaiming the Gospel and planting churches. Notice what Paul doesn’t say about himself and those he served with. He doesn’t say, “Sometimes we’re sorrowful. Sometimes we’re rejoicing. Paul doesn’t say that. He says as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Sorrowful and rejoicing are both in the present tense

The verb tense where the writer portrays an action in process or a state of being with no assessment of the action’s completion1

1 Heiser, M. S., & Setterholm, V. M. (2013; 2013). Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology. Lexham Press.

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How can a community of believers always be weeping, and always rejoicing? Most churches tend to be one or the other. They tend to be either hyper or hypo, pumped up or dreadfully heavy and serious. As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing exists every single week in a local church. There’s is someone whose marriage is broken. There are parents whose children are going off the rails. There are people facing some kind of financial problem — facing some kind of terrible disease — maybe actually facing death or the death of a loved one. Yet at the very same time there are people who have just fallen in love, just had a healthy baby, just discovered they got the promotion at work, just got accepted to college. The church is really the church when believers are so sure that God is with us in all of it, so dependent upon Him in all of it that someone who’s sorrowful could walk into Metro when we gather like this, they should be able to say, These people understand. If somebody who’s celebrating walks into Metro when we gather like this, they shouldn’t feel pulled down and deflated — instead they’re lifted up because they can see that as a community of believers we have discovered real life and real joy in the middle of this wilderness — and that life and that joy has a name: JESUS!! In Psalm 139 we’re told that there is NOTHING that God doesn’t know about us. Yet He loves us and is with us — wherever we are. That’s why the psalmist could say Search me O God and know my heart. That’s why we can bear to let God lead us into the wilderness — humble us — show us what’s in our hearts. NONE OF US are begging for the Wilderness. Picture it as a Freeway Exit. Have you ever seen the traffic on a the only freeway exit to a stadium or arena before a huge game — or a massive, sold-out concert?

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This is the one and only way to Gillette Stadium for in Foxborough, Mass. Where the New England Patriots play. It’s backed up because there are 66,829 people who WANT to watch the Patriots play — paid big money to watch them play. They KNOW they’re going to deal with the traffic but they’re willing to endure it for the anticipated joy of watching the game. Imagine what it would look like if there was a freeway exit said,

”The Great and Terrifying Wilderness” fiery serpents and scorpions; thirsty ground; no water

There’s no traffic jam on that exit because no one buys season tickets for the event that humbles them — no one pays money to see what’s really in their own heart. But here’s the deal — God LEADS us into the wilderness. We see the exit sign that says ”The Great and Terrifying Wilderness” and we change lanes to make sure we aren’t in the “exit only lane”. You see — we are blind to our need to be humbled. We are blind to what’s in our hearts that is hurtful.

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But here’s the deal — Yahweh — who redeemed Israel from death and bondage in Egypt led Israel into the wilderness for those 40 years became a man so He could redeem us from the power and penalty of sin. Jesus is the good shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep. He is the shepherd of our souls who knows when He needs to lead us into the wilderness. So, He puts out the traffic cones that close down all the lanes until we’re in the “exit only” lane Sometimes He might give us an advance warning — like those signs that say “lanes closed ahead — alternate route”. But He does lead us into the wilderness. We should be so secure in what He has revealed to us about His perfect love and infinite wisdom — (He’s revealed Himself in Deuteronomy 8 so we can know WHERE and WHY) — that we can say

SEARCH ME O GOD AND KNOW MY HEART TRY ME AND KNOW MY THOUGHT SEE IF THERE IS ANY GREVIOUS WAY IN ME KEEP ME IN THE WAY EVERLASTING