Sept 2021: Is Your Christian Life Unsettled, Unpredictable, Inconvenient? Remember How Israel Wandered and Camped! Jesus, the Son of God and Our King and Savior... Is Not Our Travel Agent. He is Our Shepherd and We Are His Humans Become Sheep, Not His Customers. He Determines When To Move Us To New Pasture. And Through Our Periodic Undignified Shearing (persecutions), and Through Our Wool Sharing (evangelism), Others Learn How To Clothe Themselves Also!
Parts of the Sinai are very bleak, though beautiful. Not many nations would have contested the land with sojourning Israel. Not prime land for living, in most respects. Maybe that is why God chose it as a place for a refugee band of Israelite slaves to become an obedient nation.
If you go to the Book of Numbers, chapter 9, verse 15, you find the following:
15 On the day the tabernacle, the tent of the covenant law, was set up, the cloud covered it. From evening till morning the cloud above the tabernacle looked like fire. 16 That is how it continued to be; the cloud covered it, and at night it looked like fire.17 Whenever the cloud lifted from above the tent, the Israelites set out; wherever the cloud settled, the Israelites encamped.18 At the Lord’s command the Israelites set out, and at his command they encamped. As long as the cloud stayed over the tabernacle, they remained in camp. 19 When the cloud remained over the tabernacle a long time, the Israelites obeyed the Lord’s order and did not set out. 20 Sometimes the cloud was over the tabernacle only a few days; at the Lord’s command they would encamp, and then at his command they would set out.21 Sometimes the cloud stayed only from evening till morning, and when it lifted in the morning, they set out. Whether by day or by night, whenever the cloud lifted, they set out. 22 Whether the cloud stayed over the tabernacle for two days or a month or a year, the Israelites would remain in camp and not set out; but when it lifted, they would set out. 23 At the Lord’s command they encamped, and at the Lord’s command they set out. They obeyed the Lord’s order, in accordance with his command through Moses.
Unquote
So, could they depend on the duration of their stay? No.
Could they depend on their next location? No.
Did they get advanced warning that it was going to be time to depart again? No.
If they were tired of their present location, could they choose a new one? No.
Did they move from one dream location to another? No. It was the barren Sinai Desert. Beautiful in some ways, but barren. Even in the ancient days it was spoken of as a dry empty land. It was a big deal for them whenever Israel encountered an oasis. That's one way that we can know that it was much the same in their days as it is in ours. They complained at times to Moses, grumbling about their great thirst. Sometimes God drove them to the limits of their thirst before miraculously supplying them with needed water. At one point in time a certain rock was struck with a staff at God's command and that rock cracked open and water began to pour out. There had seemed to be no hope, but with God there is never a situation He cannot deal with as He wishes, I believe. There was no real food supply there in the Sinai Peninsula for a group of well over 1 million wandering campers...no real supply of natural food, that is to say...but then Manna began to reliably fall from the sky six days a week. The Israelites came to know that they could depend upon it though it was not a fancy, exciting tasting food. It tasted like flakes of bread with a slight honey taste, the scripture says. It looked like Coriander Seed, the scripture says. Honey would become a symbol of the Holy Spirit at certain times. 'Ingesting Bread' would a metaphor for consuming God's Word at certain times...a metaphor adopted (originated?) even by Jesus! So it is as if they consumed both the Word of God and the Holy Spirit as they wandered and camped.
For 40 years (to the exact day) they wandered as a group. Miraculously their shoes and clothing did not wear out during all of this time, scripture tells us. By then, all of the original Israelites had died off except Caleb and Joshua, the only two of the 12 spies who, about 40 years before that time when they had just recently fled Egypt, had come back with the other 10 spies from spying out the land we presently call Israel with the report that it was a good land and despite the seeming mightiness of its occupiers it was a land which could be taken because God would be with them.
But the Israelite people had quaked at the report of the other 10 spies who said that the occupying peoples were too formidable, and that they should not listen to God's command to militarily seize that promised land...a land that it says in the Bible was promised even hundreds of years before by God to these descendants of Israel now escaped from Egypt. So, God placed them in Spiritual Bootcamp as a nation. And other nations surrounding the Sinai came to know of a nation that lived by the hundreds of thousands out in the desolate wastes where no one could possibly survive in those numbers. They were being used as a marvelous work and a wonder to the eyes of the surrounding fallen away peoples. The celebrated Balaam could not curse them, even when he was enticed to do that very thing. By the time they exited the Sinai the people Jericho trembled at the thought of facing them. Those Canaanite and Philistine and other occupying nations were descendants of Noah, about 1000 years before. But they or their ancestors had quit believing in the Living God that Noah had trusted in. They had invented false religions and taken up habits that were sinful and highly offensive to their Maker. He had given them many chances. In fact, they were getting their last 40 years' worth of chances to see what amazing things were done on behalf of the Israelites by their mighty God. But they almost totally ignored those chances to turn to the Living God of the Israelites.
So...is your Christian life shaky at times? Do you feel led off into a confusing wilderness at times?
Have you noticed though that at the last moment (if not before) God provides a way, some way, to bring us out of tough situations into the next unpredictable situation? Out of the frying pan into the fire, is it? No. That's not quite it at all. But out of one situation that we do not control into another situation that we do not control, on a trip that God has planned out, yet He does not share many details of the trip that He has planned for us. But He does walk it with us. God is in charge coming in and going out. God is with us coming in and going out. And so, we trust in God the Father while eating the Bread of Life (Jesus/the Word) and drinking the Living Water (following the leading of the Holy Spirit.) And we camp. And we keep a clean campsite (we are supposed to!). And when we depart, we leave our campsite better than when we found it.