Do you have relatives back perhaps one or two generations ago who came from a different country? Italy, Latin America or the Caribbean, France, Germany, Sweden? I had relatives from Wales move to America and relatives from Sweden move to America. Somehow, both ended up in Kentucky. The paternal branch (who were moonshiners) moved to Oklahoma while the maternal branch (who might have also been moonshiners) stayed in Kentucky. Both branches moved to Kansas at about the same time, just after the Dust Bowl. It was there where my father met my mother after WWII.

My wife and son moved to our current home in 1998 mainly because God called us to a ministry here, but also because we wanted to live where there was more snow. How did you get to where you currently live? What unique series of events got you right here to this place in the country – and to the people you call friends?

The people of Israel entered Egypt around 1876 BC with less than 100 people in the families of the twelve sons of Israel. They were invited in by Pharaoh, and lived in a beautiful area of the Nile delta called Beulah. They lived in Egypt for 400 years and grew to be a great nation of people over 2 million strong. I’m sure they wondered how they came to live in that land. They were worshipping idols and false gods and had all but forgotten God’s covenant with Abraham. In fact – a Pharaoh came into power who had forgotten Joseph, one of Israel’s sons, who had done so much for Egypt, and this Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites and imposed harsh labor upon them.

I’m certain they began to wonder how they got to that place. I’m sure they dreamed of a better life in a wonderful land. They had forgotten God’s promise, but God had not forgotten.

Looking back from our vantage point in history, we know why they’re there: a famine threatened them, but God rescued them and sent them to Egypt. We know they’re descendants of Abraham – even if they don’t know it. We know they were chosen to be instruments used by God to sort out the moral mess humanity had gotten itself into, to attract others into the community of Israel. We know they become enslaved – then freed by God through Moses.

Looking forward a few weeks in our 10,000 fly-over of the biblical narrative we know that these chosen people will be given laws to help them conduct themselves properly, guidelines for copying God’s own behavior patterns in their corporate life together – laws found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. We’ll find out more about God’s promises to them to prosper them as long as they stay connected to Him and Him alone.

Right now – we’re looking at their 40-year wandering in the wilderness of the Arabian peninsula – a journey that should have taken them several days ended up taking them 40 years. Through this entire exodus story (exodus means “exit”) we can see God’s hand of rescue and salvation. God could have called upon an army of angels to fight for the Israelites; He could have organized the great armies of the north in the Fertile Crescent and brought them down to attack the Egyptians and free the Israelites. Instead, God calls one man – Moses – and uses him as His agent to lead the people to freedom.

Through Moses and his brother Aaron, God sends 10 plagues upon the Egyptians to force them to let the Israelite people go free. The last plague was called the “Passover,” when the angel of death moved throughout the land of Egypt and snuffed out the life of every firstborn of both humans and animals. The only escape – faith in God exhibited by the painting of the blood of an innocent lamb upon the doorposts and the lintel of your home. When the angel of death came to your home, he would pass over your home. The Israelites were told to eat their meal in haste and be packed up and ready to go, because this last plague would be the one that would finally release them, but they would have to leave fast and hurry for their lives.

Moses leads the people to the edge of the Red Sea. They look behind them and notice that Pharaoh’s chariots – in other words, the mobile infantry – were bearing down on them. Pharaoh’s son had died in the Passover – and he was out for revenge.

Take a look at Exodus 14:10-16.

Oh, the grumbling. They’d seen the 10 plagues and had even lived through the Passover of the Angel of Death. They’d seen God at work – 2 million people leaving Egypt as free people, but they’re grumbling and complaining. God saves them – again and again. Complaining, grumbling people that they were – God still saved them – but not without a little bit of irritation. The people did what you’d expect – they fell in line: “And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.” (Exodus 14:31.) Well – they fell in line for awhile.

They marched on for three days, but hadn’t found any water yet. When they finally found water, the water was bitter to drink. So what did the people do? They did exactly what you and I would do – they complained! “What are we to drink?” God made the water taste sweet and fresh.

They moved on – they were about 45 days into their journey and they found reason to grumble again. “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Exodus 16:3) God saved them again – and rained down manna – a breadlike substance more like graham crackers and sent thousands of quail into the camp – enough so that every man, woman, and child could get their fill.

Still later, they were thirsty again so they grumbled again: “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” (Exodus 17:3) God rescued them again – and provided water miraculously from out of a rock.

The people grumbled and complained – but God saved them at every turn. He made them victorious over the Amalekites when they attacked. As they traveled, God gave them a cloud to shield them from the sun every day, and He gave them a pillar of fire to guide them or keep the safe by night. How do you ever lose sight of God when there’s the cloud by day – the pillar of fire by night – each morning there’s fresh bread just outside your door, quail fly into your hands when you need meat, and water gushes from rocks when you’re thirsty. Who would ever grumble after that?

Human beings – that’s who. Humans keep up with the Joneses. Humans created a trillion dollar fashion industry based on our desire to look like or better than one another. We’ve created the disposable society: “planned obsolescence” means we lease cars so we can trade them in for a brand new car at the end of the lease; we can build new houses when we’re tired of the old one; we can throw things away and buy new almost cheaper than we can repair something. We get bored, discontented, and always want bigger and better. Worse – we want what we want and we want it now.

The people march to Mount Sinai where God give Moses the Law – codes to help show the people how to live to advertise God to the world and to show how to be connected to a Holy God. (We’ll get into the Law in the next blog.) On one of the visits on Mount Sinai when Moses had gone up to visit with God, when he came back to the camp, the people, who were without Moses’ leadership for a period of time – had fashioned a golden calf and had returned to worshipping idols.

Who does that? People.

A guy loses huge weight on P90-X – and a year later is back out of shape and overweight. A celebrity goes to rehab to get off of drugs and alcohol, and within 24 hours of being released is drunk and doped up again in a night club. A criminal always returns to the scene of the crime – that’s why police film or take photos of the crowds at a major crime scene. There’s a Proverb that says: “A dog always returns to his own vomit.” Our human nature tells us to go back to behavior we’re most comfortable with.

As soon as Moses was absent, the Israelites flipped right over and went back to their idol worshipping days. Soon after that, the people are led by God right up to the borders of the Promised Land. Guess what? Yep - it wasn’t good enough.

Read Numbers 13:21-14:40.

Moses makes quite an argument to God to spare the people, and God relents and spares them – long story short: God never changes – His character always stays the same and His promises are always kept – but, a righteous person can reason with God and get Him to reconsider His judgment or His decisions on our behalf. . . that’s the sign of a God who is interested in us and willing to interact personally with us!

They whined and complained - so God judged them and sent them wandering – spending long, hot, dry, weary, sweaty years walking, camping, herding sheep and goats and cattle, setting up tents, picking up Manna every morning. Manna, water, quail, sheep – manna, water, quail, sheep – manna, water, quail sheep.

Wait. . . manna, quail, water, sheep – God kept on providing all their basic needs. The people sinned – God judged – and then God showed mercy and grace. Sin–Judgment–Grace. . . all a part of God’s character and will. God dealt harshly with the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. That’s for sure. If you simply read the story of the Exodus without stopping to think about it you might see this as a truly angry God being mean to people. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sure, there were times when God would give the people – or an individual – serious illnesses like a plague or leprosy just because they had acted selfishly or faithlessly. There were times when God opened up the earth under a family or clan tent or campsite and swallowed people up into the earth. There were a couple of occasions when God was ready to chuck the whole group and start over, but Moses talked Him out of it. The Covenant of Divine Obligation was fresh: follow me and me alone, and I’ll be your God; mess up, and I’ll get you good.

We must remember that humanity walked away from God. God pursued us in love and mercy and forgiveness – but He had stipulations: you have to obey me. Humanity continued to do stupid things, so God had to dole out severe punishment – and at first, the punishment had to be spectacular and in-your-face and seen by everyone. Whine about the difficulty of taking the Promised Land? Wanna go back to Egypt? Fine – wander in the wilderness until you faithless ones die off and your faithful children grow up! You don’t deserve the Promised Land! God was forming His people.

In my life I’ve gone to dozens of “group-building” exercises or retreats. Throw a ball around the circle as you learn everyone’s names. Do a personal collage on “Who I Am.” Do a group collage on “Who I Am in the Group.” Do some role-playing. Go on scavenger hunts as a small group to work together. Go off and meditate on my own and keep a journal – and that was just the MORNING activities. Have you ever been to one of those? There are high and low rope courses – where you have to work as a group to accomplish these obstacles or challenges. It forces you to work together and think as one. Our military do survival training together. They might get dropped in the desert with nothing but a rusted nail and they have to learn to survive. What they learn is personal accountability; how to work together; how to make contributions to the common good; how to look out for others.

God used the wilderness wanderings to knock some rough edges off of a rebellious, lazy, faithless people – to get them ready to for greater challenges – all of which was to make them into a people who knew their purpose: to bless the nations of the world and to fold the non-Jew into their community so that everyone might find the God who loves all of humanity. They never really learned these lessons very well. God knew that would happen. These wanderings gave them a major project on which to work to help them learn.

There are three big lessons we can learn from their wanderings in the wilderness.

1. We have to pay the consequences of our sin.

God will forgive us anything. He longs to love us and be in a love relationship with us – no matter how irritating we act. Just look at how He kept rescuing and forgiving and restoring the Israelites – and they were living in the age of the Old Covenant and the Law. . . while we live in the age of God’s immense grace given to us in Christ. When they messed up, they were messing with their entry into eternity. There was a lot riding on this. It was almost like God was saying “keep the law – or keep on walking.” Not with us! When we mess up – God is right there, loving us, ready to forgive, wanting to make us into a better person. They were judged on their ability to keep laws and pay for their mistakes. We’re judged on our ability to have faith in who Jesus is and what Jesus did for us.

Either way – the lesson we learn is that we have to pay the consequences for our sin. Back then – if you murdered someone, you were cut off from God, and you were put to death for your crime. Now if you kill someone, you ask for forgiveness, God forgives you, even thought you may still get put to death for your crime. Forgiveness and paying the consequences are two different things.

Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer. His crimes were heinous – unspeakable. He was sent to prison for the rest of his life, where, we’re told, Dahmer came to faith in Christ. Jeffrey Dahmer – serial killer – was later murdered in prison by other inmates – but if he truly accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, then we’ll see Jeffery Dahmer in heaven. Just because he found Jesus didn’t mean he got to walk out of prison – it just means he gets to walk into eternity in heaven.

If you have unprotected sex with someone and contract HIV – you can be forgiven for sin, but you will still have the HIV-AIDS virus. If you lie about something – you can be forgiven – but you will have to deal with the fall-out from your lie. If you cheat in your marriage, you can be forgiven, but you may have to deal with lawsuits, divorce, damaged relationships, and a lifetime of mistrust.

The Apostle Paul addressed this – because some people in the early church viewed this as some kind of license to do anything they wanted because they were just going to ask to be forgiven. They were getting into the mindset of “Hey, live it up – and ask for forgiveness.”

Romans 6:1-2 tells us, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” In the new covenant we are to be striving to be more and more like Christ. We don’t continue in our sin so we can receive more grace; we’re not hooked to that slavery to sin any longer! When we come to faith in God, we may not have eternal consequences to pay, but we still have earthly consequences to pay – and they sometimes are horribly difficult to bear.

2. The second thing we learn is that other people suffer for our sins.

Back then, the entire nation of Israel had to wander for 40 years. That included Moses, Aaron the priest, Joshua the general, and Caleb, Joshua’s fellow spy scouting out the Promised Land. Back then, when a father rebelled against God, the whole family or clan got swallowed up in an earthquake. The same kinds of things happen to followers of Christ. You rob a store – your family is in the news, embarrassed, living with the ridicule, they might even lose their home, savings, and their job.

If you break the law, your family will suffer for your sin in some way. Lack of intimacy. Hostility. Mistrust. Uncertainty. Shaky finances. Rebellion. Separation. Brokenness.

3. The third thing we learn from our fly-over of the Wilderness Wanderings is that God molds and forms people who belong to Him.

God loved the Israelites intensely, and looked for ways to grow closer to them and bring them closer to Him. He was shaping them and molding them to be who they needed to be. Grumbling people still got what they needed – not because they grumbled – but because they asked. They could have simply said, “Umm, God, we’re hungry. Can we have something to eat?” Food would have poured into their laps. Instead they whined and complained to Moses and called him all kinds of names. When God heard them, He sent them what they needed – not what they wanted.

We can receive things from God by whining, grumbling, or complaining – it worked for them, it will work for us – but what God wants is a relationship with you where you simply ask for what you need. Jesus said: “For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Luke 11:9-10)

James the Apostle and brother of Jesus, leader of the Church in Jerusalem told us this: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:1-3)

This point is not about asking – but about God forming His people. God hovered over the people of Israel day after day – in a pillar of fire by night and a cloud of shade by day. He provided for them every day. He helped them in battle. He was right there, ready and willing, and every time the people’s hearts were leaning towards Him, He blessed them; when their hearts were leaning away, He withheld His blessing. God was ready to pour out blessing, but He had to work on these stiff-necked, rebellious, people to mold them into a people instantly ready to do what He asked them to do.

God does the same in our lives. He brings us through trials to build perseverance in us. He waits for us to ask to build a two-way relationship. He shakes us up to get rid of the things that don’t belong and leave only what should remain. He’s working in our lives to make us His people – ready to do His will!

The people of Israel saw the Lord’s power and experienced His goodness – but they continued to grumble and complain. They were never satisfied. Even when they were given the opportunity to cross over into the Promised Land, they were too afraid and wanted to travel back to Egypt and go back into slavery. Israel’s behavior is that of repeated sinning. God’s behavior was that of repeated mercy and rescue – salvation, provision, leading, forgiveness – over and over again. One thing is really clear – God did not choose Israel because of their faith or because of their goodness – but because of God’s goodness and God’s grace. He chose them – because He wanted to use them as a nation to reach humanity.

There’s a great deal we can learn from the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites – but these three things stand out for us today:

1. We have to pay the consequences of our sin.
2. Other people suffer for what we do.
3. God is working to mold and form us into a people belonging to Him.

At the end of the Exodus, the chosen people have finished their 40-year wandering and stand poised on the east bank of the Jordan River – and the Promised Land lies spread out for them. The hopes and dreams of many years are about to be fulfilled.

You are part of the Chosen People now if you belong to Christ. You also stand poised on this side of something incredible – either in your personal life or in the life of this church or in the life of our community or nation. . .

Are you going to be molded and shaped by God and used by Him in the very same ministry He called them to accomplish” Are you going to reach out to the people around you with the good news that God is not counting their sins against them through a saving relationships with Jesus Christ?