Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon August 3, 2008
Upon returning from a week of family trip to Maranatha conference, I learned that some of you engaged in an honest discussion on the spiritual condition of our church. What began as a discussion on how we are doing with prayer as a church, it turned into deep sharing of each of your personal dry spiritual condition. Although I wasn’t there with you guys who were engaged in this discussion, I would tell you that I too have been going through a dry spiritual season for the last few months.
So, today, taking a little break from the study of book of Acts, I would like to talk to you about the spiritual rhythm, specifically the phase that can be characterized as desert experience. When I thought of spiritual dryness, the image that popped in my mind was that of “desert.” In desert, I imagine feeling restless caused by thirst, heat, blistering feet, growling stomach in hunger. Desert is an unpleasant place where you don’t want to end up in it. So, in desert, I imagine myself seeking for relief. I want water to quench my thirst. I want to come under shade to escape scorching sun. I want to stand on cool rock instead of blisteringly hot and sinking sand. In desert, I imagine wanting nothing more than to rest!
While I imagine this intense yearning for rest from the harsh reality of desert, I also imagine feeling like quitting! I imagine a curtain of confusion, inability to focus, will or desire strongly and clearly draping over my eyes, feeling trapped and helpless to get out of it. Once you drift into this spiritual desert, even though you really hate being caught in it, you struggle to get out, feeling trapped. And, you begin to wonder if there is any redeeming purpose behind desert experience and if there will be any way out.
In desert, deepest yearning is to rest. In Psalm 62, David speaks about finding rest. He says in verse 1, “My soul find rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him.” And, similarly repeats this thought in verse 5, “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.” In the context of the psalm, he sought rest because he was restless when he realized he couldn’t place his confidence in people. In the desert, he was disappointed by people around him.
In the desert, God’s ultimate purpose is for us to find rest in him alone. When human relationships disappoints you, fails you or you fail them, when your expectations don’t fan out the way you wanted, when you are struggling with overcoming sins, when you feel oppressed and tired, in the desert, you can find true rest in God alone! This is the answer I get from the scripture. When you are in the desert, find rest in God is your answer.
During my study, I came across a lengthy article on “desert” from New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, a dictionary with a long name, written by A. R. Pete Diamond. It filled the detail for me as to how God is really the answer for us. It opened my eyes to see that while we may be tempted to dismiss desert as unnecessary, unwanted, wasted phase in spiritual journey, it is not without meaning and purpose because in the desert, you find rest in God alone.
In the desert, God wants us to experience rest, not the kind of rest of drinking ice cold coke in an oasis comfortably reclined in a lounge chair. No, rest he wants us to experience involves being made into worshipers, being tested to be pure, being trained to be warriors.
- In the desert, God seeks to make worshipers out of us.
One of the predominant images of desert experience you see in the Old Testament comes from the story of Exodus when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt into wilderness. God brought them out of Egypt, the vest fertile riverbed of Nile into the wilderness, dry, weary and desolate land. There in the desert, God tested the Israelites.
In Egypt, the Israelites lived by the riverbed of Nile River, fertile land with abundant supply of grains, fish and animals. But, this supply of abundant food was overshadowed by the slavery; they were enslaved by the Egyptian headmasters who were harsh and ruthless. This reality of life in Egypt for the Israelites speaks to the reality of our world. The world we live in is like the riverbed of Nile where there supposed to be unlimited potential of opportunities for success if you work hard at. But, in the world the headmaster is the devil, the most selfish, egocentric, deceptive, destructive, bent on taking as many people with him into hell.
Now, Exodus into desert where God was to be the Israelites’ the only God, the only ruler, unlike in so many ways from the headmasters of Egypt, points to God’s great salvation. God brought the Israelites out of the fertile riverbed of Nile and led them into desert where their survival, their existence was intertwined by their trust in God alone. In Egypt, the promise of abundance was really an illusion because of they were in bondage. But, in the desert, although the promise of abundance wasn’t apparent in what they could see and feel from the desert, it was to be reality in God as they put their faith in him.
Christian journey is very much like this. The world promises abundance, wealth, simply great life of rest, but it comes at a cost of being enslaved to the American dream stocked in selfish individualism, often at the great cost of relational brokenness. But, Christian journey is that of the desert where life is where you get your abundance not from the worldly pursuit of happiness, but from God alone. But, what’s most important in the desert is not so much about what you can get from God, but learning to appreciate and fully trust God as the Giver of all good things.
Another word, God seeks to raise worshipers in the desert. When God first commissioned Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, he said to him in Exodus 3:12, “… When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” He was to tell the king of Egypt (v. 19), “Let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God.” Exodus 5:1, 3, Moses and Aaron told Pharaoh of what God said, “Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert.”
There in the desert, at the Mount Sinai, they were to encounter God of revelation. In the desert, they received instructions on how to relate to each other and relate to him. There in the desert, they were given instructions on how to build the tabernacle, a sanctuary where God would come down and dwell with them. From there, the desert, the Mount Sinai, there were to journey with God in the midst of them to the Promised Land.
This image of the tabernacle is so strikingly similar to John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” This Word who became flesh speaks to incarnation of Jesus, God Son, coming to dwell with us by taking on human form. The word “dwelling” speaks to pitching a tent and relates back to putting up the tabernacle in the Old Testament.
It is Jesus who restores worship for Christians. For the Israelites, it was through the sacrifices of goats and lambs, but for us it is through the sacrifice of God-Man Jesus’ death that restores us to right relationship with God, where we are not the center, but where God sits in the center throne of our hearts. From the command center of our hearts, God is to permeate our lives with the way he wants us to live, which in fact affects all aspect of our human relationships. Another word, worship restores human relationships.
- In the desert, God tests us to purge evil and to purify us.
Often in the desert experience of the Israelites, you come across the image of God testing the Israelites. I don’t think God tested them because he didn’t know what they were really like for our God is all-knowing God. God tested them to reveal what they were really made out of, not for his benefit, but for the benefit of the Israelites, to wake them up. When pressure is exerted, when metal is tested in fire, what will that reveal about us?
I can be so full of myself that I can fool myself to think that I am all right with God and all right with people. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” It takes God to engineer circumstances of desert to reveal what I am made of.
Now that the Israelites witnessed the awesome demonstration by God his power over Egypt’s trust in their gods by striking them with ten plagues and parting of the red sea, you would think that the Israelites would be all about God.
But, this wasn’t the case. When God brought them to a placed called Marah where they couldn’t not drink water because it was bitter, their response was that of grumbly complaining. It says in Exodus 15:24, “So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?” And, it says in v. 25, “there he tested them.” When God tested them with bitter water, what was revealed was their ungrateful complaining spirit.
Exodus 16:2-3 says, “In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, "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.”
And, God responded to them in Exodus 16:4-5, “Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
When the pressure is on, when things that we hold are stripped away, when things aren’t going the way we want, when relationships disappoint us, when God tests us in the desert, what he allows us to see is the ugliness of our hearts. Jesus often said that it is not what goes into our mouth that defiles us, but what comes out of our hearts.
The book of Numbers is filled with the examples of God testing them, to reveal to them what they were made of in the desert.
In the desert, God is asking, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them? (Numbers 14:11)
Numbers 14:22-23, you see God’s pronouncement over the people’s predicament for having rejected God, having refused to trust in him. For those, “who saw God’s glory and his miraculous signs performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times, not one of them would ever see the land God promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated God with contempt would ever see it.”
When they camped at a placed called Rephidim in Exodus 17:2, where there was no water for the people to drink, they quarreled with Moses. And, v. 3, “the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up put of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?””
The very reason God brought them out of Egypt into desert was so that they would learn to trust in him for all things, even for the very basic necessity of water and to worship God as their Provider. And, you would think for the people who saw God part the Red Sea to easily get this. But, instead of choosing to depend on God, they grumbled and demanded critically. To this attitude, Moses asked, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to the test?”
Numbers 20:4-5, at the Desert of Zin, at Kedesh, the people opposed and quarreled with Moses and Aaron saying, “Why did you bring the LORD’s community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!”
Again in Numbers 21:5, you see the Israelites complaining, but now even worse that it before. It says, “they grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses by saying, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”
Do you hear that? The manna that God provided day after day, the daily substance from God through the desert journey is the very thing they called “miserable food.” By scorning the provision, they were scorning and rejecting the Giver, their God.
In each of these cases, God held those who complained, grumbled, mistrusted and opposed him responsible as well as providing relief. In the last case of people showing their utter contempt for their Provider by rejecting manna, God sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. To give them relief, God instructed to Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.” (Numbers 21:8-9)
We see this in John 3:14, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” To be “lifted up” here refers to Jesus being crucified on the cross. Jesus crucified, lifted up on the cross, suffered and died for us… before this Jesus, in the desert our sins tested as impure, adulterous, rebellious, indifferent, apathetic wickedness can be cleansed, purified and purged, and replaced with his holiness, his righteousness.
- In the desert, God trains us into warriors.
When God seeks to make us worshipers, when God seeks to purge and purify us from impurities, and when God seeks to make us holy, righteous, he does it so that he can make warriors out of us.
If God’s testing is one sense of God revealing what we are made of, his testing is also in another sense God training us who are untrained and feeble to become disciplined warriors who can be used mightily to expand God’s kingdom.
Exodus 13:17-18 speaks to this part of God’s testing. When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt there was a much shorter route than the desert road through which God could have led Israel. It was “the road through the Philistine country” much easier route. It says, “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt. So, God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.”
God knew that fresh out of Egypt, the Israelites were in no shape to battle against the Philistines. So, he took them to the training journey, the desert journey.
It’s like the old classic martial art movies where the hero of a story is pulled back early on in a movie to work on the skills, to be battled ready. So, the hero become a disciple of a grand master and goes through rigorous training of carrying buckets of water on a tick on their shoulder, punching and kicking the bamboo sticks until their weapons are hardened, learning to wield their swords until they can slice flies in halves, or catch flies with chopsticks, perfecting their forms and mental edge.
God takes unto the desert road to train us, to have us be battle ready. In our stories, we don’t get this training by lifting weights, running miles after miles. The spiritual training involves taking us into the desert out of the Nile riverbed, so that we can learn to depend on God for his provision, where we must meet God and know him as our Giver, Provider, Protector, and Trainer.
So, remember that as you go through the spiritual desert, although you may feel that the time is wasted, you are not growing at all or God doesn’t seem to be working in you, the truth is that God is working in your desert. God is after you to make you a worshiper, to make you pure and to train you to be effective warriors to expand his kingdom. The desert is the perfect place and time for God to work in you.
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