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They were God’s people. They were the people whom He had delivered from the bondage of Egypt so that through them, He might reveal His Name and glory to the nations. These were the people with whom God had made the covenant: “If you will obey Me and keep My covenant, you will be My own special treasure from among all the nations of the earth; for all the earth belongs to Me. And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests, My holy nation.”(1)

Yet, time and again since leaving Egypt, the people had forgotten, doubted, or outright rejected God’s promise. Now, standing on the edge of the land God had promised them, they had heard the report that it was indeed a land flowing with milk and honey—everything God had said it would be.(2)  He had led them all the way; the end of their journey was in sight.

God had defeated their enemies, provided for their every need, repeated His promise, revealed His presence, and redeemed His people. And now, on the eve of what could have been the greatest day of their lives, and their history as a nation—the day they were to enter God’s Promised Land—they chose to reject Him and refused to enter.

By rejecting God in disbelief the people were turning their backs on Him, positioning their faces away from His promise. It wasn’t God who turned them back to the wilderness; it was they themselves; it was their unbelief. Those who despise the promise of God will be kept from it. Yet, in His faithfulness, God preserved His promise for their children.

God had set their faces toward the Promised Land. Every step in the wilderness had brought them closer to this place and this day, preparing them for what lay ahead. But now, as they turned their backs on God, their faces were set back toward the wilderness. Instead of being a place of preparation, the wilderness would now be a place of winnowing. And the process of winnowing would come from their very own words. Since they had placed their trust in the testimony of the ten men who brought a negative report (see last week’s post), they would now wander in the wilderness for forty years—one year for each day the twelve men had explored the land. Instead of inheriting the Promised Land, this entire generation, save only Joshua and Caleb (the two men who presented a faithful report), would be buried in the wilderness.

Before we draw the conclusion that God uses the wilderness in our lives as a punishment, let’s revisit its purpose. God uses the wilderness to humble us, to prove us, and to reveal what is in our hearts. It is a time of preparation and refinement. He also uses it to display His provision and power, working in and through our lives throughout the journey. The wilderness is a place where God gives us a greater hunger and thirst for Him and for His desires.  And in His perfect timing, He will bring us out of the wilderness and into His promised land.

We will step from the trials of the wilderness into the rest and reward of His promise. It is hard to fathom that, at this point, the Israelites were longing for the slavery of Egypt or the trials of the wilderness over the fruit of God’s Promised Land. But instead of stepping forward by faith, they turned back out of fear and rejected God. The wilderness they were about to re-enter would become a place of death and desolation by their own design for the generation that rejected God’s promise due to unbelief.

How often have we chosen to turn our backs on God and our faces toward the wilderness? How often have we, in fear, rejected God’s promises and His Person, choosing to live out our lives in restless wanderings through the wilderness? We’ve rejected the unseen promised blessings of God and, out of disobedience, turned to the trials and difficulties of the wilderness because we doubted His promise—when all the while, He was right there waiting for us to enter into His promise.

Let us be forewarned—there will come a point when our rejection of God, our turning our backs on Him, will prompt Him to turn us back into the wilderness. His promise, having been rejected, will now be beyond our grasp, and we, too, will be destined to live out the remainder of our lives in the wilderness.

Fellow sojourners, heed this important lesson from the wilderness. Keep your face turned toward the God who has led you to where you are. Remember—the same God who has led you this far, will lead you all the way!

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You can read about the result of the Israelites’ faithless disobedience in the fourteenth chapter of the Book of Numbers.

This post is taken from chapter 20 of my book, The Wandering Years. For more information about the book, click here.

(1)  Exodus 19:5-6 (NLT)

(2)  Numbers 14:1-3, 11, 21-23, 25 (NLT)

Then all the people began weeping aloud, and they cried all night. Their voices rose in a great chorus of complaint against Moses and Aaron. "We wish we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness!" they wailed. "Why is the LORD taking us to this country only to have us die in battle? Our wives and little ones will be carried off as slaves! Let's get out of here and return to Egypt!" And the LORD said to Moses, "How long will these people reject me? Will they never believe me, even after all the miraculous signs I have done among them? But as surely as I live, and as surely as the earth is filled with the LORD's glory, not one of these people will ever enter that land. They have seen my glorious presence and the miraculous signs I performed both in Egypt and in the wilderness, but again and again they tested me by refusing to listen. They will never even see the land I swore to give their ancestors. None of those who have treated me with contempt will enter it. Now turn around and don't go on toward the land where the Amalekites and Canaanites live. Tomorrow you must set out for the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea."

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