Seeking Rest in the Wilderness

Deuteronomy chapter 2 verse 7.

Deuteronomy 2:7

We'll read through the verse, then we'll pray and get started.

For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands.

He has watched over your journey through this immense wilderness.

The Lord your God has been with you this past 40 years and you have lacked nothing.

Let's pray.

God, we come to you tonight and I pray that we can draw some strength from these words

that you speak to us, that you speak about your people Israel, about how you were there

with them in the most difficult times, dear Lord, that you brought them out of the wilderness,

that you brought them out of the hard times, that you provided for them and that you would

continue to provide for them.

Dear Lord, I pray that we would know that you are the same God today, that you are with

us as we walk through our wildernesses and you are with us, dear Lord, whatever we go

through and you will continue to take care of us through it all.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Now here in Deuteronomy chapter 2, it's kind of a recount of the things that had taken

Deuteronomy 2 · chapter mention

place and God's people are getting close to getting into the promised land and they had

been wandering in the wilderness for some time and some of that is recalled here in

Deuteronomy chapter 2.

Deuteronomy 2 · chapter mention

But it's talking about as their journey was drawing to a close, they were about to be

able to enter into the promised land.

Now not Moses and not the generation that doubted that were disobedient, but the next

generation that was going to come.

And Joshua and Caleb, who were two of the ones that scouted out the land, they were

going to be able to take the people of God into the promised land.

And even though they had been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, their journey

was not quite complete.

Their desire was to enter into the promised land, but they were only going to be able

to enter when God was going to let them enter through the means that God was going to let

them enter.

Now they had come around from Egypt and they'd kind of come south probably through the Red

Sea and then work their way through the Negev desert and then back up on the east side of

the Jordan River.

And they had wandered back and forth around during that 40 years, but finally they began

to make their way up north and as they made their way up north, there were a lot of other

tribes that were living there.

There were the Moabites and the Ammonites.

Those were descendants of Lot, of his daughters.

You had the Edomites.

That was the descendants of Esau.

These were the people who were possessing this part of the land.

And God's people, maybe there was a temptation there that they were just going to be able

to cross over these lands or overtake these people to get into the promised land.

But as they made their way north, they would encounter these lands and God said, look,

you're not going in this way.

You're not going to overtake these people.

You've got to keep on going.

It's not time yet.

And they'd go on to the next group, the next region.

And God would say, no, this is their land.

You're not going to overtake these people.

And ultimately they would come to the land of the Amorites.

And when they get there, God says, okay, I'm going to hand these people over to you and

they're going to overtake them.

And ultimately they're going to make their way into the promised land.

And as they're beginning this journey where they're going to be going through all these

foreign lands and by all these foreign people, God says, look, I'm going to be with you.

You don't mess with them.

They're not going to mess with you.

Everything is going to be okay.

I've brought you this far.

He says, I've been with you these last 40 years.

And that's what we see in this verse.

For the Lord your God has blessed you and all the work of your hands.

He has watched over your journey through this immense wilderness.

Now they had been in the midst of a wilderness.

Now a wilderness is a place that, it's not that it's never been found by a person.

Certainly people had been in this wilderness that they had been in before, but it was a

desolate place.

It wasn't a place that was easy to live.

It wasn't the kind of place that you would probably choose to live in a lot of these

areas that they were in.

And nonetheless, as bad as it may have been, as difficult as the journey may have been,

it's not like there were clearly marked paths for them to travel.

It's not like it was easy during their time in the wilderness, but God says, look, you

have been in the midst of a wilderness and I have brought you through it.

So do not give up on me now.

Now in the case of the Israelites, they were in the wilderness because of their disobedience.

And maybe there are times in our life that we find ourselves in a wilderness type situation

where we kind of find ourselves wandering and in bad shape because of our sinful choices.

But I think there are lots of times in our life that we may have a wilderness experience,

that we may be in a place that we don't want to be in, that we're not sure which way to

go, that we're not sure how we're going to make it out, that we're not sure how we're

going to survive, how we're going to be sustained, how in the world are we going to make it through

here.

We don't know where we are.

We don't know where we're going.

And it is difficult.

And we have those experiences in our life in a lot of ways.

We may experience that with a health crisis in our life.

We find out that there are some health problems in our life or somebody we love.

And it's uncharted territory.

It's something we've never been there before.

I've never had to deal with this kind of stress and worry.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know what it's going to look like when I go to the doctors.

I don't know what treatments are going to look like.

All these things, sometimes we enter into these wilderness experiences in life that

we've never been there before.

It's uncharted territory.

The path is not clear.

It's very scary.

We don't know what's before us.

We don't know how we're going to make it out.

Maybe we encounter that in our workplace sometimes.

We get out into the workforce.

When you're young and you begin to get into adulthood, you may encounter a lot of those

wilderness experiences in that you're going to experience a lot of things which are uncharted

territory for you that you've never experienced this before.

You're starting your first job.

Okay.

It's kind of scary.

You've never been there before.

You don't know what it's like to work in the real world.

You don't know what it's like to punch a clock.

You don't know what it's like to work with other people.

Some of them are going to be good.

Some of them are going to be mean.

You don't know what it's like to deal with the public.

There's a lot of experiences that we face that are scary.

There are lots of things in our life that may be a wilderness experience, something

that we have never gone through before, the loss of a parent.

You live your whole life, Lord willing, and you get to see your parents live to old age.

From the time you're born till the time they die, you have your mother and your father

with you.

You've never lived at a time that you did not have your parents.

Then you lose a parent or you lose both parents.

All of a sudden, you're walking in an experience that you've never been in before.

You don't know what to do.

How do I live without them?

How do I function without them?

I always called them.

They were always there.

They always give me wisdom.

There are things in life that we encounter that when we encounter them for the first

time, we are flying blind.

It's like we are in the midst of the wilderness.

The path has never been traveled.

We don't know how to walk the path.

We don't know how we're going to do it.

We don't know if we can do it.

We find ourselves wandering in these situations.

Maybe you can think of others in your life, these wilderness situations.

What does God say to his people?

He said, I was with you in the wilderness.

The thing about being in the wilderness is you want to be out of the wilderness.

You don't want to stay there.

You don't want to stay there trying to survive, trying to scrap, trying to get by, trying

to find your way, wondering if you're walking in circles, wondering if you're on the right

path.

We don't want to be there.

We want to get out the other side.

We want to come out the other side from where we started in a direction that's leading us

somewhere better.

We want to get out of the wilderness as quick as we can.

God had promised his people that on the other side of the wilderness was the promised land,

was everything that they needed, was the rest that they desired and longed for.

They finally had begun to get out of that wilderness.

That's what we're looking for in the midst of our wilderness, whatever it may be tonight.

We want to get out.

We want to get on the other side.

We want to find the blessing.

We want to find the deliverance.

We want to find the rest.

We want to have the answer to our problems and our questions.

Why this, God?

Why are you allowing that?

How are you going to work through this?

We want to get out of the wilderness.

God's people were so close.

They were so close, but God even still in these verses was saying, but it's going to

be just a little bit more.

You're going to have to trust me just a little bit more.

For many of us in this room, perhaps you can think of these words as God speaking to you.

I have been with you the last 40 years.

I have provided for you the last 40 years.

I have taken care of you the last 40 years.

Sometimes we need to remember that.

Sometimes we need to pause in the midst of our struggles and the midst of our wilderness.

We need to stop and we need to remember who is God?

Is God good?

Has God been with me?

How has God been with me?

How has God blessed me?

We need to recall the areas in our past that we felt the presence of God, the joy of God,

that we remember how God helped us and strengthened us and encouraged us and blessed us.

We need to remember that God may be speaking these very words to us tonight as a reminder.

I have been with you all of these years, wherever you are in the wilderness, whether you're

just getting into it, whether you're in the middle of it, whether you're on the edge of

it and you think you may can see the light of day, maybe God wants to remind us tonight,

I have been with you and I'm going to be with you so do not give up.

Don't stop now.

The Israelites were so close.

They had been through a lot, but God was going to keep his promise.

He was going to keep his word.

He was going to get them out of the wilderness and even though they were on the outer edge

and even though they were so close to the promised land, even though they were so close

to his rest, God said, not quite.

It's not quite time yet.

You got to go through Moab.

You got to go through Edom.

You got to go through Ammon.

You got to go through all these places.

You're getting close, but I am going to be with you.

I got you this far.

I've been with you for 40 years and he says at the end of the verse, he says, the Lord

your God has been with you this past 40 years and you have lacked nothing.

What God is telling them is, I've been with you 40 years and you've lacked nothing and

I'm going to continue to be with you from now to the moment you enter into the promised

land, I will take care of you and when you enter into the promised land, I will continue

to take care of you.

I will continue to bless you.

I will continue to meet your needs.

I will continue to hand your enemies over to you.

I will be the one who will deliver you and so it is for us tonight.

In all of our life, if you've been walking with the Lord, certainly, surely there are

times that you can look back to and you can say, yes, I remember the time that God got

me through the circumstance, the situation that I did not think I could get through.

Maybe tonight you're in another one of those circumstances.

Maybe tonight you're in the middle of a circumstance and the path is not clear.

You're in the middle of the wilderness.

You don't know where you're going to go, how you're going to get out.

You don't know what the future holds but I promise you, God holds the future and he will

deliver us and he will bring us to a place of rest and he will take care of us.

Maybe not always in the way that we would like, maybe not always in the way that we

pray for, but God's way is right and we need to remember that God is good.

He has been good to us and he has provided the ultimate rest for us in Jesus Christ.

That if we would only call out to him tonight, if we would only hold on to him tonight, if

we would only remember that he's been with us and he will continue to be with us, so

do not lose hope and do not give up and you will enter into the rest that God promised.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for these good words and I pray that you would help us to learn from

them tonight.

I pray that you would help us to learn from the Israelites in a lot of ways, dear Lord.

They got their self in this mess because of their disobedience and sometimes, dear Lord,

we get our self into messes because of our disobedience.

Dear Lord, sometimes there are things in life that are wilderness situations, that are uncharted

territories, that are things that we're not familiar with, that we don't know how to live

through and work through, dear Lord, and we just have to depend on you.

We just have to trust you to guide us, just as you guided your people in the book of Exodus

through out of Egypt and into the wilderness and through, dear Lord, all the way till they

got to the promised land.

God, you guide us as well through your word, through your spirit, through the love and

encouragement of others, dear Lord.

So I pray that if there's anybody in this room that's in the midst of a wilderness experience

tonight that you would help them to have the strength to get through it, that you would

encourage them, dear Lord, that if they are yours, dear Lord, that they would be reminded

of how you have watched over them for the last 40 years, maybe more, maybe less, ever

how long it is, dear Lord.

I pray that they would be reminded of how you have taken care of them.

Dear Lord, maybe there are some tonight and they are walking aimlessly in the wilderness

and they do not know Jesus Christ.

I pray tonight that they would put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ to know that they

don't have to walk alone, but that you would get them through.

God, help us not to give up.

Help us not to question whether or not you are with us, but we can know for a fact, God,

that you are with us.

So I pray that we would hold onto that truth to know that you have never abandoned us and

you never will.

I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.