The Wilderness | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

Uh okay, we're in a series of messages that we're calling symbols.

And what we're doing is taking some things that uh appear in the Old Testament, and we are looking at not only what are they, but what do they represent.

And then we're looking through into the New Testament at those things, and then most importantly, we're looking at what do those things mean to us?

Like how how would they show up into our lives beyond just information into what am I supposed to do with this?

What are you supposed to do with these concepts?

And so that's what we're doing.

You know, we um we try to do our best here each week to not only address a topic, but to continue to grow and learn in our ability to read the Bible the best that we can.

You gotta be very careful, even a sincere person, if you pick up the Bible and you start reading it, uh, it's it's actually important to go.

What does that say what I think it says?

Um, we look at the Bible as literature, we look at the Bible as history, and we look at the Bible as theology.

Because the reality is the Bible has literary elements to it, and it has historical elements to it, um, that are it was written in a different time, different place to different people than us.

Now, the Bible is written for us, but it's not written to us.

And so the more we can understand the literary and historical elements, the more we can make sure that we don't come up with a poor interpretation.

Uh, good interpretation leads to good application.

Unfortunately, bad interpretation leads to bad application.

And so we're always working at this.

And it makes sense because you wouldn't want somebody to pick up your words 2,000 years from now uh and not understand irony or not understand um, you know, the literary elements of what you were saying and not understanding the time that you lived in, and to take what you meant to be one thing and to turn it into something else.

Of course, that happens every day.

So we're trying to get better and better at this.

Uh, what I want to do today is I want to look at a literary element in the Bible uh as it relates to a particular place and setting.

Uh, when you think about literature, uh stories, you have a few different things.

You've got the characters, and you've got the plot, and you've got a setting.

And often a setting in a story isn't terribly significant.

It could have been set anywhere.

And yet there are some stories where the setting almost becomes like a character in the story.

Uh, you think of like sometimes uh stories about New York City or something, like New York City, something about uh the city itself and the subway and the tall buildings and the the ethos of that place kind of plays into the story.

You think about uh westerns, or story about the Wild West or the Prairie, those locations are more than just geographic uh backdrops, they are literally like characters that influence the story.

So when you look all the way back in the book of Genesis, you're gonna see a boatload of stories.

I'm only gonna be able to touch a few at a very high level.

I'm I'm not even gonna come close to doing it justice, but that's okay because now when you you're not gonna be able to unsee what I'm gonna show you today, that one of the most critical important settings in the Bible is the wilderness.

Today's about the wilderness.

We're gonna talk about the wilderness, and not only is the wilderness a setting for many of the most important stories in the Bible, the wilderness is a huge part of those stories.

So when you read about the wilderness, don't just think you're reading about the Wild West.

Don't just think you're reading about a location.

There's some elements of that that really leads to the theme or the central idea of those texts, the point we're supposed to get, and then it becomes extremely applicable.

All right?

When you think about wilderness, think about this is much more than geography.

It is a spiritual setting.

Uh it's it often we'll share stories of people going through tremendous testing, people going through seasons of dryness and barrenness, people going through seasons of exile.

It's it's more than setting, it's season.

Think of season when when you're uh looking at it.

If you think about something that you've been through or maybe are going through that's really difficult, and if you look back over your life, think of something that you came through that changed you.

You're like, man, I can never go back to who I used to be after having lived through that wilderness.

Uh these are these are stories or situations where we would say things like this I'd never want to go back and do it again, but I wouldn't trade what I learned and who I became for anything.

That's a wilderness.

Uh, wilderness shows up in a lot of ways.

Think about there's career and financial wilderness.

Some of you are in a season where maybe you're in between jobs, something you thought was stable, you've now been exiled into unemployment.

Uh, some of you maybe are working a job that feels like a wilderness, like I keep getting passed over.

Or maybe you're doing work that feels meaningless to you.

I feel like I'm just wandering around in the wilderness lost.

Uh sometimes relationships have a wilderness element.

It's a I I've gone through a painful breakup or even a divorce.

Uh maybe it's uh I had somebody just walk out of my life and be stripped out of my life, or maybe it's not like anybody did anything wrong, but you've been displaced to a new place and you're far away from people who you trust and who you're familiar with.

And and so we're just there's distance.

I feel like I'm in a wilderness.

Uh maybe you're in a cultural wilderness where I talk to people all the time who say, you know, I feel like an outsider everywhere I go.

There's no place that I go that I really feel like I actually fit.

I always feel like I'm I'm not fitting.

Maybe you're in a spiritual wilderness.

You're going, look, theologically, I believe God's omnipresent and I believe God is real, but for some reason, I'm not connecting with God right now.

My prayers are either being unanswered and they almost feel like they're being unheard.

Uh I for whatever reason, I'm just not feeling close to God.

There feels like a distance, and so you're in a spiritual dryness.

I could go on and on.

These are wilderness experiences.

The question is, what do we do in the wilderness?

How do we respond when we find ourselves in a wilderness season?

And here's what I want to say to you.

First of all, um, the wilderness is often so unpleasant that it's hard to frame it as anything other than something I want to get out of ASAP.

Like something to be avoided or rejected.

And the reality is, in a wilderness season, if the Bible is your guide, you're gonna find that God does some of his best work in the wilderness.

And if you can understand that, then you'll flip the script from this is something I'm trying to get out of as quickly as I can, to what I want to challenge you to do today, and I would say encourage you to do today, which is to lean into something that you've been pushing away from.

And often it's in the wilderness that God will show you something or will do something in you that requires the wilderness to do it.

And so if we get one thing right today, let's even just change our attitude.

And for some of you, that's gonna be tremendously difficult because all you can feel is how uncomfortable it is, how dry it is, how lonely it is.

And so today I want to I want us to start by realizing that there is actually value in the wilderness.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you three different sets of words.

And the first word is gonna describe what happens in the wilderness, and the second is gonna describe what can happen or what God can and wants to produce uh through these different situations.

So it's gonna be six words in total, two sets of words, and uh, we're gonna work our way through.

The first word is the word testing.

Testing.

The wilderness is a place of testing.

By testing, I mean you may be at your pain threshold.

Uh you're going through something very difficult and hard, and you're being tested.

Uh, it might be a testing of your maturity.

Just it just for some reason in life, it just doesn't seem to matter how old you get.

It seems like in every season of life your maturity gets tested.

Somebody shows up in your life to test your development.

And can you do what you know you're supposed to do and not do what you know you're not supposed to do?

Uh it might test your durability.

You might be in a season that's testing your patience, it's testing your graciousness, it may be testing your faith.

You might be in a season that's testing your self-control, or your stamina, or your integrity, or your courage.

Anytime you find yourself in a season of testing, you are in a wilderness season.

Um I think we all know that people can change.

I think the older you get, you realize that people can change, but they don't always change.

And I think the older you get and the wiser you get, the more you realize that it is foolish to be cavalier about how hard some changes can be.

Even though I see it and I want to change it, whether I actually accomplish it or not, it remains to be seen.

And so we can't be cavalier with how what it takes to actually go from seeing the change and wanting the change to actually changing.

And this is where I think the wilderness God uses often the wilderness experience.

Sometimes it takes the wilderness to get me out of my normal, to get me out of my behavior, to completely overhaul my mindset, to strip me all the way down, and and to for God to build what he wants to build.

Um, this is interesting in uh Exodus 13.

So this is the story where God's leading Israel, the people of Israel, out of bondage from the Egyptians.

And look at this Exodus 13, 17 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.

Well, we all know the shortest distance between two given points is what?

A straight line.

The straight line between bondage and the promised land went right through the Philistine country.

That was the shortest distance.

But God in his wisdom realized that if I take the nation in the most efficient path in a straight line, they are not ready.

They are not spiritually ready, their faith is not ready.

They've been making bricks all these years, they don't know how to fight, they're not warriors yet, okay?

They don't have weapons, they are not emotionally, uh, sociologically, spiritually, they are not ready.

And if we if I take them in the straightest line, they are gonna be demoralized by the Philistines and they're gonna go back to Egypt and undo everything I'm trying to do.

So, what does God do?

He takes them to the wilderness in a season of development, and ultimately, again, if we handle the testing process, it leads to transformation.

There's something in the Israelites that needs to be transformed in order for us to get to the promised land.

And I need time, I need development.

There's work that needs to be done, there's things that need to be shaped in my character and yours.

There's things that need to needed to be shaped in the children of Israel's uh theology and their beliefs about God.

There were some behaviors that needed to get out of them before they could go into what they were supposed to go into.

And so uh even God Himself, in his wisdom, wouldn't take them on the shortest route because there was something that needed to transform.

Uh, think about uh Jesus in the wilderness, right?

It says in uh Matthew chapter 4, verses 1, it says, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Matthew 4:1

Now, think about this.

Theologically, we would say of Jesus, he was fully God and fully man.

And so we understand his deity, but you you don't want to deify him to the point you forget about his humanity.

So Jesus had flesh also, Jesus was human as well.

And what we also know about Jesus was when he was 12 years old, he was standing across from teachers of the law, and they're marveling at his intellectual and his education level as it related to the law.

He understood nuance that a 12-year-old shouldn't know.

And so these experts in the law are like, who in the world is this kid?

So we know Jesus had no lack of scholastic understanding about God, but there are some things that you're taught in a classroom that you only learn in the wilderness.

So even though Jesus was fully God, fully man, he still had his humanity.

And even though he had been taught what he needed to know, he hadn't learned it yet, had to go to the wilderness, even Jesus.

Forty days goes in the wilderness and learns about his identity.

40 days in the wilderness learns about how to overcome temptation.

40 days in the wilderness learning how to deal with and manage and bring his flesh into submission.

40 days in the wilderness learning about his fear.

Okay, so all of these things, these are things I can give a kid a soundbite, but you don't learn it until you live your 40 days in the wilderness with no food and you're being tempted.

By the way, the word that's used in there, if you have your Bible open and you are in Matthew 4, 1 and you see Jesus was led by the Spirit, in other words, God said, I love you, therefore I'm gonna put you through the wilderness.

The word that's used for tempted there is a word in some of your Bibles, you have an NIV, has a footnote by tempted, which we never read past a footnote ever.

We always chase that footnote, all right, down to what, okay, what why's the footnote here?

And that footnote at the bottom says that the word for tempted is also used in Greek for tested.

Tested, right?

If you look further into the word that's used there, the connotation isn't just that the enemy was trying to seduce him and God was sending, it's not only tempting, but testing or trying.

Like it would be used for trial or like we might say, Don't try me.

You know, don't.

I'm just telling you, today's not the day.

Don't try me.

Trying me, you're you're trying to see what I'm capable of.

You don't want to know.

All right.

I know, you don't, you don't want to know.

So, okay, he's sent in the wilderness not just to be tempted by the enemy, but to be tested by God and to be on trial, to find out what's inside of you.

And part of that, when you go through trials and you go through challenges, some things are built in you, and some things that were in you come to the surface.

This is why it says in James 1, 2 through 4, consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

All right, so what's James doing?

He's using a little bit of hyperbole.

He's going, look, when you're going through a hard time, I know it's hard and that's all you want to think about.

But he said, if you understand that this is where you're being developed, something's transforming, you're becoming a new person.

He says, then if you can if you can frame it that way, it will actually induce joy.

You you'll you'll go, you know what?

I know this is unpleasant, but something's going on here.

I can feel myself growing, and sometimes growth has growing pains.

I feel the growth, but but I feel the joy that I'm becoming different.

I'm being transformed.

So he says, the the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and then it says, let perseverance finish its work, so you'll be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Right?

Mature and complete, all right, comes through the process of the wilderness.

Notice he says, you have to let it finish its work.

So think about this.

A lot of times we talk, if we talk about the wilderness and we talk about God testing us or these things, we go, yeah, testing leads to transformation like it's a foregone conclusion.

No.

Sometimes testing leads to failure.

Sometimes testing leads people to spiral out.

Sometimes, read your Bible.

There's some people who die in the wilderness.

There were some people that were supposed to be in the wilderness for a season that died in the wilderness.

So, so there it's not a foregone conclusion.

It is a place, a setting, where God can do something in me.

He can test me and develop me and transform me, but I'm gonna have to participate in that.

You're not a bystander to this process.

We engage with it, and part of that is going, you know what, I see what's going on here.

It's very unpleasant, but God's up to something, and so I'm gonna see it as an opportunity for transformation.

The second thing, the second word is barrenness.

Barrenness.

Barrenness as it relates to wilderness is when you've had something or someone stripped away from you.

Maybe something you were holding on to so tight you never would have given it up.

If you've ever been in that place where something's been taken away, something or someone's been taken away from you that you never would have given up on your own, and now you're forced to deal with that terrible feeling, which is this person or this thing that I put so much in and I fought for, I have now lost against my will.

So we're talking about a season of barrenness, we're talking about dry places, we're talking about emptiness, silence, where the silence is deafening.

Um we just think about what you do with loneliness.

Loneliness, I think there's two different ways you can handle loneliness, and I think one is right and one is wrong.

You can either treat loneliness and turn it into isolation, or you can respond to loneliness with solitude.

And isolation and solitude are not the same thing.

In fact, I'm gonna show you uh a story where you see the same person treat their isolation at one point their loneliness as isolation, and then the second as solitude, and we'll look at the difference.

Um, in 1 Kings 19, we looked at this story uh a few months ago.

It was a story of Elijah.

And so Elijah in 1 Kings 18 has this moment where he has this huge victory.

If you've ever had a plan and a vision, and it all came together, and maybe it came together even better than you thought.

This is 1 Kings 18.

Elijah goes up on Mount Carmel and he squares off with the the uh prophets of Baal, and I mean, absolutely puts them to shame, huge victory.

And in his mind, this is what he's been working his whole life for.

He's seen this in his mind's eye, and the reality even exceeded his expectation.

He's destroyed the prophets of Baal.

You have wicked King Ahab and Jezebel that are in power, and he's like, this is the moment their whole evil empire crumbles.

Not only have I beaten their prophets, but now they're gonna, you know, we're gonna go take the country back, and now everybody's gonna have my back.

And so he thinks that all these people that have seen the unmistakable miracle of God are gonna be in his corner and evil's been vanquished.

And that that's chapter 18.

Chapter 19, he finds out that even though he had the victory of a lifetime, nothing changed.

Everybody went right back to business as usual.

Ahab and Jezebel not only somehow came out of it, they came out of it unscathed, more powerful than ever.

And now they're ticked off at him and they've threatened his life.

And so he now, he's he's like, What in the world?

Everything I thought to be true, everything I thought about God, everything I thought about my own purpose, I don't know what to think.

And so he goes into uh 1 Kings 19, verse 3, says Elijah was afraid and he ran for his life because they said, We're gonna kill you, and that's not good to hear from the king and queen.

1 Kings 19:3

And so then he says, When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there.

Okay, so he goes off alone.

While he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, he came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die.

We'll call this isolation.

Okay?

Now, there is a time, and it's not wrong, sometimes to go be alone.

Being alone is not all bad.

But what do you do when you're alone?

And what he shows us here is isolation.

So he's got to run from the threat to the wilderness, which is again, happens quite a bit in the Bible.

People have to escape to the wilderness to live.

But then he takes his close relationship, he's not only pushing Ahab and Jezebel away, he's pushed the closest people to him away, and he's all by himself, which again isn't necessarily wrong.

There comes a time that it's okay to be by yourself.

But what he does is he spirals into suicidal ideation, he spirals into depression, and it and he starts to listen to the voices that are looping in his head, and he's saying things like, you know what, I've got no purpose anymore.

I I would just as soon go be with my ancestors.

He prayed that he might die.

So when you go into times that you're alone, what isolation looks like is I pushed everyone away, including God.

I push everyone away, all the voices, and now guess what?

The voices aren't gone because there's something still playing here.

And so now I have a loop in my head of lies, I have a loop in my head of voices that I that are are are not leading me the way I'm supposed to go, but those loops turn into spirals, and so he's spiraling in his isolation.

If you keep reading in the story, after he's been in A state of barrenness, in other words, all of his hopes and dreams and expectations have been stripped away.

Nobody's there.

It's just him and God.

He's able to finally quiet the voices enough that it says that God shows up to him and he doesn't show up in a fire and he doesn't show up in an earthquake.

He shows up in a whisper.

And so often that now is solitude.

To get to a place, sometimes I have to get away from the city.

I've got to get away from the population.

I've got to get away from the noise.

I've got to get away from the work.

I got to get away.

But when I'm alone, am I pushing God away?

Am I looping something that's spiraling me?

Or am I tuning into and praying and listening to what God would say to me?

By the way, look at this verse, Luke 5, 16.

This is about Jesus.

Look what it says.

Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.

Jesus, if anybody who's ever lived should have the ability in a spiral to pull the nose up on their own, it would be Jesus.

And yet Jesus in his wisdom realized there's sometimes I need to go to the wilderness, not in isolation, in solitude.

And to listen to the voice of the Father, to pray, to get my faith right, to get my connection to God right so that I know what to do next.

I was watching this video as I came up, and one of the ladies on the video who was baptized last week, she was in my line.

So we had um four stations, baptized 158 people is amazing.

And so we're out there and we got these four lines, and I'm out there, and she everybody that came out, we would say, Hey, what brought you here today?

What led up to this moment?

So you hear a little bit of the backstory, it's just beautiful.

And one of the ladies on the video was in my line, and I remember her saying, she said, Look, what led up to today is a couple years ago I lost my mother, and my mother was the most precious person in my life.

My mother was my go-to person.

I didn't know where to go, I always went to my mother, and and she helped me through things, and she was taken out of my life, she died.

And so what we what she described there wilderness.

I'm feeling barren, I'm feeling empty, I'm feeling alone, I'm feeling dry.

Something's been stripped away from me.

Something I never would have given up is gone.

And so now I'm in a wilderness, I'm trying to figure out what do I do now?

I don't know where to go for provision.

And she said, in that season, now think about it, a lot of people lose somebody like that.

They shake their fist at God, they lose all their faith, and they can't get out of the loop.

But what did she say?

She said, Instead of doing that, I turned my barrenness into an opportunity for an encounter with God.

When we handle the test right, it turns into transformation.

When we handle barrenness right, it turns into an encounter.

There's something that God wants to do in Elijah that isn't going to happen in the volume of Mount Carmel.

It happens in the whisper in the wilderness.

There's a work that God is doing.

And so what are you doing with your barrenness?

My friend could have said, I lost my mom and have her life bottom out.

But she said, this is an opportunity for me to turn to God, to lean into God in ways like I never have before.

Certainly wouldn't have picked it.

It's still tremendously painful, but she's saying, I've learned to trust in God.

I've learned to lean on God often when someone or something has been stripped away.

Jesus, by the way, you talk about loss in Matthew 14, he lost his cousin.

His cousin died.

And it says in verse 13, when Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately, look at this, to a what?

Solitary place.

So Jesus himself, all right, even though he didn't go to the physical wilderness in this particular verse, he went to a wilderness motif.

He basically got in a boat and said, I need to be with the Father and I need everybody away.

Didn't go to spiral, he went to pray.

He went to connect and to encounter God.

Um I'll give you this last thought.

I want to share just to be uh transparent with you in my own journey of wilderness.

Um when I grew up, my first 23 years, my life sort of revolved around athletics and sports.

So I played sports all the way uh from my earliest memories to uh through college.

And the older I got and the more the competition level went up and the athletes got really, really good.

And so I got to a place where, especially when I got through high school and college, I never felt like I was the best athlete out there.

I never felt like I had the most talent.

And so it drove me into a work ethic because I realized like if I don't work harder than everybody else, I'm gonna lose.

Uh and I don't like losing.

So to me, I was willing to work hard.

And then the other thing is I was I felt like my competitive advantage is that I'm willing to put up with more pain than everybody else.

And so I feel like, hey, some of these people, yeah, they they they can run faster and jump higher, and they've got more natural talent, but I'll bet I can go through more pain than they they can.

And so when I would be going through pain in training, or I would be uh going through pain in a game, I would get to a place where everything in me wanted to stop, wanted to quit, wanted to lay down.

But what I would do, and some of you are gonna think this is weird, and a few of you will get it, and I'm here for a few of you.

So um what I would do is I would detach psychologically from myself.

I would detach from my body, I would detach from my emotion.

In some way, it was almost like an out-of-body type of experience where I was able to suffer without thinking about how bad I was suffering, and I'm like, these guys are gonna suffer and quit, and I'll bet I can I'll bet I can detach longer.

So I learned how to detach and escape from my pain.

And it was really helpful in football, but it's not so good as a husband, it's not so good as a man, it's not so good as a leader, it's not so good as a disciple of Jesus.

And so what I realized uh after some time was that same sort of psychological detachment and escape that I did to get out of the pain that I was in, I was doing when I was going through seasons of wilderness.

So, what did I do?

I'm feeling pain, I'm feeling tired, I'm feeling dry, I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling hopeless, but I can't quit.

I have people counting on me.

I can't quit, I believe in what I'm doing.

I can't quit, I feel called to this.

I can I can't quit, I gotta stay in it.

So, what would I do?

I would detach emotionally and I would just numb out and endure.

And I would, I kid you not, look up and I couldn't really remember what happened the last two months.

And then people go, hey, you know, you said that last week.

I'm like, I did, I don't really remember.

It was like uh Adam Sandler in the movie Click.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, bro, thank you.

All these holy people are like, they're like, I don't watch that stuff, yeah.

I only read my Bible and watch the chosen.

Okay.

You should have seen First Service.

They're like, we don't know of this Adam Sandler.

Who do you speak of?

We only know Adam and Eve.

Thank you, bro.

Thank you.

God bless you.

If you haven't seen the movie, alright, the guy has a magic remote control and he can fast forward anything he doesn't like.

So he's in an argument with his wife, he fast forward.

He's it doesn't like his job, he fast forward.

And next thing you know, the button gets stuck, and at the end of the movie, he's fast-forwarded his whole life.

I know, you're like, dang, that's pretty good.

I don't endorse all of it.

That's all you need for today.

Um, but I realized what I was doing in today's language is I was taking my season of barrenness and I was detaching and escaping instead of doing what it's designed to do, which is encounter the exact opposite of what God wanted to do.

Listen to me, hear me.

Hear me from a guy who's done it too much.

It's not God's will for your life that you numb out.

There are some seasons you have to endure, and it's hard, but it's not God's will that you detach and escape.

We all need moments of reprieve in the wilderness.

I'm not saying, look, get your rest, and sometimes it's okay to have a distraction.

What I'm saying is you have a precious life, and it's not God's will for you to take months and years and just detach.

Even in the wilderness, even in the pain.

Attach.

Encounter.

Sometimes the noise of your life has kept you from hearing the whisper that God wants to give you.

Lean into it.

Lean into it.

The third, the third word is the word exile.

The story of Moses is, you know, he has miraculous provision at infancy.

He was supposed to die as a baby, but God spared his life.

His people were in hundreds of years of slavery to the Egyptians.

And so he has this really wild stroke of fortune and blessing where he grows up in Pharaoh's home, in the palace, being raised like a prince.

And so, in a sense, he's got the best education you could get at that time.

I mean, are you kidding me?

An Egyptian education, the best.

And but every day he looks out the window and he sees everybody who looks like him out there in bondage, and yet here I am in the palace.

And so there's something about it that just doesn't sit well.

And one day he looks out the window and he sees an Egyptian slave master beating one of his own people, somebody who looks like him, and he has this righteous anger well up, and he does the wrong thing for the right reason.

He has a righteous indignation that flares up, but he goes out and he loses his temper and he commits murder.

He murders this Egyptian and he buries him and he thinks he's gotten away with it.

He thinks nobody's looking, but someone did see, and word spreads.

And now he's on the run for his life.

So he retreats to the wilderness.

And when he goes to the wilderness, he's in exile.

He had to run away.

And while he's there, he ends up getting married and he starts now working for his father-in-law.

Now think about this.

You put yourself in Moses' shoes, you're going, My goodness, what it what happened?

I had the ultimate good fortune, I had the ultimate blessing.

I I had a one in a million door open for me, and then I do this thing.

Now my life is over, my purpose is is over, and now I'm just here trying to survive in the wilderness till I die, taking care of my father-in-law's sheep.

It says in Exodus 3, I'm sorry, in Exodus, yes, three, one, look what it says.

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro's father-in-law, the priest of Midian.

Now look at this.

Now think about this.

What was his ultimate assignment?

What was he about to do?

He was about to lead the nation to the edge of the wilderness.

And yet his preparation for that was leading sheep for his father-in-law.

Of course, he thinks I'm just out here shepherding.

But God shows up to him in verse 9 and says, the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I've seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.

In other words, hey dude, the same thing, the same righteous indignation that led you to make a mistake, I felt the same, I was provoked by the same thing you are.

So it wasn't all bad, but you need a little maturity sprinkled in because we can't be burying everybody.

So what I want to do is I want to mature you.

I want to take that thing that bothers you that bothers me, and now I want to use you because by the way, I've got a group of people that are gonna need herded, they're gonna need corralled, and they're gonna need a shepherd to lead them through the wilderness.

So you thought you were just doing time in the wilderness, but I was preparing you for a new purpose.

Not only does the test transform you into a new person, but the exile will prepare you for a new assignment.

Not only am I a different person, I'm being raised up for a different purpose.

And so all of that work that he thought was just his penance for a big mistake and an opportunity blown was actually, he was starting to develop some skills of getting everyone together and moving everybody from point A to point B.

And so, what is God raising him up to do?

Hey, the same way that you've been tending to your father-in-law's flock, you're gonna tend to my flock.

So a lot of this stuff you thought was just wasting time is stuff that I've been doing, I've been working behind the scenes to prepare you.

I could go on and on.

This is where uh I want us to just take a moment and take a moment to respond.

I I want to just kind of put it all up in front of us now.

How should I we respond in the wilderness?

Well, what are you doing with the testing?

Testing can lead to transformation, but it doesn't always.

It's what are you doing with it?

I know it's unpleasant.

I know you feel like you're hitting your pain threshold, I know you feel like you're at your wit's end.

I know you feel like I can't do another day of this, but you're in the middle of a test.

The testing of your faith develops perseverance.

Let it work.

And when it finishes its work, you'll be mature and complete.

You'll come out the other end and go, I'd never want to do that again.

But I'm sure glad I walked through that.

I wouldn't change who I am now.

So, so stick with the test and see it as an opportunity for transformation.

What are you doing with your barrenness?

Something that's been stripped from you, it's been taken from you.

The dry feeling, the empty feeling, the lonely feeling.

Don't go into isolation and let the loop in your brain cause a spiral.

Go into solitude.

Do what Jesus did.

Often go to the wilderness to pray, to connect with God.

Lord, I want to hear your voice.

What are you doing with the exile?

You're not just doing time, my friend.

You still have breath in your lungs.

You have a purpose that's ahead.

Moses, when he's walking around with a bunch of sheep, to think I'm being prepared to lead a nation, to go right the wrong that I committed, all of that wrestling happened in exile.

And when you look back throughout your life, you're gonna see that there are things that God was preparing in you that you didn't even realize at the time.

What I want us to do is take a moment and give you an opportunity to respond, give you this last thought.

Often when you're in the wilderness, and some of you, as I've been talking wilderness, you're like, This is me.

Often when you're in the wilderness, the first question that comes to mind is, Why am I here?

It's like Matthew 4 says Jesus was led by the Spirit, but then Moses in uh Exodus 3 did something wrong and had to retreat.

So you're going, Lord, am I here because of some divine big plan that you have going on?

Or am I here because I did something wrong?

Or am I here because somebody else did something wrong and I've been exiled?

Like, what's going on?

I think that's a very natural question to ask.

I don't think there's anything wrong with asking it, but I do think it's a mistake to get stuck on it.

Because here's what matters.

I can't tell you whether or not God led you into the wilderness, but I can promise you He will meet you there.

I I don't know.

I wouldn't pretend to know, I wouldn't insult you with a definitive answer.

I I don't know if this is part of God's plan or you did something wrong, or somebody else did something.

I don't know, but I don't think it matters.

Bottom line, you're in the wilderness.

God will meet you there.

God will meet you in the wilderness.

So see the test, see the exile, see the barrenness, and lean into it.

I asked uh our team to end with an old song.

It's called Through It All.

In the song Through It All, there's a line they're gonna sing.

He says, Through it all.

It's an Andre Crouch, throwback.

He said, I've learned to trust in Jesus.

I've learned to trust in God.

Some of you have been taught to trust in Jesus in the classroom, but you're gonna learn to trust in Jesus in this wilderness.

I've known I was supposed to, but I didn't know how to until I got to the wilderness.

If that's you here today, as we take a moment to sing, to reflect, and in some ways to find a moment of solitude.

If you're in a wilderness, as a step of faith, as a statement to both God and yourself that I'm gonna lean into this wilderness.

I'm not gonna ask how quickly I can get out of here.

I'm gonna ask, Lord, how can I maximize my time in the wilderness?

Is that you?

As we sing, I want you to stand up.