Keep Going Through the Wilderness

So I said last Sunday that nostalgia is a really powerful thing.

And it's powerful in a lot of different ways.

One of the things that nostalgia has a tendency to do is cause us to remember things at the very least different than they actually were.

So some of the things that we tend to be really nostalgic about, for example, would be the places that we grew up, the places that we we lived as kids.

And my wife Megan lived in the same house her entire childhood.

In fact, her parents still live there.

So every time we go visit, Megan's going to her childhood home.

By the time I went to college, my parents were in the ninth home since I had been born.

So that's an average of one different house every two years.

Even still, there are some homes that I do have significant nostalgia for.

For example, the very first house that my parents ever bought, they had rented before that.

I think I was four, maybe five years old.

I'll never forget that house.

I grew up there, it was so much bigger than any house that we'd ever lived in, than the rental house, than the trailer before that.

And I have these very vivid memories of spending time in that house.

Well, a few years into our marriage, Megan and I were visiting my hometown, and we just so happened to be driving by the street that that house was on.

It wasn't planned, it was just kind of out of the blue.

And I was like, oh my gosh, this is this is one of the houses that I grew up in.

I spent several years here.

Do you want to check it out?

And she said, Yeah, absolutely.

And so we turned, and I could still remember where the house was on the street because it was right on the corner.

And we pull up to it, and I almost had to like do a double take because the house seemed tiny.

I remember that house being massive.

I remember being it being so huge.

I remember playing in the backyard, and the backyard felt like a territory, like a forest or something like that.

I remember the basement seemingly just being endless.

And yet, standing outside of this house as an adult, it just looks so small.

Nostalgia had caused me to remember it far, far greater, far bigger than it actually was.

That's what nostalgia does.

And that's one of the reasons we have to be so careful when it comes to looking backwards in life.

Because when we look behind us, we often remember things very different than the way that they actually were.

We might even remember things being better than they actually were.

Right now, we're all tempted to look behind us.

We're all tempted to look backwards because things have changed so fast in the last few months.

I mean, who could blame us?

We want things to go back to the way that they were.

But what if?

What if God doesn't want us to go back to the way things were?

What if God actually wants us to go to places we've never been before?

I'll say this, it's not just a what if, it's really consistent with God's character.

Because when you read Scripture, you constantly find God calling people to go places they've never been before.

You constantly find God calling people to do things they've never done before, and it's people who are actually trying to put the brakes on God and saying, Hey, can we just can we just go back?

It's people who are always longing for the good old days.

But but God is never longing for the good old days.

He's always looking ahead.

A great example of that would be Jeremiah chapter 31.

Jeremiah 31 · chapter mention

And I'll go ahead and stop for a second and read it.

Jeremiah 31, verses 31 through 34.

Jeremiah 31:31–34

This is something that God says.

He says, The day will come, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.

This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt.

They broke that covenant, though I love them as a husband loves his wife, says the Lord.

But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day.

I'll put my laws in their minds, I'll write them on their hearts, I will be their God, and they will be my people.

And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their family, saying, You should know the Lord, for everyone from the least to the greatest will already know me, says the Lord.

And I will forgive their wickedness and never again remember their sins.

The context of this is really interesting, because at the time that Jeremiah wrote this, he was a prophet, Israel had really gotten off course.

Israel had gone from being kind of faithful to God to being really unfaithful to God, and as a result, things were going really, really poorly.

And in the midst of this, God speaks to Jeremiah and he gives this message to his people, to Israel, but he doesn't say, hey guys, can we go back to the way things were before you guys messed it all up, before you guys got off track?

I just want to go back to the good old days when we were walking closely with one another.

That's not what God says.

He doesn't say he wants to take them back, he says he wants to take them ahead.

He says he's looking forward to a new covenant, a new type of relationship that he can have with them.

My point is this: God is never looking backwards, he's never longing for the good old days.

God's always looking ahead.

God's always trying to bring us into a place that we've never been before.

And so what that means for us right now is that in this whole crazy season where we're all locked down and our lives are paused because of this whole coronavirus thing, God isn't wanting to take us back to the past.

God wants to create a future for us through this whole situation that takes us places we've never been before in our relationship with Him, takes us places we've never been before, perhaps in our careers, in our families, you name it.

God wants to take us somewhere that we've never been before, someplace greater.

But we've got to have a mindset that allows him to do that.

We can't be people who are fighting him and just saying, no, God, I just I just want to go back.

I just want to go back.

But that's a temptation that's very strong.

And we see it over and over again in Scripture.

In fact, the the story of the Israelites after they leave Egypt and before they get to the promised land, it's a great example of that.

If you know the basic story of the Old Testament, it follows this family, starting with a man named Abraham, and uh, and they become a tribe, and then that tribe grows and they become like a people.

And God actually promised Abraham that they would become a nation, but to be a nation, you have to have, you know, like land, you have to have authority, you have to have territory.

They didn't have that.

They end up settling in Egypt and they they grow very numerous, so numerous that the Egyptians actually get nervous.

And they say, hey, we've got to do something about this before they they maybe even overtake us.

So the Egyptians actually take the Israelites as slaves, and for generation after generation, they're living in Egypt as slaves.

But then God raises up this man named Moses, and Moses leads the people out of slavery in Egypt, and he's taking them to the promised land, this land that God is gonna give them where they will become the nation that he promised that they would be.

In order to get to the promised land, though, they have to go through some wilderness.

When we think wilderness where we live, we tend to think like woods, forests.

That's not what the wilderness was.

It was basically a desert.

They've got to go through the wilderness to get to the promised land.

And the wilderness, as you can imagine, was just, well, it was difficult.

It was hard.

Any type of wilderness life is tough.

And they weren't really prepared for how tough it would be.

And so several moments in their 40-year journey in the wilderness, several different times, they end up wishing that they could just go back to Egypt.

As crazy as that sounds.

We see it the first time in Exodus 16.

Exodus 16, 3.

They say, Oh, that we were back in Egypt.

It would have been better if the Lord had killed us there.

At least there we had plenty to eat, but now you've brought us into this desert to starve us to death.

You know, they get to this desert, to this wilderness, and there's not a lot of food.

Now, God ends up providing for them every single day, but at the moment they're they're scared, they're worried, and they find themselves going, let's just go back to Egypt.

Like, yeah, we were slaves, but at least we didn't have to worry about what to eat.

I mean, that makes sense when you're when you're hungry, you're willing to sacrifice a certain amount of freedom, maybe, for safety.

But it's crazy to think about the fact that they were like, hey, remember the good old days when we were when we were slaves in Egypt?

We see it happen again in Numbers chapter 14, verses 1 through 4.

Numbers 14:1–4

It says, 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 go out of here and let's return to Egypt.

And then they plotted among themselves.

Let's choose a leader and go back to Egypt.

So what's happening right here is actually that they've they've come to the edge of the wilderness, and now they're they're standing on the outside of the promised land.

Like they're on the outside looking in.

They're just inches away from this promise that God has made them, but they get scared because the promised land is occupied.

And they don't think that they can defeat the people who occupy the promised land.

They realize they're gonna have to fight for this.

And they're certain that they have no chances.

So they say, hey, let's just go back to Egypt because you know, at least there we we didn't have to worry about fighting for our very lives.

Again, in the wilderness, they just want to go back.

This is so relevant to us right now because the truth of the matter is we're in the wilderness right now.

All of us are in some type of wilderness, our normal lives have been interrupted.

This is this is hard.

The wilderness is hard.

For the people of Israel, the wilderness was a long journey.

It was filled with failures, it was filled with moments of triumph, it was filled with detours, times where they thought they were gonna have a short journey and it ended up being a long journey.

There were setbacks, galore, the wilderness, it's difficult.

And it has this way of bringing you face to face with some of your biggest issues.

But the people of Israel, fortunately, never go back.

They never go back to Egypt.

They wanted to go back to Egypt, they were tempted to go back to Egypt, they even found themselves looking back with some sense of nostalgia, believe it or not, even though they were slaves, they longed to go backwards.

Because they were afraid, because they were overwhelmed, whatever it might be, but but thankfully God didn't let them go backwards.

Thankfully, God said, no, no, no, you're gonna move forward, I'm gonna lead you forward, and they end up getting to the promised land.

Takes a lot longer than they thought.

You know, maybe they were thinking a couple months, it was like 40 years.

It's a long time in the wilderness.

But they get there, that's the point.

They arrive at their destination, they make it to the promised land.

Here's what I want us to understand this morning.

There's no such thing as a promised land that doesn't have a wilderness in front of it.

It's just the way life works.

There's no such thing as an amazing experience and an amazing breakthrough that doesn't have some hardship in front of it.

Right now, we're going through the hardship.

Right now, we're going through the wilderness, but here's the deal: the wilderness will end.

And God's promises stand.

And all of us have an opportunity right now to kind of plant a flag in the ground and say, you know what?

I'm not turning back.

Maybe the life before all this happened was was good.

And I'm not saying it wasn't.

Like I'm sure there were most of us are probably like, no, no, my life was pretty good a few months ago.

I'd like to go back to that.

But let me ask a question: is it was it as good as it could have been?

Was your life like at its at its peak?

Is there any more goodness?

Is there any more that your life could have been just a few months ago?

And if the answer is yes, then just trust that that means God has more for you.

Because look, we have a God who's all about giving us more.

Ephesians 3.20 says God can do infinitely more than we can even imagine, than we could even think to ask.

You think about the people of Israel in the wilderness, and their mindset is almost like, man, at least back in Egypt, at least back in Egypt, we we knew what we were getting into every day.

But you will never hear God speak in at least terms.

When you read Scripture, you never hear God say something like, Hey, if you stick with me, at least you'll know this.

That's not our God.

Our God says, hey, do you have any idea how much more I want to bless you with?

Jesus said that that even sinful, normal parents, like all of us who have kids, know how to give good gifts to our children.

How much more does our heavenly Father want to give good things to us?

We don't have an at least God.

We have a how much more God, which means that we should be extremely, extremely hopeful about what's ahead.

Yes, the the past just a few months ago might have been good, but could absolutely be better, and God wants to lead us into that better place.

I believe it with all of my heart that God wants to use this season in our lives, difficult as it may be, to be like a line in the sand, and we can look back at our lives maybe years from now with thankfulness, saying, you know what, that was really hard, but man, God used it to change me.

God used it to give me a brand new perspective, and I was more ready after that season for the life God wanted me to have than I was before it.

That's the desire.

We don't want to go backwards, we want to go forwards.

We're gonna jump back up on stage, and I've got a few takeaways, something practical I think that that will help all of us sort of take this story, take all these concepts, and put it into practice.

That's what practical things are supposed to be be helpful for.

Three three specific takeaways.

Number one, we kind of talked about it a few seconds ago, but but I'll put it this way: the best is never behind you.

The best is is never behind.

That's kind of what nostalgia wants us to believe, right?

That the best is back there somewhere.

The good old days, right?

The best is behind, and everything from here on out is it's not as good as what's ahead.

That's a lie.

When you live with God, the the best is always ahead of you.

The best is always ahead.

Look, even if you're like 85 years old and watching this, the best is ahead of you, not behind you.

Why?

Because believe it or not, this life, this earth as we know it, it's not even ultimately our home.

God has prepared something even greater for us when this life is done.

We see that, for example, in Hebrews.

Hebrews chapter 11, verses 13 through 16.

Hebrews 11:13–16

It's talking about Abraham and many of the people in the Old Testament who believed in the promise of God, even though that promise was going to be after their lifetime, the fulfillment of the promise.

It says, all these faithful ones died without receiving what God had promised them, but they saw it all from a distance, and they welcomed the promises of God.

They agreed that they were no more than foreigners and nomads here on the earth, right?

Not foreigners and nomads in the land that they were living, but but foreigners and nomads here on this earth, in this life.

They said, obviously, people who talk like that are looking forward to a country they can call their own, but if they had meant the country they came from, they would have found a way to go back.

But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.

And that is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a heavenly city for them.

Look, when we follow Jesus, the best is never behind us.

It's never behind us, it's always, always ahead.

And so remember that the best isn't behind, it's ahead.

Keep that in your mind.

That'll help you, that'll help you move forward, that'll help you have an expectation for what God wants to do next.

Number two, don't be dissuaded by a detour.

Don't be dissuaded by a detour.

You might get discouraged by a detour.

Because it's frustrating, right?

It's frustrating when things take longer than they're supposed to.

I'm sure at the beginning of 2020, a lot of us had big plans for this year.

I know I did.

I'm sure at the beginning of this year a lot of us were thinking, man, by summer, you know, I want to see this happen.

Well, here it is, it's almost summer.

And I would I would guess most of our, most of our 2020 plans have been maybe detoured a little bit.

When that happens, when we encounter a detour, when there's a pause in our progress, we tend to get discouraged.

And that's completely normal.

But even if you're discouraged about the detour, don't be dissuaded by it.

Don't don't let the detour convince you just to throw in the towel and go back and say, okay, I guess this is just the way that it is.

I'm gonna lower my expectations.

I'm just I'm going back to Egypt.

I'm going back to where I came from.

No, no, no, don't do that.

The detour just means it's it's gonna take longer.

But if you have if you have a vision for your life, if God's given you a vision for the blessings that He wants to give you that's great enough, then look, if it takes 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, 50 years, so be it.

Don't let a momentary detour dissuade you from seeking out the life that God has prepared for you.

He loves you, he wants to bless you.

You know, stay the course.

The Israelites had to be in the wilderness for 40 years, but when they got to the promised land, that 40-year journey was well worth it.

And if this season right now has put a detour in place when it comes to your hopes, for your plans, for your dreams, I'm really sorry.

I wish it hadn't.

I wish the same for all of us, but the truth is great things are worth waiting for.

And God has great things for you.

Not good things, He has great things for you.

So, detour, let it be what it is, but don't be dissuaded from the detour.

Finally, number three, look to the promises of God, not to the past.

The Israelites were in the wilderness, but they were going after a promise.

God had promised them a land to call their own.

God had promised that they would become a nation.

But when they got in the wilderness, when they got in the hard season, they started, they started to lose sight of the promise and they started looking at the past.

And that's what made them just want to go back because that was familiar.

That was something that they could wrap their heads around.

When you're in a tough situation, don't look to the past, look to the promise.

God has made you promises.

And God always keeps his promises.

In fact, I just want to read a few of these.

After this, we're gonna we're gonna take Lord's Supper together.

So if you want to get some bread, get some juice here in a second, go for it.

I just want to read a few of the promises that God makes to us in Scripture.

This is by no means an exhaustive list.

We would be here a long time if I was reading an exhaustive list, but just think about some of these promises God makes.

Isaiah 40, 29.

He gives strength to the weary, and he increases the power of the weak.

God wants to give you power.

He wants to give you strength.

Deuteronomy 31, 8.

The Lord Himself goes before you, and he will be with you.

He will never leave you nor forsake you.

Do not be afraid, don't be discouraged.

God's never gonna abandon you.

God promises to be with you.

Matthew 6, 31 through 33, Jesus says, Don't worry.

Don't say things like, what are we gonna eat?

What shall we drink?

What shall we wear?

For the pagans run after these things.

Your heavenly Father knows that you need him.

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you.

He promises to give you everything that you need.

That's a promise of God.

Proverbs 3, 5 through 6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your path straight.

God's gonna get you through.

That's a promise that he makes.

Romans 8 32.

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

God's gonna give you everything you need.

It's kind of a repeat of one before, but it's true.

He's gonna give you everything that you need.

Now, that everything you need may not match everything that you want, but it's everything that you need.

Just a few more.

These are so good.

John 8 12, I'm the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Look, you might be in a dark spot right now, right?

Think about what the wilderness must have been like at night for the Israelites.

But God, Jesus Himself, will be the light that gets you through it.

That's a promise.

He will light up your path even when it's dark.

Jeremiah 29, 12.

Not 29.11, that's a popular one.

29.12 is really good too.

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

Think about that.

God promises to listen to you.

Trust that.

Pray.

Let him know what you need right now, and he's gonna listen to you, he's gonna hear you out.

That's a promise that he makes.

I'm gonna finish with this one Romans 10, 9 through 10.

And this is a big one, especially by the way, if you're watching this and you're like, I don't, I don't know if I've really decided to follow Jesus or not yet.

I'm still figuring this whole thing out.

Listen to the promise that he makes to you.

If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, it's with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

Look, salvation basically means total forgiveness, complete and total mercy, grace meaning that you get what you don't even deserve.

You get a restored relationship with God.

You get to live life as one of God's very own sons and daughters, because Scripture says when you put your faith in Jesus, God adopts you as his very own.

You get to live that life.

That's what salvation is.

It's a whole lot more.

It would take us a long time to encapsulate all that goes with salvation.

But the promise is that if you just put your faith in Jesus, you will be saved.

God will be with you in a way that you've never experienced before.

And I want you to know right now, if you're kind of in the wilderness and you don't know what to do, if you're realizing right now that maybe you're not equipped to get yourself out of this or to navigate life in a season like right now, God is absolutely here for you.

He loves you.

He's already given the life of his son just so he can know you.

And all it means for you is to accept him, to put your faith in him, to say, you know what, I believe.

I don't even know what that all means.

I don't even know how to live that out, but I believe.

If you're ready to do that, if you're ready to give your life to Jesus, do us a favor.

Just text the word ready.

R-E-A-D-Y.

Almost spelled it wrong.

R-E-A-D-Y.

Text the word ready to the number that you see on the screen.

And what we're gonna do is we're just gonna reach out to you.

And we're gonna have someone call you just to A, get to know you a little bit, give you a chance to ask some questions, but but just so that we as a church can help you as you as you start out on the first steps of your journey of faith.

We want to help you kind of get your feet underneath you.

We want to pray with you.

We want to we want to celebrate with you because this is the greatest decision you could ever make.

Put your faith in Jesus because he promises, promises to be with you.

Don't look to the past, look to the look to the promise of God.

We're gonna wrap up by taking Lord's Supper.

And so I've got I've got a little piece of bread, I've got some juice, if you've got cookies and milk at home, that works too.

This this little mini meal, it represents a wilderness of sorts that Jesus had to go through himself.

You know, the cross was kind of like Jesus' wilderness.

He was he was working toward a promise.

A promise that Jeremiah, as we read earlier, had written about, this promise of a new relationship with God, of a new covenant, a new way of relating to the God who created us.

Jesus wanted to see that happen.

And so Jesus, he went to the cross.

It was his wilderness, and my son Eli has escaped childcare.

Eli, come here, buddy.

You can do this with me.

It's okay.

I saw him out of the corner of my eye.

He's been like walking up here the whole time.

But you know what, dude, you want to take Lord's Supper with me?

Yes.

He said, yes.

It's all good.

It's all good.

I'm actually kind of glad this happened, this wasn't on stage.

But I look at this guy, he's my youngest, and I love him so much.

And I would do just about anything for him.

And the idea as a father of me allowing him to sacrifice himself just so that other people could experience something that they were meant for, that's a really tough thing for me to even think about.

Because hey, Eli, Eli, I love you.

No, it's all good.

That's what that's what God did for us.

That's what God did.

You want to go?

All right, he's gonna go.

All right, that's what God did for us.

He gave up the life of his one and only son, so that we can know him.

And in order for Jesus to actually fulfill that, he had to go through a tremendous wilderness, a tremendous amount of hardship.

He he had to die on the cross.

And this this bread, it represents his body that was broken for us on the cross.

This juice represents his blood that was spilled for us on the cross.

He went through, he went through the wilderness so that we could experience the promise.

And so with that in mind, let's uh let's let's pray and let's thank him for the bread.

Jesus, thank you so much for this piece of bread and for what it represents.

Your body broken for us on the cross.

We love you.

We need you.

Thank you, Lord, that we get to experience the promise of a restored relationship with you because of what Jesus did for us.

Jesus, thank you.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Let's take the bread.

Same with the juice.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you so much for this cup of juice and for what it represents.

Your blood spilled for us on the cross.

You went through the wilderness so that we could inhabit the promised land, the promise of a restored, right relationship with you where we could just know that we're loved, know that we're forgiven, not even have to think about it, Lord, and we're grateful for that.

Thank you for all you've done.

It's your name we pray.

Amen.