A Land of Milk and Honey (and You)

That working? That's good. Love it when a plan comes together. Welcome to all of you. Good to see all of you here. We've certainly got a full house here, but very glad to have all of you here with us today on God's Holy Day. This is a very special, wonderful time. As we heard about in the special music there, we are forgiven by the Creator, the King of the Universe. That's a wonderful and awesome thing. Thank you very much, Pam, for that special music and to Cheryl also for the very beautiful, offeratory message to our music too. Very, very, very good.

I'd like to start off with a question here for you. I'll tell you up front, I'm not going to answer it, but what do these people have in common? Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, Elijah, John the Baptizer, Jesus Christ, and the Apostle Paul. Again, I won't answer what they have in common right now. I just want you to think about this as we go through the sermon. I'll answer it later in case you haven't figured it out by then, but presumably you will. And it's hard and core. What is the Feast of Unleavened Bread all about? What's it all about? What is its intent? What is its purpose? What are we supposed to learn from it? What are these days designed by our Creator to accomplish? If I had to sum it up, I would say that these days are all about building a relationship with God. Building a relationship with God. How do we do that, though? Well, we do that by two vital things, two vital symbols of these days of Unleavened Bread. We know that the first thing we have to do is to remove the leaven of sin from our lives. It's a very prominent symbol of these days of Unleavened Bread. We are supposed to remove all the leavening from our properties, not to touch, not to taste, not to have anything to do with leavening during this week ahead of us here.

So we are a first to remove sin from our lives. We have to do that to build a relationship with God.

Isaiah 59 says we won't turn there, but it says that our sins have separated us from God and have hidden His face from us so that He will not hear. So obviously we have to remove sin, we have to overcome sin in our lives if we are to have a relationship with our Creator. And avoiding leaven during this seven days of Unleavened Bread reminds us of that fact that we are to avoid and get rid of sin in our lives just as we are to avoid and get rid of leaven during these seven days. And then there's the other side of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is that we are to eat Unleavened Bread during these seven days as well. We are to avoid leavened bread, but we are to partake of Unleavened Bread during this period too. And we know that this teaches us that we are to be partaking of the true bread of life, which is Jesus Christ. So this Feast, I would say, this is why I say it is about building a relationship with God. Because without a relationship with Jesus Christ, we also will not have a relationship with God. I'd like to toss out another question for us to think about during the sermon. And that is this. Do we know God, or do we know about God?

Do we know God, or do we know about God? And there's a difference. There's a very big difference there. In our studies of the Gospels that we've been going through here along the front range, we've been learning a lot about God. And one of the questions that I regularly ask in those studies is, what does this material that we've just read about teach us about God the Father and about Jesus Christ? So it is very important, it's crucial for us to learn about them. After all, how are we going to become like our elder brother, our Savior, our Rabbi, our teacher, our Master Jesus Christ, if we are not learning about Him? As our role model, as our elder brother, who is the express image of the Father? And if we aren't studying about Him, how can we learn what kind of people we are to be?

How can we become like Him if we don't know how He lived, what He taught, what He did under various circumstances, what His habits were, that sort of thing? How can we become like Him if we aren't studying about His life? So it is important for us to know about God, but it's even more important to know God. But how do we get to know God? How do we get to know a being that great, that awesome, that incredible as our Creator? How do we get to know Him? A God so much higher in His thinking, in His ways, in our ways, in our thinking. A God who inhabits eternity. A God who lives in a spirit dimension that we cannot see, dwelling there in glory and majesty and power and might. How do we get to know a God like that? I want you to be thinking about that question, too, as we go through the sermon today. And I'm not saying I have the answers to that, because that would take... that would probably vary for person to person to some extent. And it would probably take a whole series of sermons to even begin to scratch the surface of that topic. But today, I do want to give you some thoughts that might help us answer that question, help understand that.

Another thing we know from Scripture is that the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread are closely linked with the Israelites' journey out of slavery and Egypt and to the Promised Land, its representative of our journey as Christians journeying out of slavery to sin, to our Pharaoh, Satan, the God of this world, and this world to which we are enslaved and journeying to our Promised Land and the kingdom of God. And Passover marked that final plague, after which Pharaoh had had enough and told the Israelites to leave then, and they left Egypt during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which we are observing. And the Apostle Paul, in talking about some of these very same events here that we are commemorating here, says this to us in 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 11.

He says, Now all these things happen to them, to the Israelites, as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So these things happen to them as examples for us. So they're clearly lessons we should learn from the things that the Israelites experienced, what they went through during this time of Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and their journey from Exodus to the Promised Land, things that should be beneficial for us in our walk with God, in our spiritual journey, and our striving to become like Him, and to please, and to serve Him.

I'd like to start today, due to reading in Deuteronomy 8, it's a fairly long section, but I'll just read excerpts from verses 2 through 16. Deuteronomy, as was mentioned earlier, is the final book of Moses, where he is recounting Israel's experiences on that journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.

It was apparently written just in the last few months before they crossed over the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land. Moses, in this book of Deuteronomy, is recounting the different lessons, the different experiences that they went through on that 40-year journey there. Because Moses is not going to go with them into the Promised Land, he is going to be left on the other side, and he will no longer be leading them.

So, in Deuteronomy, he sums up these are his last words, you might say, to the Israelites as his leader. Notice what he says to them. Deuteronomy 8, verses 2, beginning in verse 2, "...and you shall remember that the Eternal your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness to humble you and to test you to know what was in your heart, to know what you're made of, in other words, whether you would keep his commandments or not. So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Eternal." Sound familiar?

Jesus Christ said the same thing when he was in the wilderness, being tested by Satan the Devil. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Continuing down in verse 7, For the Eternal your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey.

And skipping down to verse 11, he says, Then beware that you do not forget the Lord your God, the Eternal your God, when you've gone into this land and been blessed with all these things that you didn't have to create or build for yourselves.

And then continuing on, verse 15, he says, referring to God, who led you through that great and terrible wilderness in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water, who brought water for you out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and that he might test you to do you good in the end. Notice in the last phrase there, he gave them this trial of 40 years of wandering in the desert, dealing with scorpions, heat, hunger, thirst.

Why? To do you good in the end. Quite a remarkable statement. These are God's words through Moses to the Israelites there in the book of Deuteronomy. So to get back to a question I asked earlier, how do we get to know God? How do you get in touch with a God so awesome, so incredible as our God is? How do you and I come to personally relate to a being like that and get to know a God that big?

We could go in a number of different directions with that topic, but what I would like to do is take you to answer that question to begin to address that question. I'd like to take you in the same to the same place that God took Israel into the desert. Into the desert. Now that's hard to do in this auditorium here today because it's hard for us to feel desert. Desert is something you need to feel. For one thing, it's not hot enough here in this auditorium today. If you would think back to perhaps the hottest you've ever been in your life and then crank it up another 10, 15, 20 degrees, you might be getting close to what it would feel like in the desert where God took the Israelites.

For another thing, I assume all of us had plenty to eat and drink last night. I know the people who were here in this auditorium last night did. But think back to the thirstiest you've ever been in your life. The thirstiest you've ever been and multiply that several times over.

And then you'll get a little inkling of what it's like there in the desert. Today, sitting here, we have shade. We don't have the sun beating down on us there. We have comfortable chairs to sit in except for those in the back row where you had to set up metal chairs back there. So we have, we're in pretty comfortable circumstances here today. But until you feel desert, until you experience desert, it's difficult to appreciate and really understand what the Bible teaches in the desert and through the desert. But let's try this afternoon to mentally walk along with God's people, Israel, who spent so much time in the desert. Not just Israel, but others as well.

When people go to Israel, they're usually in for a lot of surprises. And I know some of you out here have gone to Israel, some who are going very soon, leaving tomorrow. And a lot of people are surprised by several things about Israel. First of all, they're surprised usually at the small size of Israel.

Israel is only roughly 150 miles north to south, and about, on average, probably about 40 miles wide east to west. At its narrowest, it's less than 10 miles wide. I'm talking about the nation of Israel today, although ancient Israel wasn't a whole lot bigger than that. At its widest, I think it's about 60, 70 miles, something like that. But on average, about 150 miles north to south and about 40 miles wide. But one of the big surprises, in addition to just the small size of Israel, the small size of, for instance, the Sea of Galilee, people think it's going to be huge, but it's not. It's about eight miles by about 12 miles, something like that. But another big surprise to a lot of people is they go to Israel and they expect it to look like this. And they're kind of surprised when it doesn't. They expect it to be farm country, lush country, like we have here in the United States, or even better. And there is fertile land in Israel, but it's a fairly small percentage of that. Most of Israel, in reality, doesn't look like this, but looks like this. It really does. Those of you who have been there before would recognize that. When I've gone there on my trips, and I've been there three separate times, it's always struck me how little of the promised land is lush and fertile. Much of Israel, as I tell people, is what we out here in the West would call BLM land. We're of land management. It's land that was so poor that the government couldn't even give it away. And that's what a lot of Israel is like. It looks like this. BLM land. So poor you can't grow anything on it. It takes 48 acres to feed a cow. Something like that. But how do we square this with God's promise to take the Israelites to a land flowing with milk and honey? And that phrase, a land or flowing with milk and honey, appears 20 times. In the Old Testament, it's always in reference to the land that God is giving Israel, a land of milk and honey. But what does that mean? We probably have our ideas what it means, but those ideas are probably wrong, as we're going to see through the sermon today.

Now, it does mean that it is a blessed land, and the phrase flowing with milk and honey indicates blessing. Something that is flowing, gushing, overflowing with milk and honey. That does indicate that it is a blessed land. It's not a curse or anything like that. But milk and honey probably means something quite different from what we've thought. First of all, let's start with a little little mental exercise here. If you live in the Middle East, where does your milk come from?

Where does your milk come from? Think about that for a minute. Where does our milk come from? Milk comes out of the carton in the refrigerator from the grocery store. We all know that. But it does not in the Middle East come from cows. There are very few cows in the Middle East. Very few of them there. There have never been very many cows there. In the Old Testament, where you see the word cattle from time to time, we tend to think of cattle out here in the West. In particular, we think of herds of cows. That's cattle. Everybody knows that. But in the Hebrew there, cattle means a herd of domesticated animals. It doesn't say what kind of animals. It could be cows, it could be sheep, it could be goats. In most cases, it's talking about sheep and goats when it uses the word cattle there. So where does milk come from in a Middle Eastern context? Well, it comes from goats. It's goat's milk. And where do goats live in the Middle East? They live in the desert. They live in the desert. Good farmland there is so rare that the farmers just will not put up with a bunch of goats coming through and eating everything in sight. They can't afford that. So goats and sheep are desert dwelling animals there. What about honey? It's a land of milk and honey. Where does the honey come from? Well, honey, we know, comes from bees. That's pretty obvious But what do bees need to produce honey? Well, they need flowering plants. That's pretty obvious to all of us as well. So where do flowering plants grow? Well, they grow in areas that are fertile, that are well watered, that get sufficient rainfall there. It's the land of the farmer.

Areas like Galilee, which we've been talking about quite a bit in our series of studies on the Gospels there. So when God promises the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey, what He is promising them is a land where both the farmer and the land of honey and the shepherd and the land of milk can coexist, can live, and that land there. And that's different from most of the Middle East. Most of the Middle East is one or the other. Most of the Middle East, you've seen the photos of it. You know it's pretty dry. It's the land of milk, the land of goats that live in the desert there. So God did promise that some of the land would be good and fertile like this. It would be good for growing vineyards, wheat, barley, pomegranates, things like that that we saw earlier in the list from Deuteronomy 8. They would get enough rain for crops like that. But the rest of the land would be land for the shepherd, suitable for raising sheep and goats. And most of the Middle East, again, is one or the other. Land for the shepherd or for the farmer. And the promised land would be a land where both could live and carry out their occupations and serve God in that way.

Now the land of milk was also known as the land of faith because there you did not, if you did not have God's blessing, if you did not have God's protection, if God didn't feed you, if God didn't give you water, you just simply wouldn't survive. So it's called the land of faith because it required faith. It required faith in God. And if you were being prepared by God, you were normally in a desert. Let's consider a few examples. The names that I mentioned earlier, Abraham and Sarah were Bedouin. Quite a few new faces here, but where does where Bedouin come from?

Badu in Arabic is desert. Bedouin, from which we get Bedouin, is somebody who lives in the desert.

Abraham and Sarah are Bedouin. They are nomads living in a desert, traveling around in a tent, much like this, with their flocks, their herds, their sheep, their goats, their servants, that sort of thing. Moses, before he led the Israelites out of Egypt, did what? He spent 40 years as a shepherd in the desert. Elijah fled from Jezebel. Where did he flee? He fled into the desert.

John the Baptizer. Where was he living? Where was he baptizing? In the desert. Jesus Christ spent 40 days in the desert, part of that time being tempted by Satan the devil, before he began his public ministry there, preparing himself, strengthening himself, for what lay ahead? We know that, again, the story of the temptation by Satan took place. They're in the wilderness.

The Apostle Paul, when he is first called, what happens to him? It's easy to forget about that, but Jesus Christ takes him into the desert of Arabia and trains him personally for three years in the desert. So this is the answer to the question, what do these names have in common? They all spend considerable time in the desert, being refined by God, being prepared for the work that he had for them to do that. And we see this as a regular theme there in the Bible. And many of the great giants of faith that we read about in Scripture spent considerable time.

They're in the desert. Now, in contrast, the land of honey, which we've mentioned there, is also clearly, in biblical terms, is a place where God rewards faith with prosperity. An easier life, you might say, where you've got regular rainfall, where you have fertile soil, where you can grow your crops, your grain, your wheat, your barley, your olives, your pomegranates, your grapes, that sort of thing. So you move out of a place, the desert, the land of milk, into the land of honey, which is a blessed land, a fertile land, a rich land there. You move out of a place where you had to rely on God to a land where essentially everything is prepared there for you. There, that's again, is part of what God was promising the Israelites there. And once they move to the other land, the land of honey, the more fertile lands, what was different then? Well, another thing that was different is there you would be in contact with the other nations, the other nations around. You would interact with them. You wouldn't do that very much in the desert, where you're out by yourself. So God intended the Israelites in the land of honey to be the right kind of example for the nations around them. We've talked quite a bit about the famous international highway that ran right through Galilee, ran through the coastal plain of Israel and down to Egypt and so on. And land ran right through the heart of Israel. And God placed his people there at the crossroads of the world to be an example to the other nations. We talked about that quite a bit in our series of studies on the Gospels. But the problem, though, with that is that when you left the land of milk and moved to the land of honey, where everything is so good, where you were prosperous, what happened? And we see this in the history of Israel and Judah. They forgot God.

They did the exact same thing that Moses warned them against there in Deuteronomy 8. They forgot their God. They thought that they had gained all of this on their own. And they turned to idolatry. They turned to the other gods of the land. And ultimately, things got so bad that they had to be taken away into captivity, exiled by the empires of Assyria and Babylon. And Israel was constantly tempted to think in that way. They brought into those pagan religions there of the other peoples there in the land of honey. And this became a constant trap for them. Because the land was fertile and productive, they simply lost sight of the need to rely on God. They didn't have that bond with them that they had had earlier. And ultimately, they simply became no different from the other peoples around them. The peoples that God had driven out of the land before them.

And God said through His prophets, you became worse than the nations that I drove out before you.

And in turn, they were driven out as well. And there's an obvious lesson for us there that we need to be sure that we always have our trust and faith in God and never lose sight of our need for Him. Lest we fall into the same trap that they did, thinking that we've got it all. We don't need God. It was a fatal mistake for those nations, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. But let's look more closely at the land of milk, the desert land. Here's a satellite photo here. Depending on how you want to define the borders of Israel, here's the Dead Sea right here. Here's Sinai Desert. Here's Egypt with the Nile River where they came from, the land of Goshen up in here.

The Sinai, the Jordan Valley right here. Saudi Arabia down here. Jordan over here.

Syria and Lebanon up here. And basically the land of Israel, the land that God promised them, is right in this area. It's about 70% desert. About 70% desert. So if God gave the Israelites a land that is 70% desert and had them spend 40 years in the desert, is there a lesson there for us? Well, there should be. God doesn't do things by chance. God is not a God of chance. And if there's a lesson there for physical Israel, there's a lesson there for a spiritual Israel as well. And a number of deserts are mentioned there in the scripture. It's typically translated wilderness, which could always be another synonym for desert. But there's the Sinai desert. There's the wilderness of Zinn, the wilderness of Peron, the Judean wilderness, or Judah wilderness. Not that far from Jerusalem. But the desert is a very intense experience. It is hot. The heat is absolutely relentless. It never quits. Never gives up.

The sun is hot. The air is hot. The wind is hot. The dirt is hot. The rocks are hot. Everything is hot. Everything is hot. The terrain itself in that area, this is from the Sinai, very rugged, very steep mountains, very deep valleys, gullies, waddies there. And also, very soft sand in some places, which would make traveling on foot very difficult to travel through that area. And soft sand there. Imagine thousands of Israelites trying to work their way around this desert wilderness there across a landscape like this for 40 years. It's amazing that this land can really sustain any kind of life at all. And yet, that is the place where God wanted his followers to come.

It's very clear, the names, the list of names, the giants of faith that I mentioned earlier. God worked with them there. What did they have in common? God worked with all of them in the desert.

It's an obvious lesson there, for us there. They were people of great faith, but they were also people who spent a lot of time in the desert, in an environment like this. I'd like to shift gears now for a few minutes here and let's reflect on a few aspects or a few lessons from the story of Israel's journey in the desert and a few conclusions we can draw from that.

The first one I'd like to mention here is a lesson from Israel's journey in the desert is that it was easier to take Israel out of Egypt than it was to take Egypt out of Israel. It's easier to take Israel out of Egypt than it was to take Egypt out of Israel.

What do I mean by that? What does that mean? Think about the great miracles it took to get the Israelites freed from slavery there in Egypt. It took the tin plagues, water turning to blood, a plague of frogs, of lice, gnats, of flies, the plague on the livestock, the plague of darkness, and finally the great plague of the killing of the firstborn of the Egyptian. Not just the people, but the livestock as well. And then there was the miraculous parting of the Red Sea there with the Israelites passing through safely.

And then the Egyptians, Pharaoh and his armies, followed them and ended up drowning there in the sea as well. And then God continued to perform great miracles for them, as we heard about earlier today. But what happened when Moses went up to Mount Sinai and was gone longer than they expected?

When he didn't come back at the time they expected? What happened? What did the Israelites do?

We know the story. They immediately turned to worshipping the gods that they had just left.

Gods they worshipped for generations. They're in Egypt. They made a golden calf. Why a calf?

Well, because bulls, cows and calves were all sacred in the Egyptian religion. They were all symbols. Various Egyptian gods and goddesses had these animals. Again, cows, bulls and calves as their symbols there. So they're just going right back into their Egyptian religion there. The gods they were familiar with. Sadly, those Israelites who came up out of Egypt never really learned to believe God and to have faith in Him. I'd like to pick up the story now sometime later in Numbers 14.

We'll summarize from verses 22 through 34. God says here, How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who complain against me?

I have heard the complaints which the children of Israel make against me.

Skipping down to verse 29, The carcasses of you who have complained against me shall fall in this wilderness, every one from twenty years old and above. Except for Caleb, the son of Jephuna, and Joshua, the son of Nun, you shall by no means enter the land which I swore I would make you dwell in. They're not going to go into the Promised Land, in other words, is what He's saying. Continuing in verse 31, But your little ones whom you said would be victims, they were saying you brought us and our children up to die in the wilderness, but God says, No, your children aren't going to die. They're not going to be victims, as you said, but I will bring them in, and they shall know the land which you have despised.

Skipping down to verse 33, And your son shall be shepherds in the wilderness, forty years, and bear the brunt of your infidelity until your carcasses are consumed in the wilderness, according to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days. For each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know my rejection.

So again, the bottom line here is that it was far easier to take Israel out of Egypt than it was to get Egypt out of the Israelites. In fact, in the end, it proved impossible to do that.

Because out of all of those people who came up out of Egypt, those twenty and above, only two, Joshua and Caleb were allowed to enter the Promised Land, to inherit that great promise.

They alone had the faith, the belief, the obedience that God wanted, only two, and only two of them, and all the rest had too much Egypt in them. Too much Egypt in them, too much unbelief, too much lack of faith, too many wrong ideas about God. And God couldn't get the Egypt out of them. And consequently, over forty years, they had to die off and be replaced by their children and grandchildren, who did have faith, who did believe God, who did obey God.

And as it says, we just read, were shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, who learned to believe God and trust God. A second aspect of the story to reflect on is an interesting one.

Why did God choose the route that he chose for the Israelites? Let's take a look at our satellite photo here, just a minute ago, that we showed just a minute ago. How far is it from Egypt to the Promised Land? About three hundred miles. Think about that. God could have used the Via Mars that we've talked about again that ran right along the coast. Here's Egypt. This is the land of Goshen over here, very fertile land, watered by the Nile, watered by the canals. The Via Mars ran up through here, through Israel, and on up and eventually over to Babylon, to Damascus, up in Syria, to Babylon, way out over here, to the other empires of the north here. About three hundred miles. Nice road, level road, not mountains in the way. There's water along the way. There's some farming along the way. So it wouldn't have had a lack of water, lack of food, that kind of thing. God could have led them that way easily. Three hundred miles, if you walk three hundred miles a day, which most people could do rather easily, you're there in about three months, covering that three hundred miles. If you only did a mile a day, you'd easily be there in a year, very easily there, taking breaks for Sabbath and Holy Days and so on.

And all again, all along the way, there's water, there's foodie, smooth road to follow, very few mountains, that sort of thing. And yes, there were Philistines there. They were the ones who inhabited this coastal area there and they would give Israel grief for many years later on in the period of the Judges. But God is bigger than the Philistines.

What did God do with the other nations? The Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Amorites, and others? He drove them out before the Israelites. So the Philistines were no problem. God could have done the same thing with them. But instead, God chose to lead them into the heart of one of the most rugged, harsh environments, and He were on earth.

And yes, they came out of Egypt, and Egypt had its deserts, but they weren't living in the desert area in Egypt. They were living in this lush area up here, not out in the desert. So God brings them out into the desert, and what is their reaction? They haven't seen something like this before. They haven't experienced that before. So as Exodus 16, verses 2 and 3 tell us, this is just one month into their journey, and what do they say? The whole community of Israel spoke bitterly against Moses and Aaron. Oh, that we were back in Egypt, they moaned. It would have been better if the eternal had killed us there, at least there we had plenty to eat. But now you've brought us out into this desert to starve us to death. What's the point? Again, we see here the lack of faith, the lack of trust, the lack of a relationship with God. The point is that God could have easily done it another way, in a much shorter period of time, on a much easier route, and a time, in a manner that wouldn't take 40 years to get them to the Promised Land. But God didn't. He chose to do it another way, a way that was not the easy way. And there's a lesson in that story, which we'll understand a little bit later on. A third aspect of this story to reflect on is that the deeper they got into the desert, the greater and more common were the miracles. Initially, there were the miracles, again, of the 10 plagues there. Then there was a dividing of the Red Sea. As I covered in a sermon a couple of years ago, we read the account there in Exodus, and it seems like all of these plagues hit right back to back to back. Well, actually, read it more carefully. They were spread out over at least several months, about five months minimum, there. But as they moved deeper and deeper into the desert, into this harsh, unforgiving environment, the miracles are happening daily. God sends quail because they're wanting flesh to eat. God sends them manna, as we heard about earlier, every day. Manna, every day, except on the Sabbath, and gave them a double portion on Friday. There as well, God purifies springs in the desert that are poisonous to drink, bitter springs that they can't drink from. And God purifies them. And finally, God is actually bringing water, fresh water, cool water, gushing out of the rocks in the desert there. And God has to do these miracles, has to provide them food, has to provide them water, because if He doesn't, they're going to die in the wilderness. What's the point? The point is that God had to challenge them, and to get them out of their comfort zone big time. Get them out of their comfort zone to work with them, to begin to work with them. And He does the same with us.

He's got to call us out of our environment, call us out of our slavery to the world and its system.

Got to take us, essentially, into a place where He can work with us, where He can become a people of faith, a people who trust Him, a people who obey Him. That sort of thing. God does the same things with us. And the further we get out of our comfort zone, the deeper we get into the deserts of life, the more we are forced into challenging situations and circumstances where we have to make choices, choices as to whether we'll believe God, whether we'll obey God, whether... and the more that we do that, the more we see God at work in our lives. And the more we see God at work, the more He is at work in our lives. One other fourth point I want to mention here regarding this, and what was the result of these things? What was the result of these three aspects we've talked about earlier? What did they lead to? What was the end goal of that? We talked earlier about how God had to let that entire first generation die off. Everyone age 20 and above that came out of Egypt had to die off in the desert. They were just too stubborn, too rebellious, too lacking in faith, too disobedient, too lacking in trust for God to have a relationship with them. He found out that He simply could not work with them. Now, did that destroy God's plan for working with Israel? No. God has a plan B. And He just simply started working with their children, their grandchildren, and stand there. So, going from being unable to have a relationship with Israel because of their faithlessness, of their lack of belief, lack of trust, what does a relationship change to with the next generation? Let's notice something in Jeremiah 2. In verse 2, this is from the New Living Translation. We saw earlier how Israel viewed their time in the wilderness, but how did God view His time with Israel in the wilderness? This is what the Eternal says, I remember how eager you were to please me as a young bride long ago. How you loved me and followed me even through the barren wilderness. Quite remarkable. What is God saying here? He's saying here that he and Israel grew to love one another. He's saying that their time together was essentially a honeymoon, where Israel, as his bride, loved him and followed him. And he is the husband, protected her, watched over her, provided for her, gave her food, water, everything that they needed during that period there in Israel. It was their honeymoon. They loved each other. They grew into a very deep, loving relationship. Where? In the desert, in the wilderness there, in the desert. They built this amazing relationship together. What is it about desert that allows these things to happen?

So again, this is the point of this, that God and Israel, in contrast to how they started out, ended up very different. Ended up in a very deep and loving and close relationship there. So another aspect of this is that God likes, you might even say, God loves to spend time with his people in the desert. Bringing them into the desert, getting to know them, getting to build a relationship with them. But why is that? What is it about the desert that allows that to happen? As I mentioned before, a month ago, before in our sermon at Combined Services, I talked about how God uses pictures a lot. Gives a lot of pictures to teach us different spiritual lessons and principles. And in life, sometimes we are in the land of milk and at times we are in the land of honey. Sometimes we are in conditions where things go smoothly in our lives and sometimes life is not so smooth. Life is like a desert. At times, desert is a picture. A picture God provides of difficult times, of painful times that we all have to walk through in life.

And deal with painful, hurting issues, a death in the family, the death of a loved one, a serious illness, disease, something like that. Maybe break up of a relationship. Maybe job problems, loss of a job, economic hardship, losing some of your possessions, something like that. Family problems, spiritual problems, our deserts in life can be a number of things.

Any number of things. Some are big, some are small, some are terrible. Some are not so terrible. But they are all things that we experience in life. When we go through the tough times in life, some of you today probably brought your desert with you. I know you did. Because I've talked with some of you over recent weeks and months and I know the deserts that you're in. And your friends know, too. Again, a severe illness, a loved one who's passed away or may not have much time left, a job that may be going to disappear tomorrow or next week, a husband or wife who doesn't seem to love you that much anymore, maybe children who don't want to come to church services, who are drifting away and going down a wrong path that you know is harmful for them. And you want to stop it. These are serious deserts that we face in life and we all do.

Some, on the other hand, maybe aren't in a desert right now but are in a fertile field of wheat, of barley, a fertile vineyard of grapes, that sort of thing. But you know what?

They probably got there through the desert, too.

Had to go through a desert to get there. They remember those scorching times, those hot times when you think and you cry out to God, I just don't think I can take it anymore!

I need your help! We've been there. We've done that. We've done that.

And remember that the promised land is 70% desert.

That's not to say that our life is going to be 70% desert. I hope not!

Sometimes it goes on for months, weeks, years on end, maybe, where you feel like you're in the desert and there's no way out. But hopefully that's not the case. But God says that when we are in the tough times, whether we got there because of something stupid, something really dumb that we did that brought ourselves into the desert, or whether God has allowed us or brought us to the desert because we needed to learn things that we could learn no other way, the desert is when and where we find God. We don't find God in the land of honey. We tend to forget God when we're in the land of honey. So there are times when we have to spend time in the desert, in the land of milk.

Times when we have to learn beyond the shadow of a doubt that if God doesn't take care of us, we're going to perish. We're just not going to make it. And I'm sure we've all seen that happen to other people as well. Let's look at some examples from Scripture that point to this reality. There are dozens of desert lessons in the Bible. I just was trying to whittle this down into a manageable size and have three that I'd like to share with us today. They all point to the importance of knowing God and trusting and having faith in God. They all cover the same theme but from totally different pictures, totally different lessons from the desert to teach us spiritual lessons about how to cope, how to rely on God in the desert. Now the first one, though, that I'd like to talk about is honey. What's honey got to do with the desert? Those of you who are sitting on the ends of the rows, let's see over here on this side and on this side of the aisle, the inside on the outside, you'll notice some paper plates under there. Pull that out from under there.

And what I would like you to do is take that and pass it down the row. And each of you take one of the little cups in there. Hopefully nobody's stepped on your plate but pull it out. Take one and pass it down. Like each of you to take one of those. Just hold it for a minute there because I want to mention a couple of things. And when you're done, you can just stick your cup back down and we'll collect those later here. Did you ever realize that the Bible says that God is like honey?

God is like honey. Why? Well, because in the Middle East and biblical times there was no sugar.

There was no sugar cane. There was no high fructose corn syrup. Nothing like that. Or anything to provide a sweet taste for your food. The only sweet thing that they knew in biblical times was honey.

It was their natural sweetener there. And honey was scarce because if you're in a land that's 70% desert, there aren't going to be a whole lot of beehives. So honey was scarce. It was prized. It was real delicacy there. A wonderful sweet treat that was so precious and so scarce that the Bible writer said, that's got to be what God tastes like.

Scares and sweet, delightful to the taste. And notice two verses from the Psalms, Psalm 34 and verse 8. God says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste God and see that he's good.

What does he taste like? What does his word taste like? Psalm 119, 103, Psalm 119. It's a continuous praise to God's word. And it says, how sweet are your words to my taste. Sweeter than honey to my mouth. Take that honey. Either dip your finger in it or stick your tongue in, lick it out, whatever you prefer. Does God taste like that to you?

Does his word taste like honey to you? That's what Scripture says. Taste and see that God is good.

How sweet are your words to my taste. Sweeter than honey to my mouth.

It's really a profound lesson there. Again, a profound picture. God teaches us with pictures, helping us to understand things. You know, it's harder for us Americans to to really taste the sweetness because so much of our food is already packed with sugar and sweeteners and all that kind of thing. But in biblical times, this was the only sweet thing they knew. It's the only sweet thing in their diet. So we wouldn't understand the sweetness to the level that they would in those times. But again, does God taste like honey to you? Does his word, his word sitting there on your lap, taste that sweet to you? Does it? It's a picture of what it means to begin to know God, to have a relationship with God. Now let's notice something else that ties in with honey. Why did I start with honey when we're going to be talking about desert pictures? Well, here's a desert road.

And it doesn't look like much of a road, but it is. And this is what walking in the desert is like.

On life's pathways, there are stones. Some are small, like gravel. Some are basketball-sized. Some are maybe waist-high. Some are as big as cars in your path or as big as houses in your path.

And you can't step over them. You've got to scramble your way around. You've got to climb over them. Maybe go to great lengths to get around some of the rocks, the boulders that are in our paths at time. And this is what life is like. Those rocks represent the things in life that cause us to stumble and to fall. I'm not talking about stumbling in the sense of sinning, but stumbling because these obstacles trip us up. They hold us back. They keep us from moving forward, as we should be. What is your path like in life? What's it like? Maybe it's filled with a lot of little stones, little gravel-sized things. You have to work with a fellow employee who's just a real pain in the neck or other parts of the anatomy. Maybe they just drive you crazy with their idiosyncrasies or something like that. Maybe your young kids are at an age where they're constantly fighting, picking on each other, and it just drives you nuts sometimes. There. Maybe you have a relationship with somebody that's just not working right. And those things hurt, but you just keep going. You keep plugging away. And then there are the bigger stones that you have to deal with. Maybe somebody you love is choosing a path that deeply hurts you because you know it's not good for them. Maybe one of your children is in a period of resentment or rebellion against you. Maybe you're having problems with other people at work. Again, maybe things like your job won't be there next week. Someone you love has only weeks or days or months to live. And you have to deal with that. Maybe you've just had to stand before an open coffin recently and realize that a big part of your life is gone. Those are the boulders in life. And we all have to deal with them at one time or another. And in those times, we can just cry out to God saying, I can't take it anymore. I just can't deal with it anymore.

Will you take these boulders out of my path? We don't like rocks in our path. They hurt.

They're uncomfortable. And we want God to come along and to sweep the rocks out of our path, to give us a nice paved trail there with some nice oak trees for shade, bench to sit down and rest every now and then, a nice sparkling stream along our rocky path.

But how often does he do that? Sometimes he does. And when he does, thank him. Praise him for that.

But the Bible doesn't say the path is going to get easier. Listen to Psalm 81, verses 13 and 16. "'O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways.' Verse 16, "'He would have fed them also with the finest of wheat, and with honey from the rock, I would have satisfied you.'" Honey from the rock, from the rocks in your path. What does that mean?

What it means is that the sweetness of God in the desert isn't so much when things are good, but a lot of times we taste the sweetness of God. We find the sweetness of God when things are hurting, when things are difficult, when things are painful. God wants us to know Him. He wants us to taste Him. He wants us to experience Him. He wants us to have a relationship with Him.

Again, a purpose, an underlying purpose of this Feast of Unleavened Bread. He knows in our human tendency, when everything is going great, that we forget about Him.

We don't need God when everything is going great, so He has to bring us into the deserts of life, to feel Him, to experience Him, to taste Him.

He knows that when we're human, we tend to think we all did it ourselves. I got the new job. I got the promotion. I got the bonus. I got the scholarship, but it's not that.

It's God. It's God, not ourselves. And we lose sight of God. And so He gives us the desert times.

He gives us the rocks in our paths. And when He does, the sweetness of God is, as we just read there in Psalms, found in the rocks, the rocks that are in our path. It doesn't make the rocks not hurt. It doesn't make the rocks shrink or disappear.

But it helps us learn that there's enough of God in the rocks that we can keep going when we taste His sweetness, when we experience Him in those trials.

And also understand that the honey isn't going to make the experience easy.

If God is in a rock, what it means is that as you face those rocks, big as they are or small as they are, there will be enough God there to help you take another step, to help you on that path, that path to the Promised Land. There's also a Jewish rabbinical saying they understand what honey in the rock means. And they say, be careful when you ask God for honey because He has a tendency to put it in rocks. And that's true. That's true. God has a tendency to put honey in rocks. So be careful what you pray for. Sometimes He'll give you what you ask for.

Let's take a look at another picture in the desert. We talked about the rocky path. Now we'll talk about a particular type of shrub or bush called a broom tree. A tree is somewhat misleading because these are much smaller than that. Typically no higher than a person. Most of them are only about waist-high, knee-high, something like that. And it's called a broom tree because the bedow and the desert dwellers break off the ends of it and use it like a broom to sweep out their tints there. They don't have Walmarts out in the desert to buy a broom, so they take what's available in the environment there. Now in the desert it gets incredibly hot. Temperatures there in the Negev, the Sinai, Judah wilderness can easily reach 120 degrees or more. And in the heat of the day when the sun is at its highest, and the heat can be so intense that if you stay out in at any length of time at all, you just get a pounding headache from the heat because of the heat affecting your brain there. It's very brutal. So in the middle of the day what the bedowen, what the desert dwellers will do is they will find one of these broom trees. And because they're not very big, what they will do is they will lay down, as you see from this little man, with just their head and their chest in the shade of the broom tree. Because in the desert an incredible amount of heat, we probably know this from winter time, we get outside in snowy weather, icy weather, without a hat on. What do we do? We get cold in a hurry because of all the body heat. We're losing through our head. And the same thing is true in the opposite direction in the desert. In the desert you are absorbing heat through your body. So the bedowen have learned that you go and you put your your head, your shoulders, your chest in the shade during the hottest part of the day and that will enable you to survive that 120 degree heat and to carry on until later on in the afternoon when the sun has moved further in the sky and a cooler afternoon breeze will start coming through. And then you can go up and go about your business shepherding or whatever there. And so this is a very common practice there. There are actually two Bible stories that relate directly to this. One is Hagar and her son when Abraham sent them away into the desert. What does Hagar do with her son? She goes and lays him down under a, don't recall the word, I think it says a bush or a shrub, depending on the translation you look at. She's laid her son down under one of these broom trees in the desert. And there are a lot of them in that area where that story happened there.

And then Hagar goes off in the distance because her son is dying. Her son there, so she doesn't want to see him die. So her son Ishmael, I'm not sure if I mentioned that, but yes, she goes away and probably goes under another broom tree herself to die. And we know the story that God sends an angel who wakes her up and said, no, that's not the way this is going to play out. You're going to save your son and make of him a great nation, the Arab nation there. And another biblical image is Elijah, when he fled from Jezebel into the desert, the desert way down the Negev, as it's called today, and then even into the Sinai. Apparently, and what did he do? It actually says in the New King James Version, he went and he laid down under a broom tree. It's the exact same thing here. It's called Rotem in Hebrew. And what does Elijah say? He says, I've had it, God. I want to die. Can't you just kill me now? I don't have to keep going through those trials. Some of us can identify with that. And what does God do? He intervenes. He says, no, Elijah, you're not done yet. I've still got a lot of work for you to do. So again, that doesn't happen. But the image is actually quite profound there. And the image is this, that life is like a desert and like a desert, sometimes the heat is so intense that it can become unbearable. We just don't think we can take it anymore. But let's turn to Psalm 121 in verse 6. Famous Psalm, you've probably read this before and recognize the phrase here. And this is strictly a desert image. Notice what it says here, the sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. What's it got to do with the moon? We know the desert's hot, but the desert's actually very bitterly cold at night, too. Because there's nothing to hold the heat in and it radiates away. So there's danger of heat stroke and dying of heat in the desert during the day. And there's danger of dying of exposure, hypothermia in the desert at night. It's a harsh environment here. And of course, the people reading this psalm at this time would have perfectly understood the dangers of both night and day in the desert there. And think about your life. Think about the times when the heat or the pressure on you is so great that you just want to give up. You just don't feel you can take another step. You don't think you can handle another crisis. You can't handle the heat anymore. Have you ever been there? I think probably most of us here sitting here have been there. Have experienced that. And if we haven't yet, your time's coming. If Christ doesn't return before then. What we would like to do in a circumstance like that is to tell God that, you know, please send me a cloudy day so I don't feel the heat anymore. But that's not the picture. That's not the picture. God doesn't say He's going to cool the temperature down to 68 degrees, give us a nice cool breeze to come along, that sort of thing. What does He say that He will do? Hold out your right hand.

Try not to hit the person in front of you in the back of the head, but hold out your right hand.

Now let's read verse 5.

Excuse me.

Yeah, verse 5 here. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. How close is your right hand to you? That's how close God is when you're in the desert.

That's the picture we're being given here in the psalm. God is that close to us.

He is our shade, the shade at our right hand. How does God provide shade for you and for me? Generally through other people.

Generally through other people. Hopefully your spouse, your family, your relatives, your friends, the other members of the church.

How many of you have been shaded in your hot times, in your desert times in life, by those people? Those people who love you and whom you love?

How about you? How often have you been shaded to other people?

You know, as a church we're supposed to be a deeply loving body, a body growing together to become like Jesus Christ.

Do you allow other people to provide that shade for you?

And do you, in turn, provide shade for other people? And the trials and the crises they're going through in life?

Something for us to think about there.

We'll close with one other picture from the land of the desert and from the world of the shepherd.

I'd like you to look out on this landscape here. This is sheep and goats. You may not be able to see it terribly clearly there. It's a mixture of sheep and goats, which is very typical there for the shepherds here in the Middle East. And you look at that picture and is there an obvious question that comes to your mind?

It did to me. What are they eating?

What do they eat in the desert? How do they live?

What are they doing? What's going on here? I'll tell you a story about this. About an American. I've mentioned him before. I've learned a lot of this stuff that I'm sharing with you from him. He has studied an awful lot, years, several decades, about the culture and the history of biblical times and Israel and so on. I heard this story from him. And years ago, this is probably 30, 40 years ago by now, he was in Israel on a college-level study program. And part of the program to study about life in the desert was to spend several nights out in the desert there. And there are several people in this group. And he tells a story about how they're out camped out in a desert environment like this. And morning comes and hears noise and rustling and so on off on a hillside nearby about like this. And he wakes up and he pokes his head out from under the blanket and looks out and sees these sheep and goat moving across the hillside there. And what he would do is he was watching them. He would see them stop and stick their head down at a rock.

And take a bite and move another three or four steps to the next rock. Stick their head down.

Bring your head back up. Take another four steps to the next rock. Stick your head down.

And he's wondering, what in the world is going on? Are these rock-eating sheep?

As he puts it, and he's sitting there just wondering what in the world is going on. And nearby, a couple of people over, is an Israeli about the same age in the same program who wakes up about the same time. So he says, hey, what's going on? What are those sheep eating? And the guy laughs because, you know, here this guy was this American. I didn't know what sheep ate. But anyway, he tells a story that the Israeli responded to him in Hebrew. And this man knew knew Hebrew at that time. And the man explained that in the afternoon in the desert area, this is about 30 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. And in the late afternoon, of course, of course, the land, as I mentioned, is very hot during the daytime. The rocks are hot, the sand is hot, everything's hot. And in the afternoon, this breeze comes in with some moisture from the Mediterranean. And it passes over those hot rocks. And overnight, enough moisture condenses out of that moist air that just a few drops of water will form on that rock and drip off the sides and literally overnight, a few blades of grass will spring up at these rocks like that. 4-5 inches high, just a few blades. And that's it. It doesn't rain in this area maybe once every other year or something like that. But that's what the sheep were eating. It looked like they were eating rocks. But no, they're eating the grass that has sprung up overnight around these rocks there. And so the shepherd, what the shepherd was doing, the shepherd's there that he saw that morning, were bringing the sheep through in the morning and knew where to go, which hillsides would get these breezes, the moisture-laden breezes there, and where their sheep could get a mouthful of grass. And at this rock, they'd move to the next rock and get another few blades of grass and so on. And that's what kept them alive. And all they would get is just one little mouthful of a few blades of grass at a time. And they would move on. So shepherding is taking those sheep from one tuft of grass to the next to the next. So the American student who was narrating this said he asked the Israeli there, what do you call this? And the Israeli responded in Hebrew, quoting scripture, which is very common for religious Jews there to explain things. And he said, the Lord leads me into green pastures. Does it sound familiar?

Psalm 23, 1 and 2. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. I've read the Bible for 50-something years, and I always thought green pastures were this. Big fat sheep and belly-deep grass munching away contentedly, not a care, not a worry in the world. And we can think that when God, rereading Psalm 23, we can think that when God calls us, everything is going to be like this. That God is going to make us lie down in green pastures. And we're going to be in this belly-deep grass, and we can just lay there. Just, you know, every now then reach over and grab this nice lush mouthful of this verbant fresh green grass.

But how many of you had a life like that?

Don't have to show your hands, but I'd like to meet you afterwards if that's the way your life has been, because that sure hasn't been the story for me. I know, and most of us that I know.

But this is a desert image. This is a desert image. The desert environment is the green pastures of a shepherd. How does that change your view of this Psalm? And there's much more. That whole Psalm, I'll probably give a whole sermon on it sometime. The whole thing is desert. Desert image after desert image after desert image. Unless you know how, where the sheep are, where the goats are in the Middle East, you totally miss the point of that whole Psalm there. It's a desert image.

But again, is life like that for us? Well, maybe sometimes it is for brief periods, but that's certainly not the norm. As we've talked about today, life has its ups and downs. It has its rocky past, its blistering hot sun, and sometimes we just don't know whether we'll make it or not.

But look at these sheep. Are they worried? No, they've got a mouthful of grass.

They've got a mouthful of grass. And not only that, but they have something else as well.

They have a shepherd. They have a shepherd. And it's the shepherd's job to know where the green pastures are. To know where to take the sheep so that they can get that mouthful of grass.

And another mouthful. And another mouthful. And a good shepherd knows where to find enough grass to keep the whole flock fed. Now, if the sheep get lost, they stray away and don't follow the shepherd. What happens? Well, then they wander off into the desert and they may well starve to death or be taken by an animal or something like that. And they will die. But this is Psalm 23. These are the green pastures of the shepherd. Maybe you don't believe me. Maybe you look at this picture and you say, but it's not green! Well, it's not. But it's not pasture! No, it's not! Not by North American standards. But in the Middle East, this is green pasture. This is green pasture.

It's a picture. It's a desert image. And in the Middle East, the picture is, as long as you have a shepherd and as long as you follow the shepherd, when the grass is gone that you're eating on at that moment, your shepherd will lead you to more green pastures. A mouthful here and a mouthful there to keep you fed, to keep you alive. That's a picture of life in the land of milk, the desert.

All God has ever promised us is green pastures. Think about that. What does that mean? That means that we have just enough to deal with what we need in life at this moment. We have everything we need at this moment. And if we have more than that, if we have truly everything we need, real abundance, that sort of thing, why do we need God?

Why do we need God then? We don't need Him. But if God is your shepherd, then whatever it is that comes into your life at any given moment, an hour from now, a day from now, a week or a month from now, if you follow the shepherd and if you are close to Him, there will be pastures enough to deal with whatever He gives you, whatever comes your way.

It's not to say don't plan for the future. I'm not saying that at all.

But it does mean that we have to learn to trust God. We have to learn the lesson that Israel did not learn, the lesson of faith, the lesson of obedience. They never learned it. And what happened? They all died out in the desert. God simply could not work with them. And their bodies were scattered over the wilderness for 40 years. We have to learn to have faith in our shepherd, like these sheep and goats following their shepherd, knowing their shepherd is going to watch over them, is going to protect them, is going to lead them to green pastures, where they will have enough. That's why God at times wants you and me in the desert.

Not because it's easy, but because it isn't easy. Because it isn't easy. And the result of being in the desert with God is that we come to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that unless He provides for us, unless He cares for us, unless He protects us, we're not going to make it. It's the lesson of faith, the lesson of trusting God, the lesson of knowing God that Israel failed to learn.

In closing, let's read again Deuteronomy 8 verses 2 and 3, part of what I read earlier.

And you shall remember that the eternal your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, He allowed you to hunger. He fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.

I asked earlier in this sermon in the introduction, do we know God or do we know about God?

If you want to come to know the King of the universe and not just know about Him, the desert is a good place to start.