The End of Wilderness
Sycamore Creek Church
March 24/25, 2013
Numbers 13:25-30
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

What is the longest “wilderness” you’ve been in?  I’m not talking about a literal desert.  I’m talking about a state of feeling like you’re in the wilderness.  Several long wilderness moments in my own life come to mind.  One night when I was a student at Wheaton College, a suburb of Chicago, I drove down to Chicago to meet some friends and watch a concert.  It was raining, and I was running late, so I didn’t pay much attention to where I was parking.  I just pulled in the first open spot I saw.  When the concert was over at 2AM, and I came out to drive home, my car was gone.  I looked up and saw a sign posted telling me where it had been towed to.  I used the last bit of cash I had to take a taxi to the impound.  The impound wouldn’t take a debit card, so I walked a mile in the rain to the closest ATM.  The ATM wouldn’t take my debit card either.  I broke down.  At 3AM in the morning, I called my dad in Indianapolis. I woke him up with my sobs on the other line.  I didn’t know what to do.  He helped me get my bearings and make a plan which included calling my roommate and having my roommate get the $100 in cash my dad had just sent me as a gift and that I had left in an envelope on my desk.  The only problem was that my roommate was at hockey practice at 3AM.  They rented ice when it was cheapest.  So I had to leave a message.  There was a Dunkin Doughnuts within sight so I went there and scraped up enough change to buy a hot chocolate that I nursed for the next couple of hours waiting for my roommate to get out of hockey practice and bring me the money.  It was one of the longest nights of my life in the concrete wilderness of a big city.

All of us find ourselves in the wilderness from time to time.  There’s the wilderness of not being employed.  The wilderness of being employed in a job you hate.  The wilderness of a broken family.  The wilderness of an abusive relationship.  The wilderness of wanting a romantic relationship.  The wilderness of homelessness.  The wilderness of a dry spell of faith.  The wilderness of trying to figure out what to do with your life.  The wilderness of reality not matching expectations, like in the movie 500 days of summer:

While we all end up in a wilderness from time to time, wilderness is not where we were meant to live.  Wilderness does come to an end.  I’m not still sitting in the Dunkin Doughnuts on the north side of Chicago nursing a cup of hot chocolate.  Sometimes the wilderness won’t end this side of heaven, but it will end.

We’re wrapping up a series today called In the Wilderness.  We’ve been exploring the Hebrew people, the Israelites as they wander through the wilderness for forty years as told in the book of Numbers.  We’re seeing what we can learn about our time in the wilderness as a church and our time as individuals.  Like the Hebrew people, we too don’t yet have a home.  We too have to set up and tear down a tent every time we want to worship.  We too are a bit tired and cranky from time to time.  We too are on a journey of becoming the people God wants us to become.

Thomas Dozeman, a scholar of the book of Numbers, says, “The wilderness is a road (Isaiah 40:3), and a place of miracles (Isaiah 41:18-19) that signals and may even lead to the return of Zion (Isaiah 53:3).  But the wilderness is not Zion.”  We weren’t made to live in the wilderness.  Let’s get back to the book of Numbers and see what we can learn today about the end of wilderness.

Numbers 13:25-30 NLT
After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned to Moses, Aaron, and the people of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land.

This was their report to Moses: “We arrived in the land you sent us to see, and it is indeed a magnificent country — a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is some of its fruit as proof. 

But the people living there are powerful, and their cities and towns are fortified and very large. We also saw the descendants of Anak who are living there!  The Amalekites live in the Negev, and the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Seaand along the Jordan Valley.” 

But Caleb tried to encourage the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!”

While most of the scouts sent to spy out the Promised Land come back fearful about the obstacles for bringing their wilderness experience to an end, Caleb (and also Joshua elsewhere) is ready to bring this wilderness time to an end.  They trust God’s goodness and God’s provision for their future.  Unfortunately, no one else does.  This has some pretty dire consequences for everyone else when it comes to the end of wilderness.

At the beginning and the end of the book of Numbers, there are two big census lists.  This is where the book gets its English name from, “Numbers.”  (The Hebrew name is “In the Wilderness.”)  As we read the census list at the end of the book we see that there are only two people who make it out of the wilderness.  Out of hundreds of thousands, only Caleb and Joshua were alive at both the first census and the second census.

Numbers 26:63-65
So these are the census figures of the people of Israel as prepared by Moses and Eleazar the priest on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.  Not one person that Moses and Aaron counted in this census had been among those counted in the previous census taken in the wilderness of Sinai.  For the LORD had said of them, “They will all die in the wilderness.” The only exceptions were Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

There are three things I think we can learn about the end of wilderness from the book of Numbers.  First, some of you are thinking: “I’ve missed the boat.  I’ve screwed up.  God is no longer going to let me enter the Promised Land of [fill in the blank].”  I don’t know if this is true or not, but sometimes there is something in you that has to die before God can bring you into the Promised Land.  What has to die in you before you can enter the Promised Land?   Second, the Promised Land may be different than you expect.  It may not be what you had in your mind.  It may not line up exactly with your vision.  It may even be very very different.  Thirdly, patiently prepare for the “Promised Land.”  You may not see the end in sight, but prepare for it.  Begin now by taking the steps you need to take to plan for the end of the wilderness.  I want to dwell for a moment on this idea of patiently preparing for the end of wilderness even when you can’t see the end.

If you read chapters 28-30 of Numbers, you will find all kinds of preparation for rituals and laws for entering the Promised Land.  They haven’t even gotten there yet and Moses is instructing them about how to live once they get there.  In chapter 34 you find a division of the land between all the different tribes.  Again, they aren’t even there yet, but they’re making plans.

So if you’re in the wilderness and you can’t see the end, then begin to patiently prepare for the end.  Pray.  Worship. Search the Scriptures.  Resist Sin. Seek Holiness.  Some of us get stuck on this big question about what God’s will is for our life.  What is the “Promised Land” that God wants for me?  Sometimes we get so wrapped up in that question that we forget the immediate answer to it.  What is God’s will for your life?  To be holy.  So if you’re in the wilderness and you don’t know which path to take to get out of the wilderness, ask this question: Will A or B lead you to be more holy?  If neither is the clear winner, then know that it will delight God for you to do what delights you more.  So while you’re in the wilderness, do what you can, wait, rest, and let God do the rest.

Recently I was talking with someone whose marriage had come to an end several years earlier.  A lot of bitterness had been present.  It was a wilderness time.  But one day in worship doing what she was supposed to be doing and waiting for God, she realized that the wilderness had come, almost imperceptibly, to an end.  She had spent several years angry full of questions to God.  Then that day in worship she realized that she no longer had any bitterness.  It was gone and had been replaced with forgiveness.  The wilderness was slow to end, but it did end.

Consider this verse from the prophet Habakkuk:

Habakkuk 2:3 NLT
But these things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.

Let me speak for a moment about how this end of wilderness might come for us as a community.  There is a question on my mind right now: Is a building the Promised Land for SCC?  I don’t know the answer to that question.  I do know that a building is a good and worthy desire.  But a building and desire for a building can also become an idol, something we begin to worship rather than worshiping God.

I recently spoke with someone whose church spent thirty years setting up and tearing down each Sunday in a school.  They had it worse than we did.  We have a closet we can store stuff in.  They had a trailer.  In the last year they found a building that had 80,000 square feet that they bought for an amazingly low price of $400,000.  Then they promptly put $7,000,000 into remodeling it!

I don’t know how much a building is going to cost in the end.  But in the meantime, we are patiently preparing for that day by saving for it.  Our current capital campaign likely won’t be enough.  So we will have to patiently save some more.

In the meantime, let me share with you what I am sure is the Promised Land for SCC: more and more people ignited with authentic life in Christ, and that spark of faith fanned into an all consuming flame.  To this end, we will always be in a wilderness period until every person in every corner of the world knows, loves, and serves Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:9-11 NLT
Because of this, God raised him up to the heights of heaven and gave him a name that is above every other name,  so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

May God lead us into this Promised Land, whatever form it might take.  Amen.