Sermon 2019.07.28
In the Wilderness
(Exodus 16:1-5; sermon 1 of 4 in series “In the Wilderness”)

1. In the wilderness.  This year’s vacation bible school theme is ROAR! The theme this year is, “Life is wild – God is good!” Our kids are going to be learning about how God is faithful even in challenging times and places.

We’re going to take the wilderness theme and expand it for the next few Sundays. We all find ourselves in the wilderness from time to time, even if we never leave home or church. The wilderness is a challenging, scary place to be… but it is also exciting and full of possibilities. We’re going to look at how God walks with us through the wilderness – indeed, God often leads us into the wilderness. God’s faithfulness to us can make the wilderness a transforming experience.

2. Wilderness of Sin.  Our scripture reading this morning is from Exodus, the book that describes the Israelite people’s journey out of slavery in Egypt. At this point in the journey, they have escaped the pursuing Egyptian army and passed through the Red Sea. They are travelling through the Sinai peninsula on their way to Mount Sinai and eventually the Promised Land of Israel. 

Scripture calls it the “Wilderness of sIn,” short for SInai. We tend to read it as the wilderness of sin, as in being tempted and sinning. That’s an okay mistake, because it describes well what the people of Israel do over and over on their journey through the wilderness.

I travelled to the Sinai peninsula in 2009. It certainly is a desolate place – red rocky mountains with oceans of sand blown up against them, baking in the hot African sun. No wonder the Israelite people complained, “What are we going to eat out here?” (Exodus 16:3)

But “wilderness” is a bigger concept than physical place – more than just a desert or a jungle. Wilderness is anyplace we find ourselves lost or challenged or confused… bewildered, if you will. 

We all have our own wildernesses: the ethical briar patch, the arctic waste of loneliness, the dry desert of despair, the urban jungle of perceived threats, the heaving waves of sea change. Some wildernesses are private. Some confront us wholesale and work, school, or church.

What is the biggest discomfort and challenge in your life right now? What is the “wilderness” in which you find yourself, your family, or your church? … Let’s take 60 seconds now and talk about this with the person next to you. Look around – make sure no one gets left out! We’ll switch in 60 seconds so both folks get a chance to share…

Got a partner? Great – let’s share…  [60 second timer]  And switch…  
3. Back to Egypt committee.  Thank you for taking the time to share with each other. We all have our challenges – our wildernesses. The wilderness is unavoidable. Even if we try to stay put, change comes to us. And change makes us uncomfortable and scared.

Like any church, the Israelites quickly form a committee to deal with this wilderness of change. It’s called the “Back to Egypt Committee.” Over and over again in the book of Exodus, the Israelites complain…

14:12, “It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”
16:3, “If only we had died in Egypt, where we sat by the stew pots and ate our fill of bread.”
17:3, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”

Now let’s stop and think about this for a minute. Egypt sounds nice… plenty of food and water, no armies chasing us. But the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, forced to labor for the Pharoah, beaten by the overseers, with their boy children taken from them and killed. 

To put it bluntly: Egypt sucked. Yet facing the wilderness, the Israelites want to go back.

We still have Back to Egypt committees. We long for the good ol’ days… forgetting that in the good ol’ days, churches prohibited dancing and playing cards and drinking beer with buddies! In the good ol’ days black folks still faced Jim Crow, women had few job options, more people died of cancer, and we couldn’t talk to our grandkids on video chat.

4. God is with you.  The good ol’ days weren’t that good. We can’t go back to Egypt. Change is inevitable, and change pushes us into the wilderness. So how will we survive?

We need to remember that no matter where we go, God is with us. In Exodus, God is described as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night – a visible presence to comfort and lead the Israelites. We may not have the same visible presence of God, but we have the same assurance. Psalm 23 promises that the Lord is our shepherd and walks with us through the darkest valleys. Jesus’ final words to his followers in Matthew 28:20 are a reassuring promise, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Our Lord is a God of creative change. Out of the chaos God created the universe. Out of Egypt, God led the Israelites to a promised land. Out of sin and death, God’s son Jesus Christ redeemed us. Out of the dark ages, the Spirit has led us to open the church’s doors and spread the gospel to more people in more places.

God promised to provide the Israelites with meat and bread even in the Sinai wilderness (Exodus 16:4-5). God promises to be faithful to you in your wilderness, meeting your most essential needs.

5. Loving change.  If we hold onto God’s promise, it can help us navigating the wilderness. We may even learn to love the new. During my visit to the Sinai, we were assigned local Bedouin guides. The Bedouins are nomadic people who live much as the ancient Israelites did, travelling with their flocks and herds through seemingly inhospitable wilderness and yet making a living.

We had ridden camels to the top of Mt. Sinai to watch the sunrise. I chose to descend the Steps of Penitence, the 3750 steep, uneven, rough cut stone steps from the mountaintop down to the ancient monastery of St. Catherine’s. This was a grueling descent through the stony wilderness. My calves were burning, my knees were wobbling… you can bet I repented!

Yet our Bedouin guide smiled the whole way. He told us stories of his life in the wilderness. He climbed Mt. Sinai three times a day with tourists. He loved the mountain. At several points, he left the stairs and literally sang as he danced his way down the rocky slope.

Friends, our challenge is to find ways to love the wilderness, to embrace the change that God is always bringing to the church and to our lives. It’s been said that healthy, growing church are 70/30 churches – you might love 70% of what’s going on, but you should be okay with 30% challenging you. Because that 30% that is new and strange and uncomfortable is the new thing God is doing. That 30% is where the church is growing.

Sure, change makes us uncomfortable, even tempts us to the sin of grumbling and turning our backs on God. But we are promised that in the wilderness – at church, or in our private lives – Jesus is with us, God loves us, and we will be led safely home. 

We may even come to love it!

Amen.