1611. Life in the Wilderness

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Every day, students are blessed by the preaching and teaching of the Bible from the University Chapel Platform.

Today on The Daily Platform, we'll hear a sermon preached by the Chancellor, Dr. Bob Jones III, who is the grandson of the founder, Dr. Bob Jones Sr. I'm going to ask you to turn to an Old Testament passage in Exodus 15. And I only have one verse there, but it's essential to the whole discussion of this morning. So I don't want you to miss it.

I'll take you there in just a moment. But we heard the beautiful hymn, It Is Well With My Soul, presented to us musically. But the truth is, I'm looking into the faces of a number of people, faculty and students alike, who have disturbed souls this morning. How can you not, when you take a realistic look at the international and national landscape? Where I go in churches these days, pastors are giving reports of churches decimated through the effects of COVID and the political exploitations of the plague.

I talk to people who are uncertain because of the incivility of the nature of people today. The cities, as you know, are run by the liberal politicians, where there is lawlessness and designedly so, are on fire. They're unsafe. Policemen are being killed. Multiple of them, it seems almost every day, we hear reports of the killing of policemen in these cities.

It is unsafe to ride the subways of some of these cities and even walk on the streets. There is a shortage of food in our grocery stores. There's perplexity. What will tomorrow bring? What will the news be? And all of that is noisy static in the background of your lives as you're trying to study and apply yourselves and prepare the best you can for whatever the future may hold. And then in recent days, there has been the frightening rattling of sabers on the part of Russia and China, who it appears are planning incursions against their sovereign borders of their neighbors in a fashion that has the potential of being World War III. These are troubling, disturbing times. But it's not new in the world. It's characteristic of a world that is devoid of the anchor of the Creator's welcome in hearts, in homes, in governments.

I'm pointing you today to a time just to try to help you put some of this in perspective for yourself. A time when the Hebrew people were greatly disturbed. Their whole past had been one of slavery for more than 400 years in Egypt. Their father Abraham, through his promised son Isaac, had been told of God that the land of Canaan would be their inheritance. And for 400 years they were barred from that.

It looked humanly impossible. And God miraculously raised up a leader, Moses, to deliver them from that. And the passage we're looking at this morning comes immediately on the heels of the Red Sea experience, the deliverance. And now here these enslaved Hebrew people for the first time are being formed into a nation, the nation of Israel. The passage we're looking at takes place within the first month of their deliverance. They have no idea what's ahead. They had promise of a wonderful land flowing with milk and honey.

We're free at last. In our promised homeland where God has designed a wonderful earthly inheritance for us. But getting from the Red Sea to that promised land was a wilderness experience. A longer wilderness experience than had been foretold and foreseen because of their disobedience, their refusal to receive the promises of God about that promised land. And so for 40 years what should have been a few weeks of direct progress right to that land turned into a 40-year wilderness experience because of their lack of confidence in God and a refusal to embrace his promises.

They lived in disobedience until that generation had to die off and a new one could come. So within a month of being delivered from Egypt, they came to a place called Elam. The first stop was Marah where the bitter waters that caused their murmuring against God took place and the sweetness of the waters was accomplished by the tree that God pointed to Moses to put into that water to make them sweet. They saw the Red Sea miracle. They saw the Marah miracle. And now they're at a place called Elam. It's like a rest stop on an interstate highway where the necessary things are taken care of.

Just a little blip. The Scottish preachers called Elam the blinks just like a blink of an eye. That's how long they were there. I point you to verse 27 of the 15th chapter and the first verse of the 16th chapter. They came to Elam where were twelve wells of water and three score and ten palm trees and they encamped there by the waters. And they took their journey from Elam and all the children of Israel came into the wilderness.

Put yourself in their place. They had no idea from one day to the next what was going to happen. And they came to this beautiful place of tranquility, rest, bounty, refreshment. And you can imagine the collective sigh that these two million Hebrews must have uttered. But God loved them too much to leave them in that place of comfort and safety and predictability and reliability. Where there's water, there's grass for their cattle.

They could have lived there in that oasis. But God had better things prepared for them. It's easy to thank God for the Elams of life.

You and I are granted of God Elams of life. You work hard at school. You go home for a summer vacation or Christmas vacation, an Elam like experience. Easy to thank God for those and a desire to just stay there. It's hard to go back into the wilderness of hard study when you return to school or to hard work.

If you are out in life in a working environment. You see, while their physical well-being was cared for in Elam, temporarily for those couple of weeks that they were there, their spiritual well-being languished. As far as we know, they learned nothing at all about God during that brief stay in peace and quiet in Elam. They had to go into the wilderness to find out who God was.

As an example, and I don't have time to take you through these in detail, but just listen quickly. They left Elam, immediately entered the wilderness, and very soon in the wilderness they found themselves at Mount Sinai. What did they learn about God in the wilderness there at the foot of Sinai? They got to see the work of God, not just briefly as in the Red Sea experience or briefly at their one or two day stay at Marah. But they got to see long-term work of God.

The Bible tells us in the Exodus 16, 12, And even you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread, you shall know that I am the Lord your God. They had to go into the wilderness to know the works of the providential care long-term of their God. They got to see that God would provide them with water that followed them, a river of water from the rock that God told Moses to smite, from which fountains flowed enough water for them for forty years in the wilderness. The sustaining, ongoing care of the God of Heaven for His people.

Do you believe He really cares for you? Do you really believe His providence is sufficient and His provisions? They got to see that, but they had to be in the wilderness to see it. They had to leave Elam to know the fellowship of God. Listen to Exodus 19, verse 17. Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God. They got to find out their God is knowable, He's not an idol on a shelf.

He is not a distant God who is like the Muslim God ready to rain down terror, and judgment, and hatred, and violence upon His people if they don't toe the mark. They got to find out a lot about the knowledge of God and to engage with God in the fellowship of God. Have you fellowshiped with God this morning?

Are you on a regular basis as you face the perplexities, uncertainties of every day here and every day in the whole national and international environment in which we live? Are you engaging with God in personal fellowship? If you're not, the wilderness is an horrific, horrible, frightening place. It was the presence of the fellowship of God that made the wilderness endurable for them. They had to be there in order to see God.

Exodus 19, 11, on the third day the Lord God said, I will come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai. What did the sight of God look like since no man has seen the presence of God? They saw the mountain shaking. They saw the majesty and the greatness and the power of their God displayed in the lightning and the thunder and the thunderous voice of their God. As He spoke to Moses and Aaron up on the top of the mountain, they heard the voice.

The sound of the voice, if not the speaking of the voice. They heard the speaking through Moses who heard the words. It was a sight of the greatness and the majesty of their God. It brought reverential fear to realize who their God was. It would do us good to recognize that that's our God too.

The kind of reverential fear that caused Isaiah to fall down on his face when he saw the glory of God and said, Whoa, it's me. It's not a God to be trifled with, to play games with, to profess with the lips and despise in the heart. They had to leave Elam to know the will of God for them. Exodus 19, 5, If you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me for all the earth is mine. They learned in the wilderness that they were a nation unlike any other nation and that God had a purpose for them unlike any other national purpose. These were exclusive people of God. And he had a plan that they should make him known to the world.

They didn't do very well with that plan. But the will of God was known to them at that point. They learned the reason for their existence. Have you found the will of God for your existence?

Do you care to know it? And will you follow it? You ought to be seeking God's face every day. What is your will for me today, dear Lord? And what is your will for me down the path of life? Because I don't want to live in this wilderness if I can't be a people for your sake.

If I can't be a man or a woman who has an eternal purpose connected to my transient earthly life. And they had to leave Elam to know the holiness of God. Moses said to the people because God had told him to tell these people that there was a boundary at the base of Mount Sinai that they could not cross upon fear of death if they did so.

Moses and Aaron got to go to the top of the mountain with God. These people, because of their unholiness and their pagan-ness still fresh in them from Egypt, these were people ill-equipped to draw near into the presence of God. And he said, put a boundary there and have the priest tell them, if you cross this, you're dead. You see, my friend, God is not like us. His holiness separates him from us. He doesn't come and acquaint himself with our ways. He says, be ye holy, for I am holy. You acquaint yourself with me. You be like me, you redeemed people. The church, you be like me. That's his requirement. What are you doing?

What are you pursuing? What efforts are you making to be holy as he is holy? That requires a separateness from that which is unholy and unclean. There's no other way to worship him.

There's no other way to be in his presence. The holiness of God demands that he puts boundaries which dictate how we approach unto him. Exodus 19, 12, thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about saying, take heed to yourselves that you go not up unto the mount or touch the border of it.

Whosoever touches the mount shall surely be put to death. That God is our God. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He expects us to worship him in the beauty of holiness. If you ask me in a word or two to describe what's wrong with the American Bible Believing Church, I would have to say it's increasing unholiness.

It's increasing world-likeness. How much can we mirror the world and still say we are people of Jesus? It's not how much like Jesus can we be which takes us from the world as we approach unto his holiness. But how much of this world can we have while we have the name of Jesus on our lips?

It's not the way it works. You read about the seven churches of the revelation in Revelation 2 and 3, five of those churches. God said to the pastors, I expect you to remove the unclean things from your churches.

The immorality, that was specifically mentioned, and the doctrinal deviances of those churches. You must get rid of that. You must purge your church of this.

Or I'm removing my presence. I'm going to have nothing more to do with your church. And what in the world is a church good for if God isn't there? The Bible tells us in Proverbs 15 8 that the sacrifice of the wicked, the worship of the wicked, you could put in the place of sacrifice, the worship of the wicked is abomination to the Lord. The demands of God upon his people Israel and upon his church, the redeemed, is one of separateness unto the Lord, which means separation from everything that is antithetical to the worship of a holy God.

My friends, we live, in all of my lifetime, I'm 82 years old, in all of my lifetime, I've never lived in such a convoluted world. In a time when the churches that say they are the church of Jesus Christ, the redeemed people of God, when they seem to be further from the love of God and the worship of the God of heaven than they are now. I've never seen such confusion among the people of God. What is right?

What is wrong? Where should we stand? And the fears, COVID has had an awful lot to do with that, but not just the COVID, not just the disease, but the way it has been manipulated to give governmental tyrants greater control over individual businesses, and the life of the homes, and the life of the churches.

A great deal of erosion of religious freedom has taken place in the last two years as a result of COVID, or more specifically, the exploitation of it. I would just say for your encouragement, if you and I did not know that the promised land, heaven, glory, eternal presence with God, and all the good things He's prepared for those who love Him, awaits us, if we weren't confident of that, how in the world could we possibly get through the present wilderness of this life? And I would have to think that of those two million Hebrews in that wilderness, if they could not look forward someday to that promised land, they would have said, this is ridiculous. Life here is worthless. We just go around in circles.

It's horrible in the wilderness. But they knew God had something better for them, and you and I do too. The Bible says in James 5-11, we count them happy, which endure. So my challenge to you is, don't flee, don't bail out, don't despair, don't give up, don't get disillusioned and disgruntled and despondent. Look ahead. God's on the throne. He's your God. If you're a redeemed child of God, you have an eternal heaven waiting for you. And the Lord said to his disciples, I go and prepare a place for you. And if I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there, you may be also for more than 2000 years. He has been gone to prepare a place for us. I don't know how much of those 2000 years since he went to do that.

I don't know how much of his time has been taken up preparing a place for us. But if he created the world in six days in all of its virgin beauty before the fall, just think what that place must be that he's been fixing up for us as our eternal abode. But my friends, until then, we have to go through the wilderness. But let's not forget that we can sing in our hearts as we go. I'm bound for the promised land. And that other part of that song, who will come and go with me? I'm bound for the promised land. Hobed, Moses' brother-in-law was with them for part of that wilderness wandering. And Moses pleaded with him and he said, come and go with us. You can be part of this too when we get to that promised land. And the same goodness of God that is reserved for us is reserved for you, Hobed. Come on and go with us to the promised land.

And I would submit to you, my dear friends, that I love. The wilderness is unbearable for us in much of its factors. It's unbearable for us if we can't be telling others along the way who also are in the wilderness with no hope of anything ever better than the wilderness. Come on and go with us. The same Lord who saved me will save you. Let's go there together for the good things God has waiting for us. Let's pray, Father, help these young people and faculty. Help all of us.

Lord, help me. I preach this because I need to understand that Elam is not normal life in this world. This is normal and you have prepared for us at the end of the wilderness a wonderful eternity in Christ. There are some here that are not in Christ and have no such hope. Today, O God, open their understanding that they might come go with us to what you have prepared in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a message preached by Dr. Bob Jones III, Chancellor of Bob Jones University. Thanks again for listening. We hope you'll join us next time as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.