Exodus: Why We Live in the Wilderness

In this continuation of the "Exodus" series, the sermon shifts focus to the "wilderness season." While the Book of Exodus spends 15 chapters on the exciting plagues and deliverance, it dedicates 100 chapters to the slow, difficult wandering in the wilderness. This reflects our spiritual reality: most of the Christian life is lived in the "in-between" time—after our deliverance but before the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 8 answers the crucial question: Why does God lead us into the wilderness?

Scripture References

• Deuteronomy 8:2-5: God's purpose for the wilderness: to humble, test, and teach that man does not live on bread alone.
• 2 Corinthians 12:7-9: Paul's "thorn in the flesh," given to keep him from becoming conceited.
• James 4:6: "God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble."
• Philippians 2:3-4: "In humility value others above yourselves."
• Romans 12:15-16: Rejoice with those who rejoice; do not be proud.
• Matthew 4:1-4: Jesus in the wilderness, quoting Deuteronomy 8 to defeat the enemy.
• John 6:35: Jesus declares, "I am the bread of life."

Key Points

1. Objective 1: Teaching Us Humility (Deuteronomy 8:2) God uses the wilderness to humble us. We often want humility in others, but resist the process in ourselves. God values humility so highly that He allowed Paul to endure a "messenger of Satan" to produce it (2 Cor. 12).
   • What Humility is NOT: It is not timidity, a laid-back personality, or self-deprecation.
   • What Humility IS: It is agreeing with God's truth about yourself—you are a sinner, but you are also deeply loved and valued. It is the willingness to serve others, knowing your own limits, and celebrating the successes of others without envy. As C.S. Lewis said, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.
2. Objective 2: Teaching Us to Live on the Word (Deuteronomy 8:3) The lesson of the manna wasn't just about physical provision; it was a test of reliance. God brought Israel into a place of need to teach them to depend on His Word. Today, our daily habits reveal our true reliance. If the first thing we do in the morning is check our phones, our underlying belief is that we need the world's input more than God's. The wilderness exposes what we truly lean on.
3. Jesus is the True Manna Jesus modeled this dependence perfectly. When He was hungry in the wilderness (Matthew 4), He relied on the written Word of God rather than His feelings or divine power. Ultimately, Jesus is the "Bread of Life" (John 6). The manna sustained the Israelites perfectly—their feet didn't even swell from malnutrition (Deut 8:4). This points to Jesus: He is the complete and perfect sustenance for our souls.

Conclusion

The wilderness is not a mistake; it is God's training ground. He brings us into places of lack not to punish us, but to strip away our pride and our false dependencies. As we enter this season of a digital fast, it is an opportunity to silence the noise, humble ourselves, and rediscover that Jesus—the Word made flesh—is the only Bread that truly satisfies.

Calls to Action

1. Check Your Morning Habit: Tomorrow morning, before checking your phone, spend the first few minutes in the Word of God or in prayer.
2. Evaluate Your Humility: Are you able to celebrate a friend's success without feeling envious? Ask God to reveal any hidden pride.
3. Prepare for the Digital Fast: Begin thinking about how you will replace screen time with intentional time in Scripture and prayer.

Transcript

Let's go ahead and stand up. I'm the three of passage, and then we'll all sit back down. You will sit back down. I'll stay sitting. Okay? Deuteronomy eight two through five says, remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness.

These 40 years to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known to teach you. That man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell during these 40 years. No than in your heart, that is, a man disciplines his son. So the Lord your God disciplines you. Okay, you guys can grab a seat. So we are in the book of Exodus still. We we jumped back in last week. This is our second message back in Exodus.

And we are in the wilderness. We are in the wilderness. Passages of Exodus. And we're going to be here for a few more weeks. And there's a there's a reason that we're going to pause and kind of go in slow motion. In the book of Exodus, we have 15 chapters that are dedicated to signs, wonders, plagues, deliverance, all the good stuff, all the fireworks, 15 chapters, and then we have 100 chapters dedicated to them being in the wilderness.

So you will notice this. If you started a Bible reading plan, you will get through Genesis and you'll have fun. And then you'll get through the first half of Exodus and have fun. And then you'll get to the second half of Exodus and you'll be like, what the heck am I reading? And that's because they're in the wilderness and there's a lot of laws and there's a lot of tabernacle, dimensions.

And it's hard reading, but it's also hard to be in the wilderness. And there's a reason that the author of Scripture presses the slow motion button. There's a reason. It's it's where we live. Most of our life is in the wilderness. And that might sound a little bit depressing, but that is reality, is that most of our life is not the ten plagues of Egypt.

It's not the burning bush. It's not the Red sea. Deliverance most of our life is the the mundane wandering in the wilderness. We're trying to trust God. We're trying not to grumble. As I was thinking about the the wilderness this week and preparing these notes, I was I was thinking of a few years ago, we had, a gap year retreat at Hume Lake, at a house, Hume Lake.

And I've always been a big beach guy. And so I think this was my first time ever going to Hume Lake. This was before we started having our celebrations at Hume, like this was a few years back. And so I decided to drive up by myself, meet the other people there, and they gave me some directions. I thought, no problem, this is easy.

So and they warned me that the cell reception would go out at some point, like, no problem, I can get anywhere. I can do this. So I have the directions on the seat next to me, and I'm following the Google Maps. You know, for most of the time Google Maps cuts out there's no cell reception. I'm like, sweet, I'm going to go to the directions now.

So I'm already on the winding roads. I'm driving on these winding roads, and I try to look over my passenger seat at these directions. And I notice that these are very primitive directions. The directions are like, go past the fourth tree, look for a rock with red marking on it past the Beavers dam. I'm like, who wrote these words?

So I'm I'm trying to follow these directions and failing. And I get lost. I get super lost in the wilderness around Hume Lake. And I don't want to exaggerate, but I was driving for close to two hours around the mountains, around him lake, and at one point I was just thinking, I don't know if I'm driving further into the mountains, never to be seen by mortal man again, or if I'm getting closer to him or closer to Visalia.

Like, I have no idea where I am. I'm completely clueless. I started having visions in my mind of me just having to sleep in my car at night. You know, it's it's like noon right now. I'm like, picturing myself sleeping there at night. Bears. Just like scratching at my windows all throughout the night. This is what's happening is panic is starting to set in.

I eventually I did find a ranger and I he he helped me out and I made it back. I was only two hours late, but the wilderness is crazy. That's my that's my point in telling that story. The wilderness is crazy. This is a lot of our life is just wandering around in the wilderness. Just like I was wandering around Hume Lake.

This is what Israel was doing for 40 years. Another reason the wilderness is a perfect metaphor for our life is not just because of the usual lack of miracles, but because for Israel in the wilderness they were in between their deliverance with the Red sea and the Promised Land. They were somewhere in between those two areas. And that's exactly where we are as Christians.

We're in between the time of our deliverance. Jesus has died and risen again and saved us. And yet we're not in the new heavens and the new earth. We're not in the Promised Land. And so, just like Israel, we are in the spiritual wilderness. In the time between times. Or some theologians have said it's the it's the now, but it's the not yet.

The kingdom is here. We do see God's glory in the wilderness, and I and I love it. We, the manna, the, the, the cloud in the fire, you know, we see God show up, but it's also the not yet. We don't see all of his promises fulfilled here in the wilderness. I know there's that one preacher that you heard that said that you should be living in the Promised Land now, but that's not reality.

The question for this morning is why, when God saved Israel, why didn't they just go straight to the Promised Land? I mean, it's a 14 day trip. Why 40 years? And the question is the same for us. When God saves us, why does he want to just take us straight to heaven? I mean, why do we have to hang out here for years and years and and wonder and learn stuff like, what is God doing?

Why does he do it this way? And that's why we're focusing on Deuteronomy eight. It's it's, a little bit apart from the Exodus story that we've been in, but Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy eight is the why behind the wilderness. It answers the question. It answers the question why God is doing it this way, or to ask the question another way, what is God up to right now in our own wilderness?

What is God doing? And I want to give two answers to that question. This morning. So first, let's read that first verse of Deuteronomy again, Deuteronomy eight. Verses two and three says this. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

He humbled you. Okay to play teacher here for a second? What? What major word there is repeated. Humble. Yeah. Twice. It, nothing in Scripture is random. It repeats it for emphasis to humble you. He humbled you. And so here's the first answer to our question. What is God doing in the wilderness? Objective one he is teaching us humility.

And I know that, I just taught on patience last month, and now I'm teaching on humility. This is like double groan. I understand, but I actually think we love humility in other people. We love it when other people are humble. Like, I want my family, my friends, my coworkers to be extremely humble. That would make my life a whole lot easier.

But me, that's a lot of work for me to be humble. And I think that's true for most of us. Is that like we would really prefer for other people to be super humble, but for us it's like kind of it's kind of a lot for us to be humble. But this is God's goal. According to Deuteronomy, this is what he's doing in us, in our life right now.

I don't know all of the whys behind what God is doing in your life right now, but I can say with certainty this is one thing that he's trying to accomplish right now is more humility in your heart. Whether this made it into your New Year's goals or not, this is God's goal for 2026 is for you and for me to grow in humility.

This is so important that he will send us to the wilderness to teach us, to us. This happened with the Apostle Paul. So in second Corinthians chapter 12, verse seven through nine, this is the famous, thorn in the flesh passage. And this is how it reads. This is Paul talking. He says, Start over here. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me and I. And honestly, I mean, maybe we're used to this passage, maybe not.

But when I read it now, it seems a little extreme. You know, he says, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, it's like, okay, see, you have a little pride. Who doesn't? God gives him a messenger of Satan to torment him. It seems a little extreme. It's like that's that's a bit much like, did you have to send the messenger of Satan like, did you have to torment me?

And God's like? Yeah, actually, that's usually what it takes to produce a little bit of humility and I think we would find that that's true in our lives. You know, we can pray for humility and we should. But I think most of the time it it takes some torment for us to actually grow in our humility. It takes a messenger of Satan in our lives.

And so the point is that this is how much God cares about humility is that for he would go to this length to Paul, one he dearly loved and favored. But to produce this kind of virtue on the inside of him. The tricky thing about pride is it's so hard to detect in ourselves. You know, I could preach like an awesome message about pride this morning, and most likely the most prideful people would be thinking about all the other people that need the message, and then all the humble people who already have humility would be like, man, I really needed that today.

And so there's something about pride that it goes without our detection. It's very sneaky. And so I think this is why God does this. He goes to these links to produce it in our lives. We know that God says that God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. That's from James 436 but, but what is humility?

I feel like we have a little bit of an idea, but there are also some misconceptions about humility. So I want to start with what humility is not because I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. So humility is not being timid or cowardly. Okay. You know, there's that one guy or girl, sometimes it's me, doesn't speak up, afraid to make their opinion known.

Just the little mouse in the corner. And sometimes we're like, man, that person's so humble. Like, wow, you know, they're just so quiet. Actually. They're wracked with fear. Actually, that's the truth. A lot of time is that the person who's quiet won't show up hiding, won't make their voice known. That's actually a spirit of fear. And it's not the same thing as humility.

Okay. Humility is also not having a laid back personality. I have one of those. I am laid back. A lot of times that says nothing about me being humble or not. Whether whether I want to go to Beats or Chipotle for lunch. You know, me and my friend George used to go out to lunch and I'd be like, where do you want to go if you like, I don't know, where do you want to go?

I'd be like, I don't know, where do you want to go? And we just go back and forth because both of us can be kind of laid back like that. That says nothing about humility. It's a personality trait. So let's not get confused. There. And the last thing this is probably the most important humility is not despising yourself.

And I think this could be a little bit of a religious lie. Is the person who defecates themself the most you know, who trashes on themself the most? Man? I'm such a sinner. I am just so awful man. I am just a fungus beneath your feet. And it's like, okay, it's actually a lot of focus on yourself right now, you know?

That's that's actually not the same thing as humility. And, if I have one way to explain it, I would say the humility is agreeing with the truth about God and about ourselves. And is it is it true that we're a sinner? Yeah. But is it also true that we're made in the image of God? Is it also true that we're we're valuable beyond comparison?

Is it also true that he's chosen us and he set his love on us? Absolutely. And so it's actually not humility just to talk about how bad you are all the time. Okay. So what is humility then? Humility is the willingness to serve others even in unflattering, often humiliating ways. Humility is a mindset that values and esteems others more than yourself.

And this is from Philippians two. It says in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of the others. And this is important because when we're esteeming other people more than ourself, again, it's not from a place of need, because that can be, that, that can be wrong to where somebody they find their identity in serving other people, and it fills a need on the inside of them.

They they have to be seen as they serve somebody. But but true humility starts with a place of security. You know who you are before God. You know what God says about you. And because of that, you can lay down your life for somebody else, whether they see you or not.

Humility is the wisdom to embrace your own limits. This is a huge one. It's often it's often pride in our hearts that causes us just to say, yes, yeah, I'll do that. Oh yeah, I'll be there. Yes, I'll do that. It's we have to know our own limits. Can you be can you be there? Do you have the courage to say no?

Sometimes it's our it's our pride that makes us think that everything revolves around us. That if we don't show up, that it's all going to fall apart. It's not. There's a humility in. I'm part of something bigger than myself. I'm part of what God's up to. And if I'm there, then praise God. If God uses me, praise God.

But it doesn't all revolve around me. And the last one is humility. Is the ability to celebrate with others wins and mourn with others losses. Romans 12 says it this way rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.

Do not be conceited. Here's a quote from, Andrew Murray, who wrote a short little book on humility, and he says this. He says the humble man feels no jealousy or envy. Man, that's a that's a high bar. The humble man feels no jealousy or envy. He can praise God when others are favored and rewarded before him. He can bear to hear others praised and himself forgotten.

Man. Ouch! That that hurts. Good. It reminds me of, count count sins and dwarfs said that his goal in life was to preach the gospel, die and be forgotten. Which apparently didn't work because we're remembering him right now. We're saying his name out loud. But you know who is forgotten is 99% of the missionaries in the world preach the gospel, die, and are forgotten.

And that's a beautiful sometimes, I mean, I want to I want to be careful and say things in a balanced way, because I do think there's something beautiful about legacy. But sometimes our talk about legacy is more about ourselves and our reputation. And sometimes I feel like there's something beautiful in what counts. Sins and dwarfs said, I want to preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.

This is very countercultural. Notice, though, that all of these traits are about our position before God and lifting others up. It's not so much about putting ourselves down. Here's a quote from C.S. Lewis who who says it really well, as usual. He says, do you not imagine that if you meet a really humble man, he will be what most people call humble nowadays?

He will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person. I had to look that up. Smarmy. Smarmy means you're, flattering people in an excessive way, you know? So somebody who gravels he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person who is always telling you that, of course he is a nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.

If you do dislike him, it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life. So easily. He will not be thinking about humility. He will not be thinking about himself at all. So, so well said. And I think Rick Warren, kind of riffing off of Lewis, said that humility is not thinking less of yourself.

It's thinking of yourself less. Okay, so this is what God's up to in the wilderness. He's going to great lengths to to produce this in our hearts. What else is God doing? The second thing that God is doing in the wilderness, he was doing this for Israel. He's doing this in us today. The second thing that God is doing is objective.

Number two is teaching us to live on the word. That's one of what I want to focus on for the rest of our time, as God is teaching us to live on the word. So back to our Deuteronomy passage. She says this in Deuteronomy eight three. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known to teach you.

That man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. It's interesting that the the lesson of manna was not about manna. So the bread test in the wilderness was not about bread. I mean, if you just read the manna story to me, Israel goes hungry. God provides food in the form of manna that miraculously appears every morning.

You would think that this is a lesson about provision. God. God provides when we're in need. He shows up. He provides for us. That's true. That's an important lesson. But what Deuteronomy is saying is that it was actually way more than that, because it says it was to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So the lesson of the manna was not so much God will give you bread whenever you're hungry. The lesson was, who are you depending on in your life? Who do you rely on? Is it God, his word, or is it yourself? Your own good ideas? Okay, let's let's use an example to to just go a little bit deeper into this.

We're starting a digital fast like on our set. We're starting a digital fast. And so that's going to look like for a lot of people. They're going to choose to go without social media for these for these few weeks. So when you when you wait let's take two examples. When you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is grab your phone and you start scrolling.

You start looking at messages, emails, posts. That's the first thing you do. What's what's the belief system behind that? I mean, most of us are like, I don't know, I just do it, you know, it's like, but but there's a belief system behind it, whether we realize it or not. And the belief system might be something like, the most important thing for me today is to find out what other people are saying and asking me to do.

That's the most important thing in my life. Or, even worse, the belief system might be I don't need to pray or read the Bible first thing in the morning. I'm good. I can do this day by myself without the active grace of God and the Spirit of God helping me, which again, it's like, ouch! But that is the mindset behind it.

Whereas the person who, first thing when they wake up, they go straight to the Bible, straight to their knees, straight to talking to God. What's the mindset behind that? It's that I can't do this day without the Lord. Man does not live by social media and messages and email alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

That's the mindset behind that action. And so we find that a little habit is actually way more than just a habit. There's a belief system behind it. And this is what God's doing in the wilderness. He's trying to expose us. He's trying to expose the belief systems that are really inside of us. Look, I know this is, getting redundant, but look again at the Deuteronomy passage, Deuteronomy eight two, remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years to humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

So it says, God is saying, my goal is to bring you into a place of need to test you. Where are you going to turn? You're going to turn first to the experts, to to media, to the opinions of other people. Are you going to turn first to me? And there's a place for all those other things, right?

It's not that those things are wrong, just like food is not wrong. But one of the lessons of fasting when we fast actual food is we go without food for a short period of time to remind our souls that there's something more important in life than food. It's the Word of God. It's God himself.

This is what God's doing in the wilderness.

I'm going to skip ahead a little bit here. Maybe this digital fast is God's message to us to start prioritizing his Word more than media messages, screens, sports, or Netflix. Again, none of those things are bad in and of themselves. But what's fueling us? Where do we turn to?

Jesus himself was taken to the wilderness. I love this passage. In Matthew four, Jesus himself was taken to the wilderness. It says this. Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. And this feels a little familiar, right? I mean, we're studying Israel in the wilderness who was hungry, and now we have Jesus led into the wilderness, not 40 years, but 40 days.

And he's hungry. He's he's almost rehashing the story of Israel again, says verse three, the tempter came to him and said, if you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. And so not only is Jesus quoting the passage that we're looking at today, he's actually modeling the passage that we're looking at today when Jesus is in a place of need, hunger and lack, who does he turn to?

I love that he turns to the written word of God Jesus. I mean, if anyone didn't have to rely on the Bible, it would have been Jesus, right? I'm sure he knew it pretty well, and I'm sure his instincts were pretty right on. But Jesus, of all people, relies on the written word of God. When Satan tempts him, he doesn't turn to his feelings.

He doesn't go, I don't know, does this feel right? You know, to turn a stone into bread? Like, what am I sensing? Is does this feel right? He says it is written and he doesn't turn to other people and their opinions. He doesn't go, Peter, John, what do you think about this? This is crazy. Should I turn these stones to bread?

He says it is written, there's so many places that he could have turned, but he turns to the written word of God. And this is our model. He's modeling this for us that we would have this kind of tight knit relationship with the written word of God.

There's so many ways for us to to get creative in our relationship with the written word of God. I know that everyone's in a different season. Some of us have small kids. Some of us have just a lot of free time. But there are ideas like, what about listening to the Psalms on audio as you're driving? What about listening to a sermon podcast instead of another news and culture podcast?

What about reading a proverb together at the family dinner table? What about getting to your meeting ten minutes early and just opening up the book of Philippians? What about drinking your coffee with Jesus for ten minutes and just focusing on Him and his character and reading the word? No matter what your your stage of life or season, it's always a season to be in the Word of God.

It's there's never there's never a season off. It's not like when I'm working a lot. Family responsibilities are really heavy. I'm going to take a few months off. And we don't want to. It's our life. It's our fuel. It's our joy. I'm. I'm trying to do this in my own in my own life. I've, I've I've given a lot of time to the study of the word of God and teaching it, loving the Word of God.

But in pain and suffering, God is exposing areas where I don't actually believe the words that I'm reading, areas that I don't actually believe, the words that I'm teaching you guys this morning. This is what God does in the wilderness, he says, do you really believe what you're teaching? Do you really believe what you're reading? And I go, I thought I did until this happens and God's like, exactly.

I want to take it deeper in your heart. I don't want you to live on bread alone. I want you to live on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Ultimately, Jesus is our bread. The manna was a a picture of Jesus. And that's the lesson, is that yes, we need food to survive, but more importantly, our spirits need something.

We need the Word of God that leads us to Jesus. And that's what Jesus said in John six. He said, talking to a bunch of a crowd of people in another wilderness about the exodus story. That's the context, he says. I am the bread of life. And of course they were like, why? What are you trying to say?

And he says, yeah, exactly. I'm the Messiah, the Son of God. I am the bread of life. I'm the one you need. I'm the one who fuels you. I want to be the first thing that you think about in the morning. I want my word to. To be the motivation and inspiration for your ideas for your life. That's the place that Jesus wants in our life.

This last thing I'll say from our Deuteronomy passage, Deuteronomy eight four says this about the wilderness. It says your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these 40 years. And that's another verse. And I'm like, okay. I mean, the feet swelling, like, is that a thing? Like to do people's feet swell? I mean, I don't know, I read this from, the Bible commentator J.

Vernon McGee. He said that a missionary doctor once explained to him that in the Orient, the people have a condition called beriberi, and it comes from sameness of diet. So when you just eat the same thing over and over again, and one of the primary symptoms is your feet swell from this condition called beriberi. And I would imagine that just having an all bread diet for 40 years would qualify for sameness of diet.

And I thought, well, that's amazing that their feet didn't swell, they didn't get this condition that actually happens when you just eat the same thing over and over again. Apparently, man, I had all the B vitamins that they needed so they didn't get this condition. And what it's a picture of Jesus, right? Like he's he's what we need.

Like he's really actually all we need. And we get to participate in a lot of other things. And books and food and media and all these other things. But at the end of the day, there's only one source. There's only there's only one vine that our branches need to be connected to. And he's the one. And if all we ever had was his manna, the manna of Jesus Christ, we would be good.

We would have enough. And so we want to, worship team. You guys can come on up, and I'm just going to pray that over us this morning that God would just re orient us to the bread of life, that we wouldn't live by bread alone, especially as we start this fast this month. Jesus, would you be our center and our life this month?

Would you be our joy? We're we're anxious. Would you be our peace? We're we're sick. God, would you be our healing? Would you be our endurance or bore Jesus? Would you be our fascination?

God, we're we're just weak. Would you be our power today? Jesus, Lord, we invite you to come help us to fix our eyes on you this morning. Help us to turn to you first thing in the morning. God. Pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.