Helpful Questions for Today and Tomorrow

Exodus 16:1-4

Rev. Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Greeley, Colorado
January 9, 2021

Exodus 16:1-4

The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.

Are you familiar with the wilderness? You know the wilderness. You don’t need a map to find it. You’ve lived there time and time again. All of us have been in the wilderness. It’s that in-between place when we have left one thing and haven’t yet arrived at the other, that’s the wilderness.

-      It’s the period of grief, when you’ve lost someone that was dear to you, and you’ve not yet worked through that process of mourning and adjusted to life without them

-      It’s when you’ve moved from one place to another and you’ve left behind friends and acquaintances and familiar sights and places and you haven’t quite made it home in new place, it’s not normal yet.

-      It’s the period of cleanup after a hurricane, or storm or a fire when things are in an uproar.

-      It’s middle school, you remember that.

-      It’s the time of a world pandemic and we have not reached herd immunity

-      It is the time of the loss of a job

-      The deployment of a child to war

-      The diagnosis of a serious illness

-      The aftermath of a painful divorce.

-      There are some many times of a wilderness experience

-      When we’ve left things behind and life has not settled in normal

We enter these experiences without realizing the deep impact on our soul. Soul-shaping times. A period where we ask sobering questions including:

• “What does this experience I’m going through tell me about who I am and my worth?”

• “If I’m not what I was am I not something else?”

• “What does this tell me about God and my relationship with God?

• “Where is God during the wilderness period?”

A man named William Bridges has written a book about managing those transitions in our lives. He prefers the word transition to changes because that is what we usually experience. It’s not that we experience things on one day and then on another they are a different way. But we gradually let go of one thing and take on to another.

William Bridges calls this the neutral zone and it is a painful time.

Andre Gide, a French novelist says, “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

Marylyn Ferguson who is an American Futurist says, “It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change of so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear… it’s like being between trapezes.”

Or it’s like Linus, the Peanuts character when the blanket is in the dryer and he says, “There is nothing to hold on to.”

More than legendary, it is a mythical story.

1 Cor. 10:11

These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come.

Those important stories of the wilderness are important because of what it teach us.

Romans 15:4

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.

If you were to ask ancient Israelites, “What was your worst time of your life?” they probably would respond, “The wilderness experience.” They would say it was awful, no food, only mana for food, for forty years, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the same food all the time.

Then, if you were to ask the Lord, “What was the best time for you?” Judging from the prophets, the Lord would say, “The best time was when my people were in the wilderness.” It was a honeymoon, they depended on me, were open to my guidance and leadership.

Hosea 2:14

Therefore I am now going to allure her;

I will lead her into the wilderness

and speak tenderly to her.

Jeremiah 2:1-3

The word of the Lord came to me: “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem:

“This is what the Lord says:

“‘I remember the devotion of your youth how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown.

Israel was holy to the Lord,

the firstfruits of his harvest;

all who devoured her were held guilty,

and disaster overtook them,’”

declares the Lord.

The wilderness time was a special time, because people depended on me.

Exodus chapter 16 depicts a time in the people of God when they were tested, they obeyed.

God told the people that he would provide mana every day and they were to gather bread only for that day, otherwise it would rot the following day. For six consecutive days they received fresh mana and on the 7th day there was no mana, but on the 6th day they could gather enough bread for the following day and it would be eatable.

The wilderness experience was such a defining time for the people of God and we find this story from Exodus 13 to Joshua 3. Even today, our Jewish friends commemorate those days with special feast including:

Passover- deliverance from Egyptian bondage.

Celebration of Pentecost- the giving of the law at Mount Sinai.

We find in Scripture that others such the prophet Elijah, King David, our Lord Jesus Christ, and John the Baptist had their own wilderness experience. It was a time and a place when God interacts with His people in a special way.

The wilderness is common to the human condition and the wilderness period has a special role, a time of transition to ask the big questions:

What is God doing?

Where is God leading?

These are questions that we have to grapple with whether we are 15, 45, 65 or 95 years of age.

These are relational questions that require each of us to find an answer for himself or herself.

What are the wilderness questions?

Wilderness is a place of transition, the time between Egypt and Canaan. God led his people by a pillar of smoke by day and fire by night.

It is a time to be attentive and ponder:

“What old ways have died and find new ways?”

“What do I need to grieve in order to move on?”

“How can I forge my relationship to God, to see his glory, and to obey His voice?”

“Do I know God?”

“What place does God have in my life in these days?

A time to clarify our identity.

“Who am I really?”

A season when our values get tested.

“What do I really believe about God, about faith, about Scripture, about church, about the life in the spirit?

“Where is God leading?”

During the wilderness experience it is important for us to remember who we are and who we are following.

1 Peter 2:9

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.