The people of Israel, they were
in slavery in Egypt, okay? And there's a sense, right? So Moses is sent in there to
free the people of Israel out of Egypt, out of slavery. They've
been in bondage and slavery for 400 years. And so there's a sense
that they are saved. They have been saved out of slavery.
And there's also this sense that they're going to be saved because
they're on their way to the promised land. throughout this whole journey
there in the wilderness. And the book of Exodus, it's
a historical account, but it's also a picture of our lives.
That as we're here and we believe that Jesus has like saved us,
that we're also in the midst of this process through the wilderness. Another way to say this, you
might say that, hey, you can take a man out of prison in a
minute. But it can take a whole long
time to get the prison out of him God actually brought them
into the wilderness and there there was a reason behind it
In fact, we know that they were there for 40 years now watch
they were there for 40 years But they didn't need to be there
for 40 years They're actually walking around in circles for
40 years because they didn't trust God Because they still
even though they were saved out of slavery, they still had a
spirit of slavery. And it isn't long before they
say to Moses, and the people of Israel said to them, would
that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt.
It would have been better to die in the dope house than have
to go through all of what I'm going through. I mean like, what?
Did you forget how bad it was? Did you forget how difficult
it was? And now we're thinking that this
is difficult, right? I mean, but that's what we do,
right? We so easily forget. They said,
we wish we would have died in the land, you know, where we
sat by the meat pots and we had bread to the full. At least we
got food there, you know, but it's like, yeah, but you were
a slave for the food. Think about it for a minute.
So they're beginning to think back on this already. So that
quickly, they begin to manifest the reality that, man, it's not
just that you've been in slavery, that you just needed to be freed
from these circumstances that you were in. There's something
inside of you that's a problem. You still have this slave spirit.
And that's actually why they didn't go straight into the promised
land, right? So what, so talking about the wilderness, Moses says
this in Deuteronomy, this is a different book, he says, and
you should remember the whole way that the Lord your God has
led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble
you, testing you to know what is in your heart, whether you
would keep his commandments or not. Learning, to trust God,
learning to depend on God, learning that He is above us, we are below
Him, and that He is for us, He's not against us, and that through
the wilderness I can be shaped into that type of person.