The Wilderness Journey (1): Egypt, Canaan, and the Wilderness

Scripture reading: Acts 7:36-38

Acts 7:36–38 ESV

This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.’ This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us.

Introduction

Life is a journey. Do you guys agree? We agree because we know that there’s more to life than just school. Even in school you’re always progressing to the next grade. And then five to six years from now, you’ll be in a different stage of your life. Some of you will be in army, some of you will be in poly, some of you will be in college or even in the workforce. And what that means is that the places you go to will also change.

I once visited my secondary school while in my army uniform, and everyone looked at me like I was some weirdo. Why? Because a soldier doesn’t belong in school. A soldier belongs in the army camp or in the battlefield.

In the Bible, where you go says a lot about who you are. Where you go says a lot about who you are.

When I was sixteen years old, I would to go to school five days a week. What does that tell you? I’m a student. And in addition to that, I would go to church six times a week. That tells you I’m a Christian. And sometimes, you’d be able to find me playing pool at Bukit Timah Plaza at 2am. What does that tell you? That tells you that I’m a cool guy.

So where you go says a lot about who you are.

Background story

When Abraham was 84 years old, God promises him something. God promises that Abraham’s children will be slaves in a foreign nation. Isn’t that nice? But that’s not all. God goes on to say that after four hundred years, that nation will be judged, and Abraham’s children will come back to the promised land.

Genesis 15:13–16 ESV

Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

That’s in Genesis 15. And then Abraham has Isaac, Isaac has Jacob, and Jacob has twelve sons. And then there’s a famine in the promised land, so Jacob and his family have to move to Egypt. And then Jacob and his sons die, but the rest of the family are still living in Egypt. They’ve become such a big community that the Egyptians start to fear them. And so Pharaoh decides to enslave them.

Four hundred years later, God sends Moses to bring them out of Egypt. And they go through the wilderness for 40 years, and enter into the land of Canaan, the land that God promised to Abraham, the promised land.

So what? We are living in Singapore, more than 3,500 years into the future. Why should I care about some dusty old Israelite history? It’s because the Bible says that we are the spiritual children of Abraham.

Galatians 3:7 ESV

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

And if you are a child of Abraham, where are you going? What’s your destination? I hope that you hope it’s heaven. And if we want to get to heaven, then what’s our journey going to look like? It’s going to look like the wilderness journey. I think that’s interesting, because now we have a map to tell us where we are, and where we need to go.

What happens if you’re in the desert without a map? Then you’re lost. You don’t know where to go, what to do, how to reach your destination, and then you go here and there without knowing where you’re going, and then you die.

The Bible tells us that’s what our life in the church is like. If you’re in church, but you don’t have a map, you don’t have a sense of direction, you just come in every Sunday and leave without making progress toward your destination, then chances are you’re going to stop coming to church entirely.

So in the next couple of weeks, as we study the wilderness journey, lets really focus our attention and learn this map as if our lives depended on it.

Egypt

The Israelites were at Egypt for 400 years. Where you go says a lot about who you are, so what does this say about them? We need to look at what Egypt was like. And the Bible tells us that Egypt was three things.

First, Egypt was a place of slavery.

Second, Egypt was a place of idolatry.

Third, Egypt was a place of self-reliance.

Exodus 1:8–11 ESV

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses.

Exodus 1:13–14 ESV

So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

If you read this in the Hebrew, what you’ll notice is that a certain word keeps on repeating and repeating. It’s the word ‘abad,’ which means ‘to serve’ or ‘to worship.’ And it’s the same word used to describe Adam in the garden of Eden,

Genesis 2:15 ESV

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Exodus 3:12 ESV

He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

So Egypt represents a place where you cannot serve God. You can only serve Pharaoh and other false gods. And what is that called? It’s called idolatry.

So Egypt was a place of idolatry. History tells us that the Egyptians worshiped many different gods. They worshiped the god of the Nile river, the cow god, the sun god, and even Pharaoh was considered a god to them. Do you think Pharaoh allowed the Israelites to worship God? Moses comes to Pharaoh and says to let them worship God. And do you think Pharaoh lets them go? No way. They are his slaves.

Exodus 5:2 ESV

But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.”

So Egypt was a place of slavery, a place of idolatry, and finally, Egypt was a place of self-reliance.

What does that mean? It means that they depended on themselves to survive. The Egyptians took water from the Nile to water their crops.

But the Bible says that in the end, Egypt is going to be judged, and the Nile river is going to dry up.

Isaiah 19:5–7 (ESV)

And the waters of the sea will be dried up, and the river will be dry and parched, and its canals will become foul, and the branches of Egypt’s Nile will diminish and dry up, reeds and rushes will rot away.

There will be bare places by the Nile, on the brink of the Nile, and all that is sown by the Nile will be parched, will be driven away, and will be no more.

So what does the Nile river represent? It represents a prideful independence from God. It represents any parts of our lives that we’ve decided to keep for ourselves. It represents something that we boast about, without acknowledging that it was by God’s grace.

Your grades

Your talents

Your achievements

So if you find yourself looking at something you’ve done, and you think, ‘Wow, I did this by myself!’ And then you start boasting about it, you start posting on social media without acknowleding God’s help, then the Nile river’s flowing in your heart. It’s become your source of life, your source of identity. It tells you who you are.

And the Bible calls that slavery and idolatry. So it’s all interconnected. If your source of life and identity depends on your own talents and achievements, then doesn’t that mean you’re going to have to keep working hard in order to maintain your identity? If people say you’re so smart and clever, and then you want to maintain that as your identity, then you end up studying like a slave. When exam season comes, you cannot come to church because your studies are more important. Then that means you’ve placed your identity as a smart student over your identity as a worshiper of God.

Canaan

So then what’s the difference between Egypt and Canaan? If Egypt is the place of depending on yourself and serving idols, then Canaan is the place of depending on God and serving God.

Canaan is a place where you have to depend on God to survive. Why? Because there’s no Nile river. So how do they water their crops? They have to wait for rain.

Deuteronomy 11:10–12 ESV

For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

Canaan was the place where you’d have to depend on God as your source of life.

Zechariah 10:1 (ESV)

Ask rain from the Lord in the season of the spring rain, from the Lord who makes the storm clouds, and he will give them showers of rain, to everyone the vegetation in the field.

Jeremiah 14:22 (ESV)

Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are you not he, O Lord our God? We set our hope on you, for you do all these things.

So what does this mean? This means that as you move from Egypt to Canaan, you learn to depend on God instead of depending on yourself and your achievements. You learn to put your identity as a worshiper of God above every other thing you have. You learn to confess that your grades, your talents, your family background, all these things are by the grace of God. You are first and foremost a worshiper of God.

Conclusion

What does it mean to leave Egypt? What caused the Israelites to finally be able to leave? It was the Passover. And the Passover lamb wasn’t killed in Canaan. It wasn’t killed in the wilderness. It was killed in Egypt.

So who is our Passover Lamb today? It is Jesus Christ. That’s why we call Him the Lamb of God.

1 Corinthians 5:7 ESV

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

So while we are still in the spiritual Egypt, the place of slavery and idolatry, Jesus died for us.

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And what’s interesting is that the Bible also says that Jesus was crucified at Egypt.

Revelation 11:8 ESV

and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.

Why does it say Sodom and Egypt? Where was the Passover lamb killed? It was in Egypt. And because the Passover lamb was killed, the Israelites could leave Egypt and head for the promised land of Canaan.

And after they leave Egypt they cross the Red Sea and enter into the wilderness. What does the Red Sea represent? The Apostle Paul says that the Red Sea represents baptism.

1 Corinthians 10:1–3 ESV

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food,

And after you are baptized, what happens? Do you go to heaven immediately? Maybe you will if I’m the one baptizing you. But what actually happens is that you begin your life in the church. And what happens in church?

You receive the Word of God

You learn to serve God

You learn to depend on God

And what we’ll see as we study the wilderness journey is that the Israelites go through the exact same thing. The wilderness to them is like the church to us now.

Acts 7:38 ESV

This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us.

In Revelation, the church goes into the wilderness to find shelter and refuge from the serpent. So the church is a place of training, of shelter, and spiritual nourishment.

Revelation 12:14 ESV

But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.

I pray that as we continue to study the wilderness journey, we will be able to grow in faith and awareness of our spiritual journey toward the promised land.