Transcription of the Video: There is Hope in the Desert

A Psalm (chapter 63) of David when he was in the desert of Judah, "Oh, God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and glory. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods. With singing lips, my mouth will praise you. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me." Amazing words written by a young man who was in the wilderness of Judah running for his life. And as harsh as that desert is I'm sure David would have told you that the desert of his life was even hotter and dryer. Running for his life from the king. The promises of God as of yet unfilled, away from family and home and loved ones, his wife included, David experienced the harsh and painful reality of life's deserts in the desert. 

And yet, if you listen to those magnificent words that he wrote, in that desert, he saw God in the sanctuary. Sanctuary comes from the Hebrew word kadosh (holy). Sanctuary is where God is, and in that barrenness, that hot, dry, harsh desert where David suffered literally, as he suffered the figurative deserts of his life, he found God. And where there was no water, his lips were moist with praise. Where there was no food, he had a banquet - a feast he calls it - that God had spread before him. His soul was clinging to God, using the word that Genesis used of a wife clinging to her husband. David discovered the lesson of the desert. When it's hard and painful and struggle (for you and me too), God is there. It doesn't necessarily lessen the pain, but it does teach us to cling to God.

And so David longs for God as his body longs for water. And he knows that somewhere, somehow in this desert, there will be water, because God is here. Come. Let's go see.

Okay. We've begun our hike this morning in the desert of Judea, the wilderness of Judea. We're at a place called En Gedi, which means the spring of the wild goats. And God blessed us this morning with wild goats on the cliffs. And we've been watching them - mother and babies - eating leaves out of the trees and moving across the face of those cliffs. Now, this placed called En Gedi is the place where David hid from Saul - at least one of them. The story of David in the cave, if you remember, cutting off the corner of Saul's robe. 

Our point this morning is to continue to be taught by the desert. So after he had been here and hidden from Saul, David writes in Psalm 42, "As a deer pants for water, my soul aches, longs for you." And that's his image of these ibex. The reason they're down here this morning is they've come down for water, and they're panting. It's hot. They come down to drink and you see that image in David. But or lesson this morning goes back to our theme. Remember in the desert, the desert teaches that life is a walk. We move on a path, hopefully God's. And throughout life, there are rocks in the path. There is honey in the rock. We've been learning these things. 

There's another path lesson here. Because after he's victorious and he becomes king, David writes in 2 Samuel 22 a poem, a song about that time of running from Saul. In that poem, in that song, he says, "Make my feet like the feet of a deer so that I can stand upon the heights." 

Now assume that the background to that is his running from Saul. Check it out. That's the background of 2 Samuel 22. This is probably the deer he had in mind. And it struck me some time ago that there's a slightly different image in that walking image than I had gotten. If we assume life is a path, we probably pray that God makes the path somewhat easier and smoother and moves the boulders away so that we can walk. But that's not what David prays. 

Now, when you watch these animals, it's absolutely amazing. They jump from rock to rock. They jump from the path above to the path below. They climb trees, getting leaves out of the trees. It's like their feet are suction cups and absolutely silently. I've been sitting in the desert before. They'll run past you and you don't even know they're there. It's just God has given them feet to do unbelievable things. So it seems to me that David's point is not, "God, make my path easy." I prayed for that for years. 

Sometimes God says, "Yeah, you've got an easy path today." Sometimes God says, "I'm sorry. The path I have for you is tough." What you pray for is the right kind of feet. Because if you have the feet of that animal up there, you can go anywhere here. The toughest path becomes possible with the right feet. 

So the desert teaches as you walk through life, whatever the path is - easy, flat, steep and impossible - ask God for feet. And he will never leave you without the right feet for whatever the path is he decides. And there again, it's that desert teaching, that you trust God totally. Whatever you give me God, I trust you'll care for me. So pray for feet. Come. There's another lesson ahead. Come.

You know, sometimes when you go to the desert and the desert becomes your teacher, it's hot and hard to learn. And then there are occasionally desert lessons that are delightfully fun even in the middle of a desert because of what they represent.

So this morning, our trail, our path has taken us to an oasis in the wilderness of Judea - an oasis called En Gedi. Named that - En for spring and Gedi for the wild goats that climb the sides of these cliffs. Spring of the wild goats. It's the place where David and Saul met, and David cut the corner of Saul's robe if you recall. But that's not our story today. Our story is to ask what's the lesson here. If desert represents, in the Bible, those difficult times in life when you feel so hot, so overwhelmed that the situation is so tough that you can hardly go on, what does this have to teach us?

Well, the Bible evolves, develops that theme very beautifully. It starts in a way in the Exodus, where God brings water out of the rock. In fact, he brings water out of the Mountain of God. It's pretty clear that he's saying that, "In the desert," literally the desert of the Sinai wherever that was, "I am the source of water. So think of me as water." 

David develops that idea in the Psalms (chapter 42). He says, "My soul pants for God like a deer for water. My soul thirsts for you." Psalm 63, I was reading this morning. "You are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water." 

So you're so thirsty you can hardly keep going and God says, "Think of me as this." Now notice something. If you went a couple hundred feet that way or that way, there's nothing. Just that desert we've been seeing.  And yet right here in the middle of that unbelievable desert is this paradise of an oasis. 

Jeremiah develops the idea a little bit farther. Jeremiah (chapter 2) says, "My people have committed two sins. They've left me, the spring of Living Water." En Gedi is formed by many springs. "And they dug for themselves cisterns - broken cisterns that don't hold water." Imagine the stupidity of someone who would pass this up for dirty, muddy cistern water. 

Or in Jeremiah 17, he says, "Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust, because they've left me, the spring of Living Water." 

So lesson number one, when life becomes so hard, you face something so difficult, whatever it is - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, relational - God says, "In the middle of that desert, there'll be just enough of me. You can't live here. Stop here and drink me in. Stop here and immerse yourself in me. You can't stay here, but there's just enough of me to take another hour, another day, another week in this desert.

But as we've found with the idea of shade, Isaiah takes it a step farther. Isaiah (chapter 32) says, "See, a king will reign in righteousness." Oh, that's the Messiah, God's Kingdom. And rulers will rule with justice when that king reigns. And what will happen? Each man will become a shelter from the wind, a refuge from the storm, a stream of living water in the desert, and the shade, shadow of a mighty rock in a dry and weary land. 

So God's intent was, "Look. This is me. That's where you live - at least occasionally. But this is me. But when the Kingdom comes, when the Messiah arrives, I want to train you in the idea that that Living Water is not always going to come directly from me. It may often come from you." And so not only is God our En Gedi, but our mission, like Israel's mission was to the whole world, is to be En Gedi to others. So let me ask you a question this morning. How many people do you know that God has used to be this to you in your toughest desert moments?

If you get a chance, tell them, okay? My daughter gave me a picture that stands by my bedside. On the bottom, she wrote, "Dad, you were my En Gedi." That's deeply moving to me. But there's another challenge. How many people you know would say that you were an En Gedi to them? That's Isaiah. God wanted Israel to be En Gedi to the nations. And I think in many ways, she was and is. God wants us the same. 

And you say, "How do you know that?"

Jesus is in the Temple on Sukkot, the feast that anticipates the coming fall rains. They danced, waving those palm branches and shouting, "Hosanna. Save us God. Send us rain. Send us rain." And right in the middle of the high point of the liturgy, there's a moment of silence as the priest lifts his pitcher full of water to pour it onto the altar. And in that court with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, Jesus stood up and my polite English says, "In a loud voice, he shouted, 'Anyone who's thirsty, come to me and rivers of living water will flow from within you.'" 

That's exactly what Isaiah said. Come to Jesus as your En Gedi and the result becomes you become En Gedi. God has called us to be this to hurting, broken people. I don't care how you frame it, whether it's the ze'akah, the cry of the oppressed, the lonely, those in prison, the hungry, the homeless as Jesus described them that we clothe, comfort, feed. God's mission for his people, "I want to reclaim my world." 

And the desert teaches us, "I'll be this to you, but I want you to be this to others." God wants us to be an En Gedi. There's a p.s. 

I stand by this water, and I hear again Jeremiah's words. Jeremiah (chapter 17) said, "Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust." Listen, you leave En Gedi, that's all there is - rocks and dust. Why will they be written in the dust? "Because they've forsaken me, the spring of Living Water."

If you look at the context in Jeremiah (chapter 17), he precedes that passage by saying, "I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind and give to each what he deserves." Now when Jeremiah says something like that, you duck. Because he's not a happy prophet most of the time. So if God is going to give us what we've got coming, I'm not so sure I'm happy. And why are we going to get that, Jeremiah, what we've got coming? "Because you've turned away from me. I've written you in the dust, because you've left me, the spring of Living Water." 

Jesus is on the Temple mount, where the next few verses he will stand and say, "Come to me if you're thirsty." And they brought a woman and threw her down in front of Jesus, because she had been caught in the act of adultery. Some probably wanted to see whether Jesus would obey the Torah, stone her. Others, I believe with all my heart, wanted to find a way not to have to. Because there was a whole party of Jewish people who didn't want to do that.

Jesus' answer to that woman was simply to get down on his knee and to begin to write in the dust. Every westerner I've ever talked to wants to know what he wrote. To a Jew, intensely knowledgeable in the Scriptures, it doesn't matter. He's pointing to a Bible passage. I think Jeremiah, and I think his audience was thinking, "Written in the dust. Written in the dust. Written in the dust." Why? Because we're going to get what we have coming, because we've left him, the spring of Living Water. 

And then Jesus stood up and said, "Now, whoever is without sin whoever doesn't deserve what's coming, you throw a stone at her." And then he went back down and wrote again, just to make sure. And to show you how Jewish it is, it then says, "And they left from the oldest to the youngest," which is exactly how the rabbinic system works. And then to show you that he's not soft on sin, Jesus turned to the woman and said, "Now, don't do that anymore or something worse will happen."

I think Jesus used that Living Water image out of Jeremiah to say to those judges of the woman, "Be careful. You're not without sin either, and if she gets what she deserves, you're going to get what you deserve. Do you want that?"

And they said, "No. We prefer mercy." 

And I think Jesus said, "Yes, and so does she. Let her go."

So our teacher this morning, the lesson, life has deserts. God is En Gedi. So are you. Be an En Gedi to somebody today. 

It struck me how amazing it is that Jesus, who said to the woman at the well, the woman who was in a desert in a sense that he was the Living Water. She had what he had to offer. She would never be thirsty again. But that Jesus hung on the cross. And at a moment of intense pain, uttered those words, "I'm thirsty." And somehow in the desert of his suffering, God provided for him too.

The Bible says, "Walk as Jesus walked." (1 John 2) As we walk in desert and God is Living Water, we must rededicate ourselves, like our Messiah, to passing on the Living Water of his compassion, his concern, his love to those who walk in dry and parched places. May God bless your desert with Living Water and may God make you Living Water to others. 

We've been walking in the desert discovering that God is here with us like he's always been in the desert with his people. I hope, like me, you've been amazed at how he shows up unexpectedly in a broom tree, an acacia tree, a spring of living water, whatever form he chooses to take to supply our needs. 

Deserts are hard, aren't they? Sometimes they're painful for a long time. My prayer is that this study would provide you with a new set of labels, that as you go through those struggles that God leads you through or that sin in our world brings you into, or maybe even that you or I have fallen into because of our own sin, that you would be able to say, "That's a desert, and the heat is unbearable. I'm so thirsty. Where's the shade? I'm so hungry. Where's the bread?" Because as you and I label our painful experiences as desert experiences, we begin to see how God provides just a little at a time, and a friend becomes a little shade. God's direct intervention becomes a drink of Living Water. Manna comes from the sky in the form of a community that gathers around to care. 

And you learn to see those things. You discover somehow that as painful as deserts are, in them, God is present and just enough. Just a couple of parting thoughts as we end this walk together, the Torah uses the word remember, or some derivative, more than 200 times. It was important to God that his people remembered. Deserts, as painful as they are, eventually lead to the Promised Land. God brings us out of them often. But he asks us to remember, to remember those difficult times, to remember how he provided just enough. And I pray that together with your community and your family, you would have times to remember what it was like to be in the arms of God, because there was nowhere else to turn. 

I think it's also important to remember that God gave his Hebrew people the same mission he does us. We are to be his priests (1 Peter 2), "a royal priesthood," Peter says, "a kingdom of priests," (Exodus 19) Moses writes, which means we're to put God on display to our world. One of the effects of their desert experience was that the Hebrews could declare to the world, "We were in the desert - that harsh and barren land with its poisonous snakes and its scorpions and its lack of water and bread, and God was there too and always sufficient, always strong, always loving. Somehow, he provided."

And I don't think we should end without the note of hope that runs through all the pages of the Bible. I love that song that the saints sing in Revelation chapter 7. It's actually taken from the book of Isaiah. They sing together as they experience the wholeness of their relationship with God. Never again will they hunger. Never again will they thirst. Never again will the sun beat upon them nor the scorching heat. (Isaiah 49) 

The lamb from the center of the throne will become their shepherd. He will lead them to springs of Living Water, and he will wipe away every tear. (Isaiah 25) That's our hope. Sometimes, praise God, some of that even happens in our life here. We go through those painful deserts. We come out on the other side. And God has quenched our thirst, has shaded us from the heat, and has wiped away our tears.

But for sure, as we continue this wilderness journey with all its beauty and yet those moments of pain, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the day will come when the desert is gone, and God's people will know the fullness of relationship with him. So I pray that as you continue your life's journey and we walk through these deserts of our lives, that we would know the provision of the Creator God each step of the way. 

Thank you again for joining us. May God bless you.