Could open your Bible with me in Deuteronomy Chapter 8. I want to just continue another thing related to what I was sharing. About two weeks ago I shared a message on Wilderness Wisdom, how to respond when you're going through a hard time - hard times come don't they aye? But they don't last. They're like everything, these too pass, so hard times come, and just because you're Christian doesn't mean it's not going to happen to you. the big decision, and the only decision you have, is when a hard time comes, when a tough time comes, when misunderstandings, difficulties, pressures, setbacks, all kinds of things like that come, here's the one question: how will I respond? Will I respond towards God, discover what God is saying, doing, and wants me to learn in this situation? Or will I harden and become bitter? That's the only choices we really have.
So I want to just look at one incident in Israel's life, but first of all I want to just get you a little perspective on it. In Deuteronomy, Chapter 8, it says you shall remember - Verse 2 - that the Lord your God led you these 40 years in the wilderness. Now notice they were in the wilderness for 40 years. It should only have been about one month. It lasted 40 years, because they didn't really learn the lessons - to humble you, test you, know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, fed you with manna which you did not know, and your fathers didn't know, that He might make you learn experientially, you can't live just by external things. Man will live by every word proceeding from the mouth of God. Now notice this in the end of Verse 16, it said: God did this, that He might do you good in the end.
It helps if we just understand that the wilderness was God's idea, that that difficult season was His idea. Through the Bible we saw people, all major men in the Bible, had times or seasons which you would call a wilderness. A wilderness was a very dry place, full of wild animals, it was very difficult. It represented a very difficult season, a difficult time. Jesus, after He was anointed with the Holy Ghost, and before He returned in the power of the spirit, went through a wilderness experience. Wilderness experiences are written about in the Bible, and listen, the Bible explicitly says 1 Corinthians 10: this was for us to learn from. So whatever they did is a great learning experience; best that they learned it, paid the price. We just read this story and learn the lesson.
Now if you can understand that this is what was going on, in Egypt - Egypt represented bondage and sin. It represents your life without Christ. Coming out of Egypt, God did it all. All they had to do was just respond. God had in mind that they would go into a land full of promises. He also has promises for you, promises for your marriage, promises for your finance, promise for business, promises for an inheritance, promises of all kinds. But between coming out of Egypt, where God did it all, they just stepped into the blessing; and going over here, here in the Canaan, the land of promises, they had to learn to walk by faith. They had to learn to possess. In fact, while the walked through the wilderness, God gave them supernatural provision every day. As soon as they got in the Promised Land it stopped. Now they had to operate kingdom principles, so Canaan represented kingdom lifestyle.
Canaan represented our life advancing the kingdom of God. It represents the church going into the community, making influence in the community, but for all of us, individually and corporately, we have to change how we think. So when they were in Egypt they were in captivity, they were in imprisonment, they were in hard bondage. In order to operate, and make an impact, and possess what God, they had to change mentalities. Here's what the wilderness is about: it's about changing how you think. It's about changing heart attitudes. It's about changing on the inside. That's what the wilderness is about; and so the purpose of the wilderness was to uncover their heart attitudes and mentalities. The first thing that happens when you're under pressure, what's in your heart comes up. Isn't that true? Isn't that true - so it's to uncover it, not to condemn, but so we can actually grow and change. So the first purpose of the wilderness was to uncover what was in the heart, and in the thinking - the mindsets; because in order to enter the land, and possess the promises, and walk by faith, they had to have certain mindsets.