WHAT IS THE WILDERNESS?
WHAT IS THE WILDERNESS?
The longer you are in the wilderness as a Caleb, with an actual acquaintance with Hebron, the better you know the marvellous unchanging nature of His care and ways with you; your garments wax not old, neither does your foot swell, and yet your heart is made more ready for dwelling in heaven. The wilderness is more to you, and heaven is nearer to you. The wilderness was immensely different to Caleb from what it was to the rest of Israel. At Eshcol you can fully say, “All my springs are in thee”, and there everything co-operates to give them full effect.
In the wilderness it is the same springs, but then everything hinders by temptation and distractions. If you know, and as you know, the joys of God, where everything divine contributes, so do you seek those joys where Satan in every way obstructs and hinders. The wilderness is having all our springs in God while we are on earth. If I love the things that are in the world, I turn away from the wilderness. I might retire from the world politically and positionally, and yet enjoy the things that are in it; and, inasmuch as I do so, I am not enjoying God’s provision for me in the wilderness - ‘garments fresh and foot unweary’, or in other [p. 261] words, comfort and strength - one unfailing, the other unchanging. Whenever I seek outside of Him, I do not get from Him. The more you taste what heaven is, the more you accept the wilderness in its true sense, namely, everything from God. “Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God” (Psalm 92: 13). You are blessed with the upper springs and the nether springs, and they increase simultaneously, because they come from the one source.
But we must enjoy them in Canaan if we would trust God for them in the wilderness. We must come from heaven to earth; and as the springs which delighted us in the former satisfy us in the latter, we learn God’s provision for us in the wilderness.
What a fine moral aspect to be in the world as a wilderness, and in our spirits vigorous, fresh, and unweary. May you be so more and more. But as our joys are not simply in and from God unless we accept the wilderness, neither can we discern what is of God around us, except as we are sustained by Him in the wilderness. We must be out of the world, and sustained by God in it, before we can see what is for God, and what is not. If we do not accept the wilderness, we have not the joys of God; and if we are not out of the world we cannot know what suits God or discern things that differ. As every animal recognises its own species, so does the spiritual recognise the spiritual. If I know the joys of God in heaven, I seek them in the wilderness. It is the same God in both. The corn of the land makes me more eager for the manna; it is the same life in different places. The more vividly heaven is enjoyed, the more do I appropriate God’s provision for me in the wilderness; and the more I am able to discern what is really of Christ in this evil world, and to be proof against all that opposes it.