WHAT IS THE WILDERNESS?

WHAT IS THE WILDERNESS?

In the counsel of God the believer is looked at as either in Egypt or in Canaan; either “a great way off” or in the Father’s house. The interval, however, between those two places is the wilderness; and this, though not part of the counsel or purpose of God for us, is part of His ways with us. The wilderness is not properly a place; it is more a bridge, the passage between one place which has been entirely abandoned, and a new place, which is our only true one, but which is not yet fully occupied. Hence when a place is assumed or asserted, it must be either Egypt or Canaan, the world or heaven. The ^[p. 320] passage to heaven when I am out of the world is the wilderness, and I must be clean out of Egypt before I am in the wilderness. It is of all importance that it should be seen that there are only two places, the world and heaven. Man turned away from God on earth in the garden of Eden, and the world of sin and alienation from God began. But when man rejected the Son of God who came to relieve and rescue him from his sin and distance, the earth was no longer a place for God’s people. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world”, but their citizenship is in heaven. The difficulty in definitely comprehending the wilderness is that it is an experience rather than a place; and a very peculiar experience, because it belongs to the interval when I am clean out of the world, and though not resident in heaven, yet having no other place to set my foot on, like the dove in the waste of waters. It tasted truly of wilderness experience when it carried back the olive branch to Noah. It had plucked it from the new place, and in bearing the testimony of it to Noah it had the experience of the interval between the ark and the olive tree. In the same way Caleb scanned and measured the nature of the wilderness when he returned to the host of Israel with bunches of grapes taken from Eshcol, and travelled with them forty years.

The wilderness is the experience of one who has left a very terrible place, one of the greatest suffering and yet of attraction, and is journeying to a place of infinite delight, which if it were only imaginary would lend no solace or cheer to the traveller. In the wilderness I must not only be clear of Egypt, I must also know something of Christ, the hope of glory, in my new and only place; and in proportion as I know and enjoy my new place, so do I cheerfully travel on, not for an uncertainty, but with the certainty that I have been delivered from the world, and that I belong to Him who is in heaven, and that I am going to it as my home and rest for ever.

In John 20 our Lord says, “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you”. In chapter 17, He says, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world”. The first great stage in the christian’s life is the knowledge of full redemption, peace with God, the settled assurance of acceptance with Him according to His own mind. This must be known before the wilderness can be entered and known. Now with the believer it is often long before he is quite clear of Egypt, for though he sees himself sheltered by the blood of Christ, as Exodus 12 typifies, yet it is often a very protracted journey from Egypt to the other side of the Red Sea. Some are only sheltered, some again are preparing to leave, feeding on the roasted lamb, entering in some measure into the judgment Christ bore at the hand of God for their sins. Many at this spot imagine that they have secured the fullest blessings of redemption, because they are feeding in their souls on Christ as the sin-bearer. They are growing in the sense and perception of His love and grace in dying for them, and often do not seem to think of going any further. They are very pious, they are full of feeling, they bear all the appearance of men going a journey - their shoes on their feet, their staff in their hand, and their loins girded - but they have not as yet accomplished it. This is the halting-place of many. Others who do really enter on the journey reach no further than Pihahiroth, and are terribly depressed, and often continue long here, because they do not in faith enter into the resurrection. They have not seen the open way made by Him through death, overthrowing every foe. Others again are really, as to their souls, no further than in the dry way through Red Sea. They are still crossing over. This class have a true and often fine sense of the power of Christ in laying low every foe, but they are more in the battlefield than as conquerors on the shore.

Now it is evident that however pious or devoted a person might be in any of the steps before reaching the other side of the Red Sea, before entering by faith into ^[p. 322] the resurrection of Christ, he would not be in the wilderness. The song in Exodus 15, the jubilation of heart, conscious of full deliverance, is the necessary expression of the redeemed. There must be the knowledge that “the Lord... hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea”, before I can be clear before God both of the place where I had incurred the judgment of God, and of the man - the Egyptian - on whose account I had incurred it. Christ died for our sins, “that he might deliver us from this present evil world”. When I am in the knowledge and peace of this perfect work, I am clear of Egypt and the world that is under judgment, for “now is the judgment of this world”. Then I really, in the experience of my soul, begin my wilderness journey as far as old things are concerned. But, besides this, it is necessary for the true pilgrim here to be assured of the inheritance reserved in heaven. In the same song in which deliverance and complete triumph over Egypt are expressed, there is also the exulting consciousness of entering heaven. “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation... Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established”, Exodus 15: 13, 17.

Thus the triumph of Christ over everything between us and God, and the inheritance, in earnest by the Spirit, must be first assured to my heart, before I enter the wilderness.

In 1 Peter 1, which treats exclusively of the wilderness, there is first the assured joy of heart that we are begotten again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, “to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven”. The wilderness is the space which intervenes between the complete triumph in Christ over the world,

^[p. 323] and His coming in glory. Hence it is said, “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel”. The one without the other is not sufficient. As we have seen, there must be a distinct, clear, and positive deliverance from Egypt before the wilderness can be entered; and together with this, there is the Spirit, which is the earnest of the inheritance. From one place, the world, we are completely delivered; we are justified, and have peace with God. We are as Christ is in this world. The other place, though future as to full enjoyment, is ours in Christ, and the more we are in the Spirit, the more are “the things which are above” revealed to our souls; and the more we are in the assurance and enjoyment of heaven, the more thoroughly are we strangers here. It is the wilderness when we feel we are not belonging to the world, nor to earth as such, but that while really belonging to Christ in heaven, we are still on the earth during His pleasure. When Christ is in me, I am sensibly and happily apart from the world; and the more vividly and consciously I enjoy my place in Him in heaven, the more I am both a pilgrim and a stranger here, and then I am in the wilderness. It is impossible, as we have seen, to enter the wilderness, unless in the cheerful enjoyment of Christ’s accomplished work. I am out of Egypt, waiting for heaven; but while waiting, I am led by the Spirit, the earnest of the inheritance, into the joy and blessedness of that state, though still future. Thus one place is abandoned, and I have done with it, and desire to have done with it, because it lieth in the wicked one, and it is not of the Father. I am through the efficacy of Christ’s cross clear of the judgment entailed on me there; and even if it were only this I should be displaced from that which naturally attaches to man’s heart. But besides this, my heart is enlightened to comprehend the purpose of God in giving me a place in heaven; and the more I enter into this now in spirit, the more I am strengthened in abandoning this world, and the more cheerful I am ^[p. 324] while remaining in a place which once suited my nature, but from which in spirit and taste I am separated. It is not necessary that I should know that I am seated in heavenly places in Christ before I could be in the wilderness; but the more I know of heaven, and the more I am consciously associated with Christ there, the better am I able cheerfully and fully to surrender the world as ministering to me naturally, and therefore the more truly am I in the wilderness. It is then that I can glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; so that an increased enjoyment of my portion in heaven produces a more absolute separation from the world, nay, a glorying in the fact that, with reference to it, both it and myself have been judicially disposed of in the death of Christ.

In the wilderness, then, the more I am in every way out of the world, and the more in the possession of heaven, the better; though in it I retain that which connects with the world. I am still in nature here, I am in the body; though I am journeying on to the place where even now in spirit I am free, be it even for a moment, of myself and my old standing altogether. Hence the wilderness is a testing place, for I am there as a man, though I am to walk there as Christ walked. In heaven I am outside of myself, nothing to interfere with my happiness; but the moment I am on earth I am in the wilderness. I bear about in my body the dying of Jesus. In heaven there is no admission of the flesh at all; the reproach of Egypt must be rolled away before one can be seated in heavenly places in Christ. And my conflict is with wicked spirits.

Now if my enjoyment of heaven increase, my place in the wilderness is not altered; but while I feel the wilderness the more, I am better prepared and enabled to bear the testing to which I am subjected there. Stephen had a brilliant and a positive assurance of belonging to heaven when he was in a pre-eminent way in the wilderness, where he had to resist on every side; and the more he was reduced to death, the more fully he entered into ^[p. 325] the blessedness of his true place with Christ in heaven. In like manner Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12, after having the deepest enjoyment of Christ in heaven, finds here a greater strain on him than before he knew so much of heaven. That is, the wilderness was more intensely testing, the more he was actually in possession of his real, eternal home above. But after prayer and exercise of heart, he learns to accept with pleasure the wilderness in this aggravated way. He says, “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong”. He was weak as to that which connected him with Egypt, but strong as to that which connected him with Christ in heaven. As among men I have to refuse what savours of man, and adhere to what savours of God; and thus, as in Peter, I am either renouncing from myself, or suffering from others. And as I advance in the knowledge of my place and portion in Christ in heaven, this scene is more a wilderness to me, because the more true I am to Christ here, the less am I helped by anything here. Nay, I am opposed, because the more I know of Christ in heaven, the more I must maintain Him here. And as I do this, I must not only sink into my own weakness, when His power would rest upon me, but everyone resists me, and wicked spirits also, as I demand space morally for the name of Christ. So that the wilderness increases as a place of suffering, the suffering of Christ, as the glory of Christ is more simply my object and portion.