In the Wilderness: When Prayers Aren't Answered Like You'd Like

Today I will be beginning a series on the Children of Israel and their time of wandering in the wilderness and asking what we can learn from their situation. The first comparison I see between the Hebrews and us is that God doesn't always answer us in the way we thought He would. These are the ways in which the answers didn't come in the way the Israelites thought:

1. Slavery didn't end with the death of the king. In the beginning of Exodus we find the Israelites under strong oppression in Egypt. The king was scared of them, so he drove them into slavery. When they continued to grow in number, he decreed that each newborn boy was to be killed. But the bible says "because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king and allowed the boys to live." We are later told that God blessed the midwives for this act.

Because all this treachery stemmed from one king's desire for power, I'm sure that they thought with his death they may be free. Verses 23-25 however tells us that after the king died, "The Israelites still groaned beneath the burden of slavery. They cried out for help, and their pleas for deliverance rose up to Go. God heard their cries and remembered His covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He looked down on the Israelites and felt deep concern for their welfare."

So why didn't God let the slavery end with the death of the king? Because He was allowing them to get to the place of crying out to Him. Although the midwives "feared God", it is not until the death of the king that we see the collective body calling on the name of the Lord. My assumption is that they hadn't done so before because they were holding out hope that with a new reign they would be free. Now they were hopeless, and when you are in that place, your only chance is to call on the hope of the world.

2. They wouldn't have chosen a vigilante stutterer as their leader. For all the credit we give Moses as a great leader, the fact remains that he was a fugitive of the law after having killed an Egyptian and hiding the body. I'm pretty sure that if the Israelites would have elected someone to advocate on their behalf before the king they would have picked someone who wasn't running the risk of arrest when he entered the town. Furthermore, there is a reason great orators become great leaders. Time was of the essence, they wouldn't have picked a man to speak for them who took twice as long to plead their case. The fact that he had to have a translator would have knocked him out of the running.

Why did God pick Elmer Fudd with an anger management issue to lead them? Because as my mother says it, "when you aren't number one on man's list, you can know that God choose you, not man." God's will was completed through this thoroughly imperfect man. If he had all the right credentials, there would have been a tendency to give him credit for God's work. But when this is who you got, there is no doubt it was the hand of God leading them.

3. God could have teleported them to the Promised Land. Once they were actually delivered from the hand of pharaoh, they still had to wander for 40 years. How ridiculous is that? I mean, honestly, if this is a God who can make water stand up like walls and allow them to walk across dry land, then why couldn't he just pick them up and set them down in the Promised Land? He could have dropped down all the parts for them to invent the car or airplane. 40 years seems kind of drastic right?

Throughout their time in the wilderness they blamed Moses. But after they were released from Egypt, Exodus 12:51 made it clear who took them through the wilderness when it says "the Lord began to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt..." It was by God's design that they wandered. It is by God's design that we sometimes must wander.

In the wandering we learn about things like sufficiency on God, contentment in the blessings He gives us, and his sovereignty. We get impatient and expect to arrive at our Promised Land without the trying times in the wilderness, but time and time again, we see that God doesn't work like that. If it weren't for the wilderness experience, they wouldn't have known the true blessing in the Promised Land. If they didn't have to eat manna everyday for 40 years, they wouldn't have appreciated the land flowing with milk and honey. In your wandering don't lose heart! He is setting you up to appreciate the promise that is coming!