Mensa Otabil - The Wilderness Route

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We are looking at God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt as they walk out of Egypt into the land that God has promised them, and we’re learning lessons about how God dealt with them.

So we go to Exodus chapter 13, verse 18: so the Lord led the people around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, and the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt. God chose the wilderness route for His people. It is a mirror of something we would later see in the New Testament. When Jesus Christ started His life after the Jordan River, He also went through the wilderness. It would appear as if going through a wilderness is part of God’s way of training us, equipping us, and preparing us for what He has ahead of us.

So the children of Israel left the city and went through the wilderness. This is their first wilderness experience and not their only wilderness experience because they will continue after the Red Sea into the wilderness again. A wilderness experience is a time of loneliness; it’s a time of going through tough situations, dryness, when nothing seems to be flourishing for you. Many of us go through such experiences, and many times, when we go through a wilderness experience, we think God has abandoned us because nothing is working for us. But we see from this picture that although they are going through a wilderness, God has not abandoned them. God is with them; He’s actually the one leading them through the wilderness.

So if you’re going through a wilderness experience in your life, perhaps you look at 2022 and say, «What a wilderness experience it has been.» It’s part of the way God leads us. We go through those moments when He sharpens us, prunes us, and makes us ready for greater things ahead of us. So He led them through the wilderness, and there will be times when you will also be led through a wilderness by God, not the devil, but by God.

Then the second thing I want you to note about this experience is that as they walked through the wilderness, the Bible makes a notation about their posture in the wilderness. The passage states that the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt; they went out in an orderly manner. That phrase simply means that they arranged themselves like a military convoy. Remember, they’ve lived as slaves all their lives; they’ve never been organized before as a nation and have never had to organize an army. But they decided if they were going to leave this place, they had to have the right posture; they had to be orderly.

Orderliness is always important for great things in our lives. We need to put our lives in order; we need to order our plans, we need to order nations, and we need to order churches so that things work well and properly. And that’s how Israel decided to leave. It also helped them to project their strength because normally when people are orderly and arranged, we see them as strong and formidable. So if they’re going to go through the wilderness, they don’t know whether Pharaoh will come against them again; they can’t be scattered all over, with everybody minding his own business, doing what they want.

Then Pharaoh would just hit each one of them and destroy them. So they decided they had to come together as a nation. They needed to organize themselves, they needed to be orderly in their approach, and they walked out through the wilderness in an orderly manner. I like it; it was a tough wilderness, but they were orderly, they were organized, they were formidable, walking through a difficult time and process of their lives. There’s a lot we can learn from the children of Israel for our lives.

Let us pray. Say with me: Heavenly Father, You are a God of order and purpose. Help me to order my life to serve You more effectively. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.