Acts 7:30-44 (NIV)
30“After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say: 32‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.
33“Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’
35“This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36He led them out of Egypt and performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the wilderness.
37“This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’ 38He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living words to pass on to us.
39“But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’ 41That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. 42But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:
“‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?
43You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek
and the star of your god Rephan,
the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile’ beyond Babylon.
44“Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the covenant law with them in the wilderness. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen.
Reflection
When God had rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, God had prepared for the Israelites to travel straight to a land of milk and honey in Canaan. Instead, what would have been a beeline from Egypt to Canaan turned into forty years of walking in circles through the desert wilderness. From their departure and throughout the forty years, despite God’s provisions and favor, the Israelites doubted God’s promise and forgot the very things God had done for them. Instead, they chose to believe in things that were not God: they had forgotten how much they cried out to God to rescue them from slavery and thought leaving Egypt was the biggest mistake ever, they deceived themselves to believe that other gods would give them the lifestyle they wanted, and they set up sites of worship for Molek, Rephan, and other idols and devoted their lives to them. Instead of the wonderful plans God had for them in Canaan, they sought their own ways and worshipped other gods. What ended up happening was a wasted forty years. Wilderness is not a place where we are God, but where we find God.
Responding to the Transmission
Whether we are in our teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or whatever age we are, we know we want to live life to the fullest. Let’s pray that we would find ourselves in God and His plans for our lives. Let’s ask that God would make even our wilderness the most abundant and fruitful time of our lives for God’s glory.
