Word of Salvation – Vol.39 No.33 – September 1994

 

Finding God’s Favour In The Desert

 

Sermon: by Revd. M.C. DeGraaf

Text: Jeremiah 31:2

Reading: Jeremiah 32

 

Brothers and sisters,

Very few of us, even though we have lived in this great dry country of Australia most of our lives, have ever really seen a desert.  Some of us who have been to Uluru or the Kimberleys, have travelled along the edges of some.  But most of us have not been much further inland than Mildura or Dubbo.  We’ve seen the great flat dryness, but a real desert?  No, not in real life!

And yet this doesn’t mean that we haven’t formed ideas and images about deserts or don’t have feelings about the desert.  We think of Burke and Wills, Charles Sturt, Major Mitchell, John Eyre and other explorers who constantly struggled to find water in the desert.  Some lost their lives for lack of water.  We have images of the skeletons of dead sheep; of red dust plains without a blade of grass as far as the eye can see.  We have read of the struggles of the early pioneers, and of farmers today as they struggle against the harshness of their environment.  We think of huge sand dunes always moving, as in Africa where the Sahara is growing by tens of kilometres a year, taking more and more farmland and turning it into desolate country.

We humans can live without food for a few weeks but will die without water within a few days.  Most of us will avoid the desert, if we can.  We don’t mind travelling hundreds of kilometres for a holiday on the beach or in the mountains; we like Ayres Rock or the Kimberleys.  They may be dry regions but there’s something to look at, something to do.  Would we make the same effort to travel to a flat place without running water, or trees, or abundant wildlife?  People would laugh at us and think the sun had gotten to our heads.

1.  And yet in the light of all this, it is interesting how in Scripture the image of the ‘desert’ is often seen as relatively positive.  Instead of being a place to be avoided at all costs, people are invited or strongly encouraged (sometimes against their will) to enter the desert.  As well as being a place of death it also is seen, in some ways, as being a place in which to find life.

Jeremiah 30 and 31 are largely very positive chapters.  The prophet is speaking about the time after the punishment of Israel.  Yes, they will need to go into exile.  Yes, their rebellion must be punished, but this punishment will not be an everlasting thing, they won’t be exiles in Babylon forever.  The cloud has a silver lining, ‘I will break the yokes off their necks and will tear off their bonds’, says the Lord (30:8).  ‘I will be the God of the clans of Israel, and they will be my people‘ (31:1).  There is hope!  God will be faithful!  And it is in the context of this faithfulness and hope that God says that the people will find favour.  Where?  In the desert!

It seems to be a contradiction in terms and yet it connects with imagery that we find throughout Scripture, especially in the Old Testament.  The desert is often used in Scripture as an image of a place where we can meet God face to face.  There are no distractions; no little jobs to be done; no interruptions.

• We see it in Genesis with Jacob. He has cheated Esau and must run from his parents’ home. Where does he run?  Into the desert and there God meets him with the dream of the ladder with its clear message: even in this desolate place you are not alone!
• And we think of Elijah, discouraged after Jezebel threatened his life. Where does God take him, to reason with and encourage him? Into the desert, and there he is capable of hearing the whisper of God’s voice.
• Many of the prophets spent time meditating, communing with God in the wilderness.
• In the New Testament we see John the Baptist whose ministry is centred on the desert, away from the distractions of everyday life.
• Even Jesus needed to get away from the crowds. He needed time on His own before God, to listen and share with His father. He too went into the desert and saw it as an essential part of His spiritual life.
• Of course the imagery is strongest when it applies to the whole nation of Israel. Right at the beginning of their history, God leads them out of Egypt. And then He doesn’t lead them to the Promised Land by the shortest route along the Mediterranean.  No, He very deliberately takes them via the desert, so that in that place, away from the distractions of false gods and the like, He can mould them, give them the law, show His love in practical ways by giving water and food.  The desert is seen as a place where there’s just God and his people.  The covenant relationship that would be so important in later years, is first explained, reinforced and built up in the desert.
• This whole imagery of God’s people in a desert situation is taken up several times by the prophets. Hosea is one of the most evocative. God says about His rebellious people, ‘I am going to allure her, I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.’ In many ways the image is like a romantic weekend in a hotel for a married couple.  No telephones, no kids, no distractions, just you and me, looking into each other’s eyes, deepening the relationship by creating a place where good communication and mutual understanding can occur.  So often in our lives we allow our relationships to shrivel up because of the busyness of our lives.  Television, work, friends, suckall our relationships dry, if we let them.  We regularly need time out together!

2.  Of course this whole idea of being alone together can be a threatening thing.  A lot of married couples will avoid situations like that.  Their marriage is fine as long as everything is busy and as long as there are routines and television and the like.  But silence is scary.  In our relationships with ourselves we find the same things.  When I face silence, I know there is pain in my heart.  I see the blackness in my heart; I am afraid of it so I don’t want to think about it.  I want to hide and suppress the feelings I can’t control.  I force myself to forget how to laugh and cry AND I WILL DO EVERYTHING TO AVOID BEING ALONE WITH ME.  If I have to be by myself I turn the radio up or sing loudly.

The same thing can be true in our relationship with God.  We don’t mind the routines or the religious structures, as long as everything is familiar.  We don’t mind putting the money into the offering bag, and hearing safe sermons and singing safe songs.  But we’re afraid of the silence.  We are afraid of truly opening up before Him.  We don’t know whether we like Him getting too close.  We avoid the deserts as long as we can.

But there are at least two problems with that approach.

(1)  Firstly, we don’t always have a choice.  We can choose not to hook up the caravan and head off for the Simpson desert, but we can’t always choose to avoid the spiritual deserts in our lives.  Just as the Lord took Israel into the wilderness during the Exodus and into the exile a thousand years later, so too from time to time He leads us into our own spiritual deserts.  He strips away the things we have grown used to, the things we have come to depend on (it could be anything – the death of a loved one, a child who disappoints us, losing a job).  He turns things upside down, not to be cruel, because He is always a loving father, but rather because He wants us to see just how empty many of the things we have come to lean on are.

Of course, oftentimes we react to these spiritual deserts much like the Israelites did.  We feel so afraid we quickly build a golden calf to bow down to.  We get divorced and quickly rush into another marriage.  We lose our job and rush around filled with fear.  We give up one addiction and replace it with another one.  ANYTHING to fill the vacuum we find in our lives.

Instead of using these times to empty ourselves before God and grow closer to Him, we hide and push ourselves away.  This is sad because the deserts in our lives can be times of immense renewal and refreshment – a time to throw out our arms and simply say, ‘God, I cannot go on without you’.  That is the same as saying, ‘To you is all the glory, honour and praise’, as far as God is concerned.

(2)  Secondly, we rob ourselves by avoiding the deserts.  Even Jesus knew the value of quietness.  He is God and yet, He needed to find silences, empty places in which to spend intimate time with His Father.

Just as a marriage won’t survive without these intense times of closeness, so our relationship with God needs space.  As I said, we don’t always like this.  We prefer rituals; we prefer our devotions to be filled with our words; we prefer our worship to be something we’re in control of, rather than something which challenges us.  And then we wonder why we always feel so shallow in our Christian life.  We wonder why we don’t seem to be growing.

We never open ourselves to the real power.  We don’t go into the wilderness to listen to the whisper of God.  We need to learn to turn off the car radios, learn to close the door on the washing, to turn the answering machine on.  We need to strip away all the distractions, all the excuses, and spend time with our God.  And then we must not come to Him with a shopping list.  Rather, just sit in silence and say: Here I am Lord, this is me!

Look deep into your spirit; try and see what is going on there and lay it before His throne.

At a conference recently we heard several times, ‘Before I can grow and be useful for God; before I can really minister to the broken around me, I need to be comfortable with who I am in Christ.’

Do I know what makes me tick?  Do I know what motivates me?  Am I real about my sin and have I really seen grace?

2.  Secondly, I need to be close to Him.  I need to be listening a lot more than speaking.  This world is filled with so called Christians who are busy all the time for God and yet have no space for God in any real sense.  They don’t have the guts to shut up for a while and enter the desert.

When we do enter the ‘desert’ He will be gentle.  He will whisper and at last our loneliness will be gone and we will be home.

AMEN