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George H. Warnock: "A Way
through the Wilderness" |
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Chapter 6
THE WILDERNESS OF ZIN
“Tragedy And Triumph”
“Then came the children
of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first
month: and the people abode in Kadesh...” (Num. 20:1).
God had planned that the
children of Israel would spend approximately a year at Sinai, to learn His laws
and judgments, build the Tabernacle, and then proceed north into Canaan. Moses
tells us that it was only “eleven days’ journey” from Horeb to Kadesh... but
they wandered about in this area for another 38 years until the old generation
had wasted away.
People ask, “How long is
it going to take for us to enter into the fullness of God’s rest?” In many
respects, it is you and I who are mostly to blame for the way we prolong our
wilderness journey. God said,
“Oh that My people had
hearkened unto Me,
And Israel had walked in
My ways!
I should soon have
subdued their enemies,
And turned My hand
against their adversaries” (Ps. 81:13-14).
On the other hand it is
true that we in this generation of the Church are suffering the consequences of
the sins of former generations; just as Caleb and Joshua had to linger another
38 years in the wilderness because of the sins of the old generation. But what
God decreed as judgment for the old generation, became PREPARATION for the new
one. Let us take courage in this. Even in the midst of this “waste and howling
wilderness,” God is PREPARING a new generation to take the Land.
We recognize that there
is a very individual and personal appropriation of Canaan Life, and we would not
minimize that. But what God is about to do in the earth is so vast, so mighty,
so terrible, so awesome, that no individual could possibly appropriate it in any
sense of fullness. Caleb and Joshua must wait for the new generation to be
trained and disciplined of the Lord, before they themselves could go in. In the
meantime they could walk before the Lord in faith, in hope, in expectation. But
Canaan Life in its fullness is for a corporate people. It is simply too vast for
any individual to apprehend or appropriate:
“That YE, being rooted
and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend [or, better ‘apprehend’] WITH
ALL SAINTS what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know
the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that YE MIGHT BE FILLED WITH [or,
‘UNTO’] ALL THE FULNESS OF GOD” (Eph. 3:17-19).
The Old Way, And The New
As we have emphasized in
previous writings (Evening and Morning), when human failure hinders or
forestalls the purposes of God, and God comes on the scene to remedy the
situation and bring the people back to Himself... HE INITIATES A NEW WAY AND A
NEW ORDER. If we understand this principle it will save us from a lot of
frustration that we otherwise will have to suffer, as we seek to rebuild the
order of a past day. God does not repeat Himself, in like manner as He worked
the first time. He does not “try again” where man has failed. The second
time-around is always different, always of a higher order, always a new way. We
must know this if we are going to be spared the frustration and the sense of
futility that so many have experienced as they sought to convince God that He
must come forth and “do it this way” because this is the way He did it before. I
know God is forever “the Same”; and because He is THE SAME He always does things
differently the second time around. Because He is THE SAME He will continue to
do “new things” in the midst of human failure. Because He is THE SAME, when man
has failed He will rectify the situation through His righteous judgments, and
will do something greater than the thing that man has spoiled. Because He is THE
SAME He will consistently move forward, and upward, and onward with His people
into new areas of revelation and Truth.
This teaching is
certainly annoying to the theological mind, because it places man in a position
where he cannot, even with all His knowledge of Scripture or of history, come up
with a plan for revival, or a plan for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God in
the earth, from all his storehouse of accumulated knowledge concerning past
revivals, and past dealings of God with His people. Because God is forever THE
SAME, and changes not, He always seeks for Himself a people who are dedicated,
consecrated, humble, lowly, and obedient to His will. But because He is THE
SAME, when He has found such a people, and has prepared such a people, He will
do a “new thing” in the earth, and the old is seen to be the seed-plot and the
preparatory way for the new thing that God has in mind.
This is nothing less
than the operation of a Divine Law--THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST
JESUS. There is no way that man can come up with methods and procedures to bring
it into being, or to control it. It leaves man totally helpless and hopeless in
himself, with no other recourse but to find himself carried along, moved along,
and motivated by the Spirit of God... which, like the wind, YOU CAN HEAR HIM
WHEN HE SPEAKS, BUT YOU CANNOT KNOW WHERE HE COMES FROM AND TO WHERE HE IS
LEADING. The Spirit of God blows softly from the heart of God, and no man can
predetermine the course of the Spirit, nor can he structure and mould the
substance that God will bring into being. Man has tried, and will continue to
try, to reproduce something that God did in the past ... but he is sure to fail,
even as he has always failed in the past. Every time God moves afresh in the
earth it is a NEW THING that He brings forth, and therefore He always catches
man by surprise.
“Behold, I will do a new
thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way
in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isa. 43:19).
Let man cease his
efforts to structure and form and plan and connive to bring into being the New
Testament Church, or the glorious Church that Paul spoke about... it is doomed
to utter failure. But God will do it through a humble people... a people who are
conditioned to hear what the Spirit is saying, and who will simply move along
with His Wind, which bloweth where He will. What about the Scriptures? What
about the Word? We need have no fear of being unscriptural, if the Spirit of God
is in control. He is the Spirit of Truth. He knows the Scriptures... for He it
is who inspired His holy apostles and prophets to write the Scriptures. And when
He speaks, He speaks not “from Himself” as man does, He speaks only that which
He hears from the heart of God, who is the Source and the Author of the holy
Scriptures.
All man can do is patch
up the old, for he is of the old creation, and knows not the Spirit of the New.
But God readily discards the old, for there are new things in His heart,
bursting to come forth... and human failure is a challenge to His heart to come
on the scene, and to judge and bring to nought the old order, and to prepare the
ground for the sowing of a new seed. He simply does not go about patching up the
old, or helping man to do it. Let us observe this principle from a few examples
of Scripture:
(1) The Old Wineskins,
And The New
“And no man putteth new
wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled,
and the bottles shall perish” (Luke 5:37).
You who feel that God
gave you His Holy Spirit to make you a better Baptist, a better Presbyterian, a
better Episcopalian, a better Catholic... a better Something-of-a-Past-Day...
prepare your hearts for the bursting of the bottles! God gave His Spirit to
bring you further and further into realms of New Creation life... and not to
perpetuate something of the old.
(2) The Old Vessel And
The New
“And the vessel that he
made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another
vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it” (Jer. 18:4).
God simply refuses to
patch up a “marred” vessel. He simply crumples it up in His hand, and starts
over again. He uses the same human clay, but the vessel is brand-new from His
own creative hands.
(3) The Old Man, And The
New
The first man Adam was
not the exalted heavenly being that some make him out to be. He was but a type,
or shadow, or “figure of Him that was to come” (Rom. 5:14). He was “of the
earth, earthy” (1 Cor. 15:47). He was made “dust of the earth.” Now our Lord
Jesus came forth from the seed-plot of the old, but He was the true and perfect
image of God, the “heavenly” man, the “Lord from Heaven,” the Light, and the
Glory of God.
(4) The First And Second
Tables Of The Law
The first tables,
written with the finger of God, were smashed by the great law-giver when he came
down from the mount and beheld the idolatry of the people of God. The second
tables of the Law were also written with the finger of God, but were brought
down from the mountain to be placed in the Ark of the Covenant. Man was not
permitted to meddle with the second tables. This, of course, portrays to us the
nature of the Two Covenants....
(5) The First Covenant
And The Second
When God speaks about a
New Covenant, He obviously implies that the first covenant has become old: “In
that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old” (Heb. 8:13). The
reason God did away with the old was because of human failure. “Because they
continued not in My covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord” (Heb.
8:9). The New Covenant, therefore, was not one for man to fulfill, but one that
would be “written on the fleshly tables of the heart” enabling him to do what
the Law could not do to love God with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength.
(6) The First
Tabernacle, And The Second
The First Tabernacle,
erected in the wilderness at the foot of Mount Sinai, was but a pattern and type
of heavenly realities. But the second tabernacle was the “greater and more
perfect tabernacle, not made with hands...” (Heb. 9:11). There were many
tabernacles and temples in Israel’s history, as human failure brought the old
one into ruin, and Divine intervention brought forth the new. But never did God
ordain the reconstruction of the old one, in exact likeness to the one that
preceded it (dealt with in writing From Tent to Temple). If we understood these
principles we would drop those notions about God restoring the Church to her
early apostolic likeness... or about the rebuilding of a temple in Old
Jerusalem. When the first becomes old, Paul says it is “ready to vanish away”
(Heb. 8:13).
(7) The Rock-First,
Smitten; Then, Spoken To
When the people came to
Horeb, they were famishing for water, and God told Moses to stand there by a
certain Rock and smite it with the rod. As he did the waters gushed out from
Horeb, which means a “dry, parched place.” The waters flowed down the mountain
in a gushing stream of pure, refreshing water. Paul tells us that the Rock was
Christ, smitten that we might partake of the pure water of Life (1 Cor. 10:4).
But on a second occasion
when they needed water, God told Moses to “speak unto the Rock” and that it
would send forth its water (Num 20:8). For Christ once smitten must not be
smitten again. Thereafter we walk in obedience and speak to the Rock. Moses
discovered that the old method seemed to work, for he smote the Rock twice, and
the water gushed forth. And sometimes we may think that the old methods can be
repeated over and over again, and the results seem to prove it. But disobedience
brings judgment, even though the immediate response of the Lord may indicate His
blessing. Let us not forget that. For this error on Moses’ part he failed to
enter the Land of Promise.
(8) The First Attack On
At, And The Second
When Joshua began the
conquest of Canaan, he took Jericho, and then proceeded the much easier task of
taking Ai. But the people of God were totally routed and defeated. Joshua sought
God earnestly and God revealed that there was sin in the Camp. One in their
midst had taken of the “accursed thing” during the conquest of Jericho, and hid
it in his tent. Achan the culprit was taken and stoned to death in the Valley of
Achor, and then they were assured of victory.
But God did not
authorize a full-scale frontal attack on Ai, like Joshua attempted at first. If
there is human failure and Divine intervention, there is always a NEW WAY. Their
past failures, because of true repentance, would now be interwoven with God’s
NEW WAY. And so Joshua and his men pretended defeat, ran from the enemy as they
did at first, and drew them out of the city. Then Joshua lifted up his spear and
the ambush which he had hidden behind the city arose, entered into the city, and
burnt it with fire. Then Joshua and his men turned on their enemies and caught
them in a trap and utterly destroyed them. (See Josh. 8:1-29.)
God would have us know
that, defeated though we may have been in the past, as we rid ourselves of the
“accursed thing” in our midst, He is able to turn our defeats into victories.
But more than this: after there is true repentance, and after God has caused us
to forsake the idols of our heart, OUR PAST FAILURES AND MISTAKES MAY BECOME
STEPPING-STONES TO VICTORY AND ENLARGEMENT. The manner in which the men of
Israel were routed and defeated BECAME THE PATTERN OF VICTORY when God turned
the curse into a blessing and gave “beauty for ashes.” As the enemy gloated over
the men of Israel running away from the battle as they did at first, God
actually used that strategy to draw the enemy into a trap for his own
destruction.
Many times in our walk
with God, and in spiritual warfare, we may present an image of defeatism to the
world about us, or to the Church. We just have to recognize that, and bear the
reproach of it all. We are not really defeated... we are just projecting that
image in the purpose of God for the eventual defeat of the Enemy:
“We are troubled on
every side, yet not distressed; We are perplexed, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken; Cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about
in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, THAT THE LIFE ALSO OF JESUS MIGHT BE
MADE MANIFEST IN OUR BODY” (2 Cor. 4:8-10).
Knowing that we are in
the pathway of victory... knowing that we are drawing the Enemy into a trap...
we bear the reproach of it all. We know God has led this way. We just know that
we are “delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might
be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:11). Satan never seems to
understand the tremendous working of the resurrection life of Jesus in a people
who are delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake... and he is trapped in his own
devices.
(9) Jonah’s First Call,
And The Second Call
It may appear, of
course, that Jonah failed the first time, and so now God was simply giving him
another chance. We thank the Lord for the second, or the third chance... and for
His utter faithfulness in the time of our failure. But there is more to the
story of Jonah than that. And there is more to our many failures than that.
AFTER REPENTANCE, AFTER
THE ROOTING OUT OF THE IDOLS OF THE HEART... GOD’S INTERVENTION IN OUR LIVES
PRODUCES SUCH A WORKING OF GRACE THAT THE FAILURE ITSELF IS ENTWINED INTO HIS
PURPOSES, AND GREATER IS THE GLORY THAT MAY COME FORTH FROM IT!
Let us picture Jonah
walking through the streets of this sin-hardened people and crying, “Yet forty
days and Nineveh shall perish!” I wonder if anything would have changed; and God
would then have to destroy the city. But the second-time-around was quite
different.
Here was a man who had
become a “sign” to the wicked inhabitants of Nineveh. He had been severely
judged of the LORD. He had known the agonies of Sheol as he cried unto the LORD
from the belly of the whale. He did not go into Nineveh performing a few signs
and wonders in an attempt to get them to believe. He himself became A WALKING
TESTIMONY, A LIVING SIGN THAT GOD IS A GOD OF JUDGMENT, A GOD THAT REQUIRES
OBEDIENCE FROM THE PEOPLE WHOM HE HAS CREATED, AND THAT HE IS A GOD OF
RESURRECTION LIFE.
Beloved, we are going to
behold scenes of repentance such as this when God’s prophets are “delivered unto
death,” and become the humble, broken, and devastated vessels of truth that God
would have them to be.
(10) First, The Front
Door To Canaan; Secondly, The Back Door
The first generation was
to have taken the easier way, a more direct way to Canaan-through the front
door. But the first generation failed God, and a new generation was on the
scene, that would not fail. Not because they were any better but because God had
sworn with an oath that they would take the Land. Through the first generation
God had planned a frontal attack on their enemies from Kadesh; but the second
generation would wander about in the Wilderness of Zin for approximately 38
years, and then make a round-about journey into Canaan through the back door. It
was a more complicated, a more difficult route. And as we shall discover, God
would deliberately add to their difficulties, to bring forth greater glory to
His Name. God does not repeat Himself; and vain is our attempt to take our
history books as a map for future conquests in the Lord. True, we look into
history to learn God’s ways, to know God’s faithfulness, and to learn from the
mistakes and errors of our fathers. But we cannot take “history” as a blueprint
for future conquests. We are going to discover as we follow on to know His ways
that His path is always through an uncharted wilderness, always through the
mighty waters, always through pathways that are so strange and perplexing that
it will require great dedication and commitment and heart-searching and crying
out unto God for clear direction and guidance. We cannot go about seeking to
discover the pathway through the mighty waters, because the waters have returned
to their course, and the path is no longer to be seen. The wilderness pathway
through which men have walked in the past is now quite grown over, so that no
longer can the way be seen with the natural eye. God has planned it this way in
order that in our walk with Him we might learn faith, obedience, submission,
dedication, humility, brokenness, and in that way be READY for the new Way in
which He would lead us today. And this, of necessity, means forsaking our
well-intentioned plans for re-establishing a “Church” according to some
blueprint we think we have discovered in the Word. Let that Word rather break
us, humble us, lead us, guide us, chasten us, and make us hungry for God (as the
manna did to the children of Israel) that we might know and see the way in which
we are to walk in this hour.
For the Second
Generation there is a Second Pathway that leads to Canaan. It is a much more
difficult route; and when they are about to enter the Land, they face a much
greater obstacle: fortified cities, powerful enemies, strong bulwarks... to
hinder or to frustrate the attack of the people of God. But once again there is
Divine intervention. There was the Oath of God that guaranteed their success.
And along with the Oath there would be more grace and more power to bring
greater glory to the God of Israel. When the first generation had failed God, He
commanded: “But as for you, turn you, and take your journey into the wilderness
by the way of the Red Sea” (Deut. 1:40). (This was the eastern fork of the Red
Sea, not the one they had crossed over after leaving Egypt.) Here they wandered
about for another 38 years. They seemed to have made a complete circle in their
travels, returning almost to the same place from whence they had started at
Eziongeber. (See Deut. 2:8.) Thirty-eight years of wandering for the old
generation; but 38 years of preparation for the new one.
It may seem awfully discouraging at times to discover, after many years of
frustration and futility, that we are back where we were many years before.
Often it seems to be that way. But the circles of God’s purposes are not in
vain. The sun rises... and sets... and rises again. It is not mere repetition.
God is doing something new in each and every season. And God was leading the NEW
generation, even as He was judging the OLD. Their difficulties and their trials
would increase. But so would God’s faithfulness and His grace increase. God had
sworn that He would bring them in. And He did.
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