The book of Exodus tells the famous story of God’s people wandering in the wilderness for 40 years following their exit from Egypt and before reaching the Promised Land. Interestingly though, their overall ‘40-year-long wilderness experience’ consisted of 4 different wildernesses in particular—each place having its own set of unique testing, trial, and temptation.[1]
They first entered into the severe wilderness of Shur (Ex. 15:22), and then moved into the scarce wilderness of Sin (Ex. 16:1). After a quick stint in those wildernesses, they progressed into the chaotic wilderness of Rephidim (Ex. 17:1), and then settled somewhat indefinitely in the mundane wilderness of Sinai (Ex. 19:1).
In each wilderness, God taught His people many profound and practical principles of faith—the same ones He teaches us today in the wildernesses He will lead us into… and through. Let’s take a look at each of the four wildernesses the people of God went into, and how their experience serves as a lesson of faith for us today.
1. Wilderness of Shur
As the people of God entered their first wilderness, the wilderness of Shur, they quickly realized it was a place with no water—at all (15:22). This would prove to be a wilderness of desperate need.
For 3 miserable days under the hot desert sun, the people languished under exertion and thirst. They searched and searched and searched until… voila! they finally found water! …except tragically, the water was poisonous and undrinkable.
Put yourself in the shoes of these poor Israelites for a moment, and imagine this gut-wrenching scenario: thirsting, thirsting, thirsting—then, finally finding what you craved—only to then discover it was a counterfeit, making you even thirstier than before. What a rollercoaster of emotion, expectation, and exertion. Finding the bad water must have made the people feel so betrayed and embittered. In fact, they would end up calling the place, “Marah,” which means ‘bitter’—because the water was bitter, and they were, too.
Desperately embittered and terribly parched, they called out to the LORD. And in response, God showed Moses a tree—telling him to cast it into the bitter water as a way of purifying it. When Moses did so, the water became healed, sweet, and drinkable (15:25)—and the people drank until they were satisfied. Now imagine this time thirsting, thirsting, thirsting—then, finally partaking of what you craved—and it being everything you hoped it would be. As much as the bad water was a ‘tease,’ the real, good water was just as satisfying—and more.
In this wilderness, miraculously and supernaturally, God provided for His people good water in a parched, putrid land.
But much more was happening than just their severe thirst and a slaking salvation—God’s miracle-working power at ‘Marah.’ Here, God was testing them: a 3-day period of desperation, to see if the people would trust Him to sustain them where He led them. God wanted them to trust in—and taste and see—His satisfying grace for their desperate needs.
After providing clean water, God then brought His people into the land of “Elim”—a place known for its lushness of 70 palm trees and 12 springs of water (15:27)—where their acute desperation was followed by a much longer-term abundance of oasis. What’s next?
2. Wilderness of Sin
After their quick journey through the wilderness of Shur and their extended-resort-like-stay in the land of Elim, God then led His people into the wilderness of Sin (16:1). Whereas the wilderness of Shur would be a wilderness of urgent need, the wilderness of Sin would be a wilderness of daily need.
As the Scripture explains, the people did have a sufficient and clean water source at Sin; however, they had just exhausted their national food supply—all that they had brought from Egypt. Looking around, they quickly realized Sin was a place with no food—at all. Again, they cried out to God for help; except this time, their cries sounded forth with a darker, bitter tone. Here, the validity of their cries hastily turned into vile complaints against God—expressing nostalgia for Pharoah, their old, cruel ruler; together, they reasoned, “God, why would you do this? At least we had meat pots and bread to the full back there—in slavery!”
Again, God was testing them (16:4). When the people were weaned off of an earthly provision, what would their souls cry out for and cling to? Would they trust the unseen, faithful heart of God or cling instead to the seen, albeit merciless rule of Pharoah?
Nonetheless, God spoke into their clamorousness a word of mercy and provided for His people—sending a day-by-day provision of food, sustaining them for their entire journey—all the way until they reached the Promised Land. The LORD sent manna and quail “morning by morning,” in fact, so abundantly such that “…whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat” (16:19, 21).
Here too in this wilderness, miraculously and supernaturally, God again provided for His people food in an infertile, insufficient land. There was only one condition: God’s provision would be day-by-day, not all at once. God programmed this type of provision with a same-day-one-day expiration. In other words, this God-given provision could not be stockpiled, lest it would spoil.
But why would God do this, and set it up this way, especially in a wilderness? Because it forced His people to daily trust Him for their daily needs. In doing so, He was teaching them to not trust in their own ability or wisdom or control or resources for navigating their future—but in His heart and wisdom and ability and resources.
God’s first test in the wilderness of Shur was a 3-day period of desperation; but God’s second test in the wilderness of Sin was a day-by-day posture of dependence. At Sin, God was uniquely teaching His people to cling to “new mercies” of His faithfulness and love—sufficient for each day, available every morning—sustaining grace for their daily needs.
3. Wilderness of Rephidim
After some time, God then led His people out of the wilderness of Sin and into the wilderness of Rephidim (17:1). This third wilderness would be uniquely trying because, unexpectantly, their difficulties would intensify even more. Here, the people would not only experience urgent need (like thirst) and daily need (like hunger) …but also war. This testing site would be a wilderness of compounding struggle, where different trials happen simultaneously.
Have you ever felt like you’ve been in a ‘wilderness’ like this before? There’s a steady financial issue already… then comes an acute health issue to make it worse. Or, there’s persistent stress and pressure at work… then you have a falling out with a good friend. Categorically different hardships, creating heartache and headache—all at once.
At Rephidim, a nearby people group, the Amalekites, ambushed and attacked the people of Israel; and this attack could not have happened at a more inopportune and inconvenient time: that is, right as the people were trusting God to provide their daily food and while also struggling to find a source of water—again.
So, how do the people respond—especially after learning in prior wildernesses to trust God for their desperate needs and daily ones? Will they trust God even now—that is, with dire and compounding ones? Unfortunately, like past wildernesses, their confidence flickered-out and their fear set-in. As their trials compounded, so also did their distrust in God, too.
Here again, they cried out to God; and yet again, they clamored about with longing nostalgia for their old oppressor, Egypt, saying, “At least we had water back there!” (17:3). But what’s worse, here, they even doubted God’s own presence, saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?” (17:7).
God responded to their cries—both to the valid and the vile—with deep mercy and great grace.
- Instead of rebuking their comments about Egypt’s provision, God brought His own provision. He brought Moses to the rock at Horeb… and upon striking the rock, water gushed out for the people in abundance.
- Furthermore, instead of rebuking their doubt about God’s presence, He gave them a picture of His own. Whenever Moses stood and held up his hands on either side of him—in the shape of a cross—the people prevailed over their enemies.
Here, at Rephidim, God gave His people compounding grace for their compounding struggles—sufficient grace for every aspect of their need.
Ironically, the name “Rephidim” means “place of rest.” To be sure, as a site of compounding difficulty, Rephidim was anything but a place of rest circumstantially; it was place of thirst and battle, scarcity and insecurity. But spiritually, Rephidim was an ivy-league university of rest—because it would teach them that God would provide for their needs and fight their battles. As God’s people, they had to learn by faith that the pressure was off of them, and it was on God; therefore, they could rest.
4. Wilderness of Sinai
Lastly, God led His people into a fourth wilderness on the way to the Promised Land: the wilderness of Sinai (19:1). This would prove to be a wilderness of waiting.
Over the course of Israel’s history, Sinai would prove to be a deeply significant place—specifically its mountain, the primary site where Israel’s leaders would meet with God, i.e., Mount Sinai. Only here, however, in Exodus 19, is Sinai’s wilderness significant.
As the people entered Sinai—with both the wilderness and mountain in view—God invited only Moses to ascend the mountain and meet with Him; everyone else, including all the other leaders, had to wait until Moses came back down.
As Exodus 19 recounts, Moses goes up the mountain to meet with God… and meanwhile, the people received no timeline, no clarity, and no confirmation as to when he would return—and, therefore, when their journey to the Promised Land could rightfully resume. Moses would be gone for some uncertain, undisclosed, unsettling amount of time, and so, the people had to remain patiently in the wilderness—and wait.
As the story goes, days passed; weeks passed… yet, still nothing. And as they continued to wait, they grew more and more restless… and naturally, they began to doubt God again: “Where is Moses? What happened to him? Where is God? Where did He go? Let’s just get going and do things our own way!” (Ex. 32:1-6).
Impatiently, the people took matters into their own hands. They made their own idol, created their own religious feast, and even worshipped God in their own distorted, preferential way. Yet again—just like in the wildernesses of Sin and Rephidim—the people recall their old oppressor Egypt (32:4); except this time, they do so in such a way whereby their twisted view of Egypt shapes their view of God! In their impatience and impudence, they had recklessly re-made God in Egypt’s image—projecting Him through their broken past and through their distorted preferences—instead of perceiving Him for who He really is.
Though the people of Israel were unraveling day by day in the wilderness, meanwhile, something beautiful was coming together on the mountaintop. Surely the people knew, at least on a conceptual level, that Moses’ meeting with God must have been important—especially if it was taking so long. But they clearly failed to grasp just how important this conversation was. Unbeknownst to them, Moses’ conversation with God would be the most significant conversation ever recorded in their nation’s history. On this mountaintop…
- God gave the famous 10 Commandments (Ex. 20).
- God gave laws of justice and peace for their nation (Ex. 21-23).
- God gave the promise of their land and territory (Ex. 23)
- God confirmed His covenant with them (Ex. 24).
- God outlined the Tabernacle, Ark of the Covenant, Altars, Priesthood—how He would practically and personally dwell with His people (Ex. 25-31).
As the people waited and waited and waited in the wilderness, God was literally preparing and setting up every detail for their future on the mountaintop. If the people only knew what God was doing, then surely, they would have trusted Him more confidently, waited on Him more expectantly, and stayed more peacefully. If God was making them wait that long, certainly He was doing something really good. Surely, He had a reason.
In a similar way for us today, God will oftentimes withhold the knowledge of what He’s doing, not to be arbitrarily coy, but in order to develop in us a sense of believing Him for who He actually is and trusting that He’s actually working—and not assuming wrongly about Him merely based on what we can or cannot see.
Here, the people falsely presumed the worst about God; i.e., His absence must mean His forsakenness. And consequently, they went their own way. The wilderness of Sinai, though, was another place of testing—one of waiting, of faith, and of peace. In God’s economy, this ‘wilderness of waiting’ was to wean them off of their low-and-weak self-reliance, and conversely, to open them up to His higher-and-greater future grace.
Notice, too, the timelines of each wilderness, and how God wills and works in seasons of wait:
- The wilderness of Shur lasts only 6 verses, and approximately 1 week (Ex. 15:22-27).
- The wilderness of Sin lasts 30 verses and roughly 1 week and a half (Ex. 16:1-30).
- The wilderness of Rephidim lasts 1 whole chapter and about 2 weeks (Ex. 17).
- The wilderness of Sinai lasts 31 full chapters (Exodus 19-Numbers 10) and over 11 months![2]
All wildernesses are hard—whether it’s a desperate need (like Shur), a daily need (like Sin), or a compounding struggle (like Rephidim)—but sometimes the hardest wildernesses involve indefinite waits where you know no end (like Sinai). Nonetheless, in the wilderness of Sinai, God was in fact willing and working—even though they didn’t see or understand—sovereign grace for their future.
What About You?
Which of the 4 ‘wildernesses’ do you currently find yourself in, if any? Where do you feel a sense of acute pain, aching aimlessness, unsettling uncertainty, or just seemingly senseless waiting? The book of Exodus, and the testimony of God’s people, tells us that for every wilderness, God gives particular grace.
- If you’re in a wilderness like Shur, with urgent, desperate needs – God gives satisfying grace.
- If you’re in a wilderness like Sin, with aching, daily needs – God gives sustaining grace.
- If you’re in a wilderness like Rephidim, with compounding, multiple struggles – God gives sufficient grace.
- If you’re in a wilderness like Sinai, with long, indefinite waits – God gives sovereign grace.
Only in the wilderness can we learn experientially, enrichingly, and intensely that God is a satisfying, sustaining, sufficient, sovereign God.
[1] Technically, there are 4 wildernesses through the book of Exodus; and then, there are other places the Israelites move in and through as their 40-year wilderness experience is further documented in the book of Numbers.
[2] https://www.julianspriggs.co.uk/Pages/WildernessChronology.
