Deuteronomy 8:12–24 In the wilderness the people of God learn that gaining freedom takes a lifetime of discipline and faith.
Freedom isn’t free
They say it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Indeed, in the Exodus story it took God 40 years to teach people nurtured in slavery about freedom and faith.
God instructed Moses to tell Pharaoh: “Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness” (Exodus 7:16; also 8:1, 20; 9:1,13; 10:3).
This demand seems a bit odd. In the Bible wilderness implies death; it is a place without food or water where life is threatened. Even if they gained freedom from slavery, why should the Israelites want to leave civilized settlements and go into the wilderness to worship God? This was exactly what the newly liberated Israelites complained about in Exodus 14:11b–12: “What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”
Moses demanded the release of his people because faith in God requires freedom from all other authorities or commitments. But when the Hebrew slaves finally were liberated from their Egyptian masters, were they really free? Was it possible for a people born and nurtured into slavery and oppression to understand freedom? What kind of freedom did God have in mind anyway? Why did this freedom require wandering in the wilderness? And why 40 years?
Old habits die hard
Even after God demonstrated awesome power through the plagues, the Israelites doubted and complained, saying they preferred their old life under Pharaoh. Their previous life, though oppressive and unfair, at least was predictable and secure.
In contrast, freedom in the wilderness meant total reliance on God. The Israelites were afraid of the unknown: the unknown God, the unknown destination, the unknown of where their next meal would come from. Old habits, even oppressive ones, provide stability and comfort. This was the real problem — not slavery, and not the Pharaoh.
The Israelites had been so conditioned by life in Egypt that their slavery had become internalized. God had to recondition them so that they would become truly free. As Deuteronomy 8:1–10 explains, God had to train the people through hunger and thirst, so that they would depend on God for all the necessities of life. Freedom was less about independence from Pharaoh than about total dependence on God.
The old habits of thinking and being in Egypt were difficult to break. God led the people into the wilderness, the place of death, so that true life could emerge — a life of exclusive reliance on God expressed through obedience to God’s commandments. As Deuteronomy 8:3 explains, God provided manna in order to teach the lesson that the people should feed and live on God’s words alone.
Because old habits die slowly, God led the people through the wilderness for 40 long years (Deuteronomy 8:2). The divine discipline of the wilderness enabled the people of Israel to begin a life of freedom and faith. God also used the wilderness journey to get rid of an entire generation that had done evil (Numbers 32:13; Joshua 5:4, 6). Forty years was sufficient time for a new generation to be weaned on utter dependence on God.
Trusting God alone
In the New Testament we read that Jesus himself spent 40 days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11), during which he repeated the lesson from Israel’s past: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (verse 4).
Whether the wilderness experience lasts 40 years or 40 days, nothing less will do. Trusting in God alone is difficult; yet it is the very definition of authentic liberty. It means freedom from all worldly masters, literal or figurative. The route to freedom goes through “death” — deprogramming from the damaging illusions of slavery. The new “life” of faith and freedom requires dependence on God alone.
Today, as we approach the 40 days of Lent, who and what are the masters that keep us from being free to trust God completely?
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