Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
There are three verses...THREE... that reference 'desert' in all of the Epistles. All of them are historical references, and they all need a bit of context.
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea....Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were...We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did...We should not test the Lord, as some of them did...And do not grumble, as some of them did.... - 1 Cor 10: 1- 10 (selected).
So, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did." - Heb 3:7- 9, quoting from Ps. 95.
Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest, if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief. -- Heb.3:16-19
I have often heard that one of the compelling arguments for biblical authenticity is that the narratives are often unflattering to the folks who are supposed to be the main characters in the story. Someone writing with an agenda would certainly portray the leads as more admiral people, with fewer flaws. But, no, the narratives are unflinching in relating the good, the bad and the ugly of the heroes.
These things occurred as examples...
We, as believers, are to learn from the experiences of God's people in the Old Testament. They 'set their hearts on evil'...and four examples are listed of the kinds of evil they allowed themselves to fall into:
1) Idolatry...they worshiped something other than God. Now, we don't hold festivals to golden calves, but...what do we hold as supreme? What gets our devotion? An idol doesn't have to be a carved replica of something...it could be an ideal, a person, an institution, a political agenda, a social issue, material possessions, etc etc etc. ANYTHING that takes precedence in our lives over the simplicity of obedience to God Is. An. Idol.
2) Sexual immorality. Folks, this is a real thing. Our society today doesn't even consider that there can be sexual behavior that is outside of the plan and blessing of God. Anything goes, between consenting adults. To suggest that there are standards that should not be violated will get you cancelled in a heartbeat. But it's there. Plain as day. Over and over in the scripture, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear...or, maybe, for those who don't close their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears and sing, 'God loves me and wants me to be happy!' so as not to see the repeated refrain that followers of God are to refrain from sexual immorality. Which, actually, is a kind of idolatry, as it values sexual pleasure above the simple concept of living in obedience to God. God did bless human sexuality...but only in the context of heterosexual, covenantal marriage. It takes pretty extreme manipulation and out of context readings to attempt to justify any other sexual expression as legitimate...from serial monogamy to extreme, um, variances. And manipulating scripture to support an agenda or behavior is a pretty strong indicator of the presence of an idol.
3) Test the Lord. The reference to the serpents points to the story in Numbers 21, where the people got impatient with Moses and God...again...and accused them of bringing them to the desert to die. 'We detest this miserable food!' they said (Num 21:5) The Greek word used in 1 Cor 10:9, is ekpeirazo, translated in the NIV 4 as 'Test'...in the KJV as 'Tempt' and in the NASB as 'Try', means ' 1) to prove, test, thoroughly and 2) to put to proof God's character and power'. The Blue Letter Bible reference says 'to prove, test thoroughly [God's] mind and judgment'. So..we've kind of got two mental pictures here: one, to keep hounding God over and over on the same subject, trying to get him to change or respond differently; the other, to make demands of him to prove who he is. Either attitude shows a lack of respect for who God is and what he's done.
4) Grumble or complain. We actually hit this pretty hard when we were covering the Exodus, with the side quest of counting the number of times Israel complained/ grumbled against God. Complaining indicates a lack of gratitude...and the whole downward spiral of the last half of the first chapter of Romans shows that great apostasy starts with a lack of thankfulness to God. An entitled attitude, so to speak. 'God owes me [fill in the blank]'. The Israelites believed God owed them ...a quick trip, comfortable conditions, variety in their diet, etc. God's intention, though, was to test them to see if they would be faithful. Most of them...failed the test. They grumbled and complained. And they were destroyed...by, most translations state, 'the destroyer'; some, 'the destroying angel'.
These four things happen when we...guess what...'harden our hearts'. That is, we see the choice before us, know what the right choice would be, and deliberately choose what we want instead. Eve hardened her heart when she looked at the fruit on the tree, deciding to do what she wanted instead of doing what she had just said God required. Cain hardened his heart when God told him to resist the sin that was at his door and do what was right. Pharoah hardened his heart when Moses first asked him to let the people take a three day journey into the desert to worship. Moses hardened his heart when he struck the rock in anger. Achan hardened his heart when he took the things he was to give over to God. Samson hardened his heart when he desired foreign, pagan women. David hardened his heart when he called Bathsheba to him, and hardened it more when he sent Uriah back to the war with the orders to see to it that he died in battle. I could go on. I could also name times and places where I hardened my own heart to get something that I wanted. I knew better; I chose worse. Most of the time I pretended to myself that I didn't know better. Self-deception is a frequent type of heart-hardening. If we can become alert to the heart-hardening process...and resist it...that's maturity.
The failures of the Israelites in the desert are preserved for us to learn a better way: obedience.
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