Desert Wandering #1

Exod 13:17-18

17 And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:

18 But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.(KJV)

Exod 13:20-22

20 And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness.

21 And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:

22 He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.(KJV)

Good Morning, folks. This morning we follow the people of Israel as they leave Egypt. God had Moses lead them into a desert for at least 3 reasons. One, the territory east was all desert in the first place; two, God had many lessons to teach them in the dessert, lessons they would not really have learned elsewhere. Three, He did not want a battle with the Philistines to take place as He knew they would not be ready for it, so was sure to lead them away from even encountering Philistine* territory. The asterisk is indicating I have some info for you from the Bible on these folks.

So, first they go to Succoth and evidently Succoth is a location about due east from Pithom. There are 2 Succoths in the Bible, one located in current Jordon practically on the Jabek River, and the other there in Egypt. At any rate, they then encamped in Etham. This was at the edge of the wilderness. Previous to arriving in Etham, the territory was relatively good fertile ground with plant life. But Etham was on the edge of the dessert.

And God led them by a pillar of cloud. They had a visible representation of God by this cloud. Let us take a look at this cloud that became fire by night. By the way, you have seen spotlights and street lights give you light at night, this pillar of fire had to have been tremendously bright, so bright as to enable the people to see quite well, specially if their traveling also took place at night. That is a well lit road, I would say.

So here God represents Himself as being in this pillar of cloud. What is the significance of this. Well first of all, God the Father has never let Himself be seen by the human eye because the human eye and body could not stand it, any more than you or I could look directly at the sun without severe loss of eyesight. The power of the sun is too great to be looked at directly. The power of God’s visible is too great to be looked at directly. In Exo 14:19-24 we have the first reference to the angel of the Lord. I am inclined to believe that this Angel of the Lord was Jesus Himself. People could argue till doomsday or what we ought to call deliverance day as to whether this was just an ordinary or even special angel, or whether it was Jesus. So we won’t make an issue of that. At any rate, we have the angel of the Lord evidently operating in this cloud, and then we have the statement by Moses talking to God in Numbers 14 saying:

Num 14:13-14

13 And Moses said unto the LORD, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;)

14 And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou LORD art among this people, that thou LORD art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night.(KJV)

Notice here Moses is saying to God that He, God, goes before them by day in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire. (One reason I believe the Angel of the Lord was Jesus). Interesting too isn’t it that Moses says the people will tell others that they had seen God face to face. I will explain why in another devotional.

Another reference, this time in Deuteronomy.

Deut 1:32-33

32 Yet in this thing ye did not believe the LORD your God,

33 Who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night, to shew you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day.(KJV)

Again, God locating Himself in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. Nehemiah refers to this very same thing in Neh 9:12, & 19. See also Psa 99:7 and 105:39, Isa 4:5,6 and 1 Cor 10:1,2.

Now these are just verses that refer to Him being in that particular cloud. These references are why I believe the Angel of the Lord was Jesus. Jesus is God. God the Son.

But let us look at some additional references:

Exod 16:10

10 And it came to pass, as Aaron spake unto the whole congregation of the children of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and, behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud.(KJV)

The glory of God appeared in this cloud, was visible by means of this cloud. It represented His glory. Once the tabernacle was built,

Exod 33:9

9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses.(KJV)

How would you like God to appear to you in a cloud and talk to you? God did that with Moses. And look at this:

Exod 40:34-38

34 Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

35 And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

36 And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys:

37 But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up.

38 For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.(KJV)

Again this cloud is the visible representation of God’s presence. Verse 35, the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle and Moses couldn’t even go into the tabernacle because of that cloud. That cloud by the way had some kind of weight to it. And stop and think what the word glory means.

Here is the Hebrew definition from the Strong’s Concordance:

3519 kabowd (kaw-bode');

rarely kabod (kaw-bode'); from 3513; properly, weight, but only figuratively in a good sense, splendor or copiousness: -glorious (-ly), glory, honour (-able).

And the above word comes from-using the Brown-Driver-Briggs dictionary:

3513 kabad or kabed-

to be heavy, to be weighty, to be grievous, to be hard, to be rich, to be honorable, to be glorious, to be burdensome, to be honored

a) (Qal)

1) to be heavy

2) to be heavy, to be insensible, to be dull

3) to be honored

b) (Niphal)

1) to be made heavy, to be honored, to enjoy honor, to be made abundant

2) to get oneself glory or honor, to gain glory

I think the above 2 definitions out of Brown-Driver-Brigg’s Bible dictionary gives you the idea clearly.

So here we are seeing God’s glory and presence by means of this cloud, leading them in the wilderness, and being a pillar of fire, of light to see by at night so that they could see their way in this wilderness.

Now what if they had not looked at this cloud? What if they had not looked at this pillar of fire in the night? They would not have found their way, would they have? Here they are entering a wilderness and they needed a leader who knew the way. Did Moses know the way? Well he certainly knew his way back to Sinai but there is no indication he was returning to Sinai on the same road he had used to travel to Egypt to see the Pharaoh and give God’s pronouncements. No, Moses was following the cloud and fire also. And he was doing this in faith. He knew that was God leading them. He had confidence in God knowing the way to get to the promised land. After all, who made the land in the first place? Who set up its geography? God, of course.

Now let me ask you something, and we have barely gotten into this subject, but here is where our first application comes. What do you have your eyes on? Do you have your eyes on your circumstances like Peter did after he got out of the boat and started looking at the waves and sky, etc? If you do, you are sinking. You have to fix your eyes where? On Jesus. Just as these people needed to fix their eyes on following the pillar of cloud and fire, we have to fix our eyes on Jesus. This world we live in is a desert and is not our home. We have a better home waiting for us. And God is preparing us for that. I recently read a terrific visual illustration of that. An article called the tea cup, in which the tea cup had to go through all kinds of experiences that were rough, etc. before it was transformed from the clay it started out as to the beautiful final product. If you have every watched a potter, you have some idea of what God does and has to do in our lives -we being the clay of course-to come out as the product God is wanting-beautiful, perfect, glorious, etc. Well, what better image to be like but that of Jesus. And to become like Jesus, we must follow His light. He is our cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. Let’s tread this road together as we learn the many things God had to teach the people of Israel about not only following Him but about Himself and let’s keep our eyes on Jesus as we do this. Remember too that God used the events and the pictures of things for:

1 Cor 10:11

11 Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come.(NKJ)

And now for last week’s Bible Trivia Question: What was Paul’s request of the captain, now that he had the man’s attention? He asked permission to speak to the crowd that had wanted to beat him to death.

This week’s Bible Trivia Question: What was Paul’s basic message to these people, to this crowd?

*Philistine territory: Many people have not realized that the Philistines were already settled in the sea coasts of the Mediterannean, especially in the area of the Promised land today. Where did these folks come from. We have in Genesis 10 some information about them. Also in Jeremiah-

Gen 10:13-14

13 And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,

14 And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (out of whom came Philistim,) and Caphtorim.(KJV)

Jer 47:4

4 Because of the day that cometh to spoil all the Philistines, and to cut off from Tyrus and Zidon every helper that remaineth: for the LORD will spoil the Philistines, the remnant of the country of Caphtor.(KJV)

Also a reference to them in Amos:

Amos 9:7

7 Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?(KJV)

And in Deuteronomy:

Deut 2:23

23 And the Avims which dwelt in Hazerim, even unto Azzah, the Caphtorims, which came forth out of Caphtor, destroyed them, and dwelt in their stead.)(KJV)

Looking at Genesis 10, we see that Mizraim was actually an ancestor of the Caphtorim and Casluhim. And where did those 2 groups, the Caphtorim and Casluhim come from? Caphtor. Caphtor, my dear friends, is Crete. So the Philistines came from Crete, descended from the fellow named who started the tribe of the Casluhim. Whether the Caphtorim tribe became part of the Philistine group or were another group, I don’t know. Bus scripture does indicate that the Philistines originated in Crete and were actually cousins to the Egyptians who had been started also by the fellow Mizraim, their father. Notice in Deuteronomy, that the Caphtorims took their territory from the Avims and destroyed them. These Caphtorims may have been also called Philistines. At any rate the Philistines already had settled on the coasts of Palestine or Israel and had been a very potent force in the Mediterranean. If you have read anything about Crete, you know that they preceded the Phoenicians in being a military and sea trading force in the Mediterranean even before Moses time. As a matter of fact, when the Myceaneans moved into Crete -they were a Greek speaking bunch and had become a formidable sea faring group, and it seems they intermarried with these people of Crete and became the second Cretan empire which had originally extended up to Thera (Santorini) and quite a number of other islands including Cyprus. The Phoenicians, as a sea power did not show up till some where around the time the Cretans had already spread all over the Mediterranean, and were descendants of Sidon and being descended from Canaan were related to the Cretans, but became a different group, settling first in the area of Palestine, but eventually as the Cretan empire waned they took over the Mediterannean. But the Cretans were the first to have the sea power, and eventually the Phoenicians who descended from Sidon took over. The Cretans eventually as Philistines settled at least 5 cities on the coast, being originally a sea faring people, and were as a people a group for the people of Israel as they left Egypt to be avoided as they already had become a formidable group. But both Phoenicians and Cretans (the 2 groups of them) came out of the same family line-that of Ham. Ham begat his sons Mizraim and Canaan, and these two were ancestors, actually fathers of the Casluhim, Caphtorim and the Sidonians.

That’s it for today. God bless you and may you learn much from God’s Word and put it into practice. The Good News Lady

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem even more so now. "They shall prosper that love thee." Psalm 122:6 Pray also for wisdom for President Bush as enjoined us by I Timothy 2:1-03 and pray for our troops. Continue especially to pray God’s protection around our soldiers that are still in Iraq and other parts of the Arab world.