11th April 2020
Acts 7:30-31 “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning thorn bush. When Moses saw it, he marvelled at the sight; and as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord:
Where did the angel appear to Moses? In the wilderness!!!!!
The spiritual, eternal life is never where we expect it to be and it is never in whom we expect it to be in. The voice of the Lord came forth from a BURNING BUSH in the WILDERNESS.
Where Moses encountered the Lord was on the driest side of the mountain. It wasn’t in the lush green fields, where there was much vegetation and life. No, it was in the driest most barren part of Mount Horeb. Horeb means desert or mountain of the dried up ground.
What does this tell us about the wilderness and where we can expect to find God and God speaking?
In Matthew 4 we see Jesus being led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Now to the natural eye one would say what on earth is the Spirit doing. leading Jesus to a place where the devil is waiting for Him to tempt Him out of who He is and the Father’s will for Him. What are you thinking Spirit?
This is all a master set up. Not a set up for Jesus but a set up for the devil. Remember where God lives? In the wilderness, the very place the Spirit was leading Jesus. So let’s look at who is now in the wilderness. We have the Father, Son and Spirit, and the devil. Not an even match really now is it, and to think Jesus went in to the wilderness full of the Holy Spirit as well.
What a divine set up this is. The Triune God in the wilderness with the devil, to show the devil, just how much he is defeated and how victorious the Father, Son and Spirit are. The devil goes in there with his ‘A’ game - thinking deception, lies and temptation will be the down fall of Christ and yet comes out with his tail between his legs.
He then perceives Jesus may be weak after the fasting of natural food for 40 days, but he is completely unaware that Jesus is full of eternal food. He was full when He went in and He was full when He came out - why?
Because Jesus, like the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the representation of the wilderness.
They are the wilderness and they inhabit the very thing they are. They are the food source of the wilderness. The enemy’s ploy was to deceive Jesus in areas of Identity, doing His own will, testing of the Father, and in whom He would worship and serve.
All these attempts and efforts where futile and ultimately powerless, because the One who He came up against was full of Eternal Life that is discovered in the wilderness. This is to be our exact reality as well. There is no battle between us and Satan, when we all come into the Eternal Life that is discovered in the Triune God - the wilderness.
We just live out the victorious life in Christ, even though he dances around us, doing all he can to deceive, tempt, lie and distract us from entering the wilderness, inhabiting the wilderness and receiving all our food from the wilderness. All his efforts fall to the ground when the Eternal life is ABIDING in us.