Long and Winding Road // It's Time to Take the Promised Land, Part 4

Dear Lord, give me patience NOW! When it comes to God and His promises, boy, it sometimes feels like He takes forever to deliver. When is God finally going to show up?

I don't know about you but patience is not something that comes naturally to me. I just want things to happen and I want them to happen now. It's kind of the same when it comes to my relationship with God, "Well God, if you're going to promise me this stuff I want it now."

I was devastated when I read that bit in the Bible, a thousand years is like a day to God. No! You don't understand, God you promise all sorts of stuff, I want it now! I'm praying about this person’s health or that relationship or this financial need or this feeling of fear or whatever it is. Okay, I've prayed about it, it's been five minutes, let's go God.

And over the last 12 years I have discovered He doesn't work that way. Often it's a long and winding road and not everything along the way always makes sense. Have you found that or is it just me?

Remember that old song, "The Long and Winding Road". Sometimes that’s how if feels when we're travelling in the Promised Land. Yesterday we looked briefly at how it was for Israel, I mean it was centuries between when God first promised this land to Abraham and when Israel, under it's new leader Joshua, finally crossed over into the Promised Land and poor Abraham, you know he believed in God’s promise but he still made plenty of mistakes along the way.

You can read about it in Genesis, chapter 12 and the next few chapters but the Promised Land was written by God on Abraham’s heart and ultimately he had this son Isaac and that’s the only part of the promise he ever saw.

Isaac had Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons, one of whom was Joseph and those 12 sons were the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel and Israel ultimately ended up as a large nation but in slavery in Egypt and of course God sends Moses to tell Pharaoh, "Let my people go".

And he does a whole bunch of miracles and ultimately they pass through the Red Sea and they spend 40 years in the desert on this exodus, on this journey and all of a sudden one day, this mighty nation of Israel is standing on the banks of the Jordan River ready to cross over into the Promised Land.

Now for Israel it was a long journey, it was a long wait, hundreds of years from when God first spoke to Abraham until when they stood on the banks of the Jordan ready to cross over.

How do you think the promise that God made to Abraham was known to the Israelites in slavery in Egypt? Well, like everything else it was handed down from generation to generation. It was part of the nations psyche, one day, one day God will lead us into the Promised Land, meanwhile we'll do the brutal slavery thing.

Does that sound familiar? I mean Egypt was this world power, pharaoh had unbelievable power, the power of life and death, they were the dominant world power a bit like the U.S. today I guess and Israel were slaves in this place and God sends them Moses, this 80 year old burnt out wreck that God found out the back of the desert 'cause as a young man Moses murdered an Egyptian and fled to Midian in the back of the desert and uses Moses to talk to Pharaoh and then God sends these 10 plagues, you know, locusts and the frogs and the boils and turning the Nile into blood and ultimately, in killing the first born of all the Egyptians.

And so Pharaoh goes, "I've had enough, yes let the people go". And then he changes his mind and pursues them. There was this miracle at the Red Sea where Moses went down and God parted the waters of the Red Sea and the whole Israelite nation passed through the Red Sea, they got to the other side and then as pharaohs army came chasing them they went into the Red Sea and the water came back and the whole mighty Egyptian army was drowned! What a journey!

Can I ask, why didn't God just give them the Promised Land? I mean there they were, the other side of the Red Sea, it's been centuries, they're just a couple of weeks journey away from the Promised Land, I mean imagine if you or I were sitting up on that hill, the other side of the Red Sea, we've just come from slavery, we've seen the mighty things that God has done through Moses and we're going, "wow, wow we made it. Promised Land here I come, bring it on, the land flowing with milk and honey. Yes!" but God didn't take them the direct route, He took them the long and winding road. Look at what Exodus chapter 13 says in verse 17:

When Pharaoh let the people go God didn't lead them on the road through Philistine country even though that was shorter because God said to Himself, 'if they face war they might change their minds and go back to Egypt" so God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.

You see, the people weren't ready for the Promised Land, God knew that. They were just a couple of weeks walk away but they weren't ready.

If you were with us the other day on the program you'll remember me talk about the fact that when God showed Abraham the Promised Land there were other people living in it, Canaanites. Well by this time, centuries later, there were Amorites and Jebusites and a whole bunch of other little Vegemites and when they got to the Promised Land, the Israelites, they would have to fight battle after battle and God knew that. They didn't realise it but God knew it.

There they are sitting above the Red Sea with euphoria, if you read in Exodus chapter 15 they were singing songs and stuff, well why wouldn't they be? But God, God knew what was in their hearts. A couple of days later they were out in the desert, they were grumbling, there's no food, there's no water, God provided that. "Well okay, lets find something else to grumble about, we'll grumble about Moses and the food that God gives us is always the same". And they complained and grumbled. You know what grumbling is? Grumbling is a sure sign that we're not ready to live in the Promised Land. In Psalm 106, verse 21 it says this:

They forgot the God who saved them who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. So God said He would destroy them had not Moses, His chosen one stood in the breach before Him to keep God’s wrath from destroying them. But then they despised the pleasant land, they did not believe His promise.

They grumbled in their tents, they didn't obey the Lord so He swore to them with uplifted hand that He would make them fall in the desert and all bar two of them died in the desert and never made it into the Promised Land. It was their children who ultimately made it into the Promised Land.

See, grumbling is despising God’s promises, it shows we don't believe in Him or His promises and so He takes us on a long and winding road and the longer we grumble the longer the road. Forty years, all of those sitting in the freedom side of that Red Sea, all the hundreds of thousands or millions of them, all the adults bar two perished. Joshua and Caleb were the only ones, men of faith, men who believed in the promises.

The thing that stops us getting into the promises of God is that we don't believe. What tells us we don't believe is our grumbling. Sometimes when I'm walking in the promises of God, I'm afraid, I'm uncertain or I feel under attack, that's okay to go to God with that, He's a realist but when we start grumbling we're despising the pleasant land. Now that's worth thinking about.