Picture: Forty Years of Wandering in the Wilderness 1TC 269.1
For nearly forty years the people of Israel were lost to view in the vast, out-of-the-way desert. In the rebellion at Kadesh they had rejected God, and for the time God had rejected them. Since they had been unfaithful to His covenant, they were not to receive the sign of the covenant, the rite of circumcision. Their desire to return to the land of slavery had proved they were unworthy of freedom, and the Passover, instituted to remember and celebrate their deliverance from slavery, was not to be observed. 1TC 269.2
But the tabernacle service continued, showing that God had not completely left His people. And His divine care still supplied their wants. “The Lord your God ... knows your trudging through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing” (Deuteronomy 2:7). God cared for Israel even during these years of banishment: “You also gave Your good Spirit to instruct them. ... In the wilderness ... their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell” (Nehemiah 9:20, 21). 1TC 269.3
The wilderness was to provide discipline for the rising generation as they prepared to enter the Promised Land. Moses declared, “As a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you,” “to humble you, and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He ... allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:5, 2, 3). 1TC 270.1
“In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bore them and carried them all the days of old” (Isaiah 63:9). 1TC 270.2
The rebellion of Korah had resulted in the death of fourteen thousand Israelites, and certain cases of rebellion showed the same spirit of disrespect for God’s authority. 1TC 270.3
In one case, one of the mixed multitude that had come up with Israel from Egypt left his own part of the camp and entered that of the Israelites, claiming the right to pitch his tent there. A quarrel developed between him and an Israelite, and the matter was referred to the judges. They decided against the offender. 1TC 270.4
Very angry at this decision, he cursed the judge and blasphemed the name of God. He was immediately brought before Moses. The man was placed under guard until the will of God could be known. God Himself pronounced sentence—by divine direction the blasphemer was conducted outside the camp and stoned to death. Those who had been witnesses to the sin placed their hands upon his head, thus solemnly testifying to the truth of the charge against him. Then they threw the first stones, and the people who stood by then joined in executing the sentence. [See Leviticus 24:14; Deuteronomy 17:7.] 1TC 270.5
If this man’s sin had been allowed to go unpunished, others would have been encouraged to do evil, and as a result many people would eventually have died. 1TC 271.1
The mixed multitude that came up with the Israelites from Egypt claimed to worship the true God and to have given up idolatry, but they were more or less corrupted with idolatry and irreverence. They seeded the camp with idolatrous practices and grumblings against God. 1TC 271.2
Soon someone violated the Sabbath. The Lord’s announcement that He would disinherit Israel had awakened a spirit of rebellion. One of the people, angry at being excluded from Canaan and determined to show his defiance of God’s law, dared to transgress the fourth commandment openly by going out to gather sticks on the Sabbath. During the stay in the wilderness, building fires on the seventh day had not been allowed. This rule was not to continue in the land of Canaan, but in the wilderness fire was not needed for warmth. This was a willful and deliberate decision of breaking the fourth commandment—a sin of presumption. 1TC 271.3
Moses brought the case before the Lord, and the direction was given, “The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp” (Numbers 15:35). The sins of blasphemy and willful Sabbathbreaking received the same punishment, since they were equally an expression of contempt for God’s authority. 1TC 271.4
Many who reject the Sabbath as Jewish urge that, if it is to be kept, the penalty of death must be inflicted for its violation. But blasphemy received the same punishment as Sabbathbreaking. Though God may not now punish the transgression of His law with earthly penalties, yet in the final judgment death is the fate of those who violate His sacred laws. 1TC 271.5
During the entire forty years in the wilderness, the people were reminded of the Sabbath every week by the miracle of the manna. Yet God declares through His prophet, “They greatly defiled My Sabbaths” (Ezekiel 20:13-24). And this is listed among the reasons for keeping the first generation out of the Promised Land. 1TC 272.1
When their period of time in the desert ended, “the people stayed in Kadesh” (Numbers 20:1). Miriam died and was buried there. From that scene of rejoicing on the shores of the Red Sea to the wilderness grave that ended a lifelong wandering—such had been the fate of millions who had come out of Egypt with high hopes. Sin had dashed the cup of blessing from their lips. Would the next generation learn the lesson? 1TC 272.2
