The Wilderness Generation: Israel’s Honeymoon with God and the Call to Spiritual Restoration

Christians Have Been Getting the Wilderness Generation Wrong

When most Christian theologians think about the generation that wandered 40 years in the Sinai Desert, they have a very negative attitude. They remember the complaining. The golden calf. The murmuring about the bitter water. The demands for meat. For 40 years in the wilderness, that is the standard picture.

But Jeremiah the prophet surprises us with a completely different image. Here is what the Holy Spirit of God says from the mouth of Jeremiah about those same 40 years:

The period of these 40 years in the wilderness was the honeymoon between Israel and God. It was a pleasant relationship. God remembered the kindness of Israel's youth as a nation. Israel is the firstfruits of God's increase. And anyone that would devour Israel or offend God's nation — will be met with disaster.

When I look at the history of Israel, and all those great empires and nations that defeated Israel, who sent God's people to exile to Babylon, I see that they no longer exist as nations — only as archaeological sites.

Boot Camp — A Generation Born in Freedom

The real picture of these 40 years of wandering in the Sinai Desert was actually a school — or maybe more like a boot camp — for the children of the slaves that left Egypt. The generation that was born in the Wilderness of Sinai was a generation that never knew the harsh treatment of enslavement and suffering in Egypt. God had to have a new generation that was born in freedom and never knew the whip or the wooden stick on their back, but ate every day fresh Manna and drank water from the Rock that followed them in the wilderness. This was the nation that was ready to enter the Promised Land of Canaan and conquer and take this land as an everlasting possession promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as Israel's home.

I see a parallel between the generation of Israelites that left Egypt as slaves and their children that entered the Land of Canaan as free men ready to take what was given to them by God Himself. Now, in the land of Israel the majority of Israelites were born outside of Israel in the diaspora — but the next generation that was born or raised here in this land and served in the IDF with pride and privilege is going to take the helm and lead and guide this nation in a totally different way. The relationship with God will be clear and fresh. It will not be imported from the ghettos of Europe and the cities of Morocco and the narrow poor streets of Sanaa in Yemen. The majority of the politicians in this country today are still immigrants or children of immigrants from North Africa or Poland, France or England, Brazil or Argentina.

The Messianic Faith Needs Restoration — Not Importation

As disciples of Yeshua we also need to learn from that generation that wandered 40 years in the Sinai Desert, and first learn to be kind to each other, understanding that we, the Jewish people — including the so-called "Messianic Jews" — are a work in progress. We have not graduated yet from the diaspora school of hard knocks.

The majority of the leaders of the Messianic congregations in Israel are still in some limbo of the diaspora, and the so-called "Messianic faith" is a canned version imported from the dungeons of the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, and the tower of London and the death camps of Nazi Germany. It is our responsibility to leave the faith borrowed from the Christian denominations and sects, and work on restoration of our faith and lifestyle from God's Word first of all and from the local spiritual culture of Israel and the Torah, the prophets, and the writings of the apostles in what we call the New Testament. There is no room in the spiritual restoration of Israel for Martin Luther, or John Calvin, Wesley, Meno, Campbell, or other well-meaning Christians that know not Moses or the living Yeshua seated at the right hand of the Almighty One of Israel.

The invitation God has always been extending is this:

It is up to our generation to accept God's invitation and turn it to positive.