Page 28 - Advanced Biblical Backgrounds Revised

Chapter 4: The Wilderness wanderings as event and conceptual background
(Exodus 13-40, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy)

Connect…

God created mankind with a special gift called free will. God desires willing obedience. He did not
create two robots when He created Adam and Eve. He created beings in His own image with the
capacity to love and care for others. He made them with emotions and a spiritual desire to have
fellowship with Him voluntarily.

That’s what God desires of all mankind. To walk with them and have fellowship with them. The
problem is that mankind in general refuses God’s invitation to walk in obedience to Him. Our nature to
sin has been inbred in each one of us to resist letting others have their way. We want what we want-
and are self-sufficient in our own abilities and strength.

After departing Egypt and seeing God do amazing miracles to lead them out of bondage and to protect
them on their journey, Israel arrived at Kadesh Barnea, the entrance into the promised land. After
spying out the land, ten returned with a bad report: “We cannot attack those people; they are stronger
than we are…All the people we saw were of great size … We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes “
(Numbers 13: 31-33). Moses’s response is that the people failed to trust in God and refused obedience
because of their lack of trust. As a result of their disbelief, Israel wandered in a barren wilderness for 40
years until the entire generation that left Egypt passed on. Let’s find out about their journey…

Objectives…

1. Students should be able to describe the journey and the location covered in the wilderness
wandering.
2. Students should able to describe the government structure that existed during the wilderness
wandering.

3. Students should be able to describe the Jewish religious practices that developed in the wilderness
wandering.

4. Students should be able to explain how the social and economic culture worked during the wilderness
wandering.

5. Students should be able to identify examples of the conceptual foundation of the wilderness
wandering in the New Testament.

27