God Sends His Recruits to Boot Camp. Exodus 14:11.

Image: Paratroopers from the 11th Airborne division training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky in the early 1950s. My father could be in this picture. From https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/18zacz8/11th_airborne_paratroopers_jump_training_in_fort/

“Where do you think you’re going, Wales!”

The sergeant screamed at my dad, a young recruit in basic training. The men were inside a gas chamber. The rule was, the sergeant would flip the switch to release chlorine gas, and only after the gas began coming out would the recruits be allowed to don their gas masks and begin breathing. Something went wrong and my dad was sure his mask was leaking. He pushed the sergeant aside and burst through the door, dropping the mask and inhaling fresh air. He spent a week in the infirmary before completing basic training and spending three years as a paratrooper in West Germany.

The branches of the U.S. military enroll nearly 200,000 recruits in boot camps every year. They cut off their hair, change their clothes, tell them when to eat, when to sleep, and what to do all day long. Sergeants scream at the teenagers in a manner to which some have never been exposed. Officers defend the rough treatment with statements such as “we have to tear them down so we can build them back up.”

Some fifteen percent of the recruits fail to complete basic training—it is just too hard. But eighty-five percent graduate and go on to become America’s elite, professional military.

Following the Exodus from Egypt, God enrolled His people in a boot camp. Their challenging days in the desert kept growing longer, from a month or two walking in a million-man caravan, to forty years circling the wilderness and eating manna.

Why? The direct answer is that the people expressed a complete lack of faith after they heard about giants in the Promised Land. Only Caleb and Joshua were not scared to obey God and attack.

So God announced that the nation would wander the wilderness for forty years, and after the entire cowardly (faithless) generation had died off, the next generation would be allowed to move into the Promised Land, Numbers 14:21-23.

But Israel had been testing God from the moment Moses came on the scene. And even after they saw God destroy Egypt’s idols through ten miraculous plagues, they continued to doubt God and to cultivate a bitter, angry, defeated mindset.

“Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” Exodus 14:11.

(This is comical sarcasm, the Egyptians being world leaders in graves, embalming, mummification, and the world’s largest mausoleums—the pyramids.)

The Hebrews:

1. Doubted God before crossing the Red Sea, Exodus 14:11-12.
2. Complained about bitter water, Exodus 15:24.
3. Complained about hunger, Exodus 16:3.
4. Collected more manna than permitted, Exodus 16:20.
5. Tried to collect manna on the Sabbath, Exodus 16:27-29.
6. Complained over thirst, Exodus 17:2-3.
7. Worshipped the golden calf, Exodus 32:7-10.
8. Complained again, Numbers 11:1-2.
9. Complained about lacking meat, Numbers 11:4.
10. Were afraid to enter the Promised Land and threatened to return to Egypt instead, Numbers 14:1-4.

Only after the Hebrews demonstrated this pattern of disobedience did God punish them with forty years in the land of cactus and scorpions. God sent the entire nation to boot camp, to basic training in following God.

When God sent His people into the wilderness, it was not unlike boot camp: “We have to tear them down so we can build them back up.” These people may have been the children of Israel, the children of the Promise, but they had been slaves for four hundred years.

Slavery had filled the Jewish people with many bad habits and bad ways of thinking. The Hebrews were bitter. They were cynical. They were skeptical. They did not trust Moses and they did not trust God. They had a bitter, angry, and defeated mindset. In modern parlance, the former slaves thought like losers. They saw themselves as losers. Many of them had no hope, no courage, no integrity, and no faith.

But God is the Master Teacher. He would school His people, and not unlike the U.S. military, God would use time in the wilderness to teach the lessons[1].

Have you ever felt like you were lost in the wilderness? Or that you were wandering in circles for years? Remember: the Hebrews did not remain in the wilderness forever, though I’m sure it felt that way at the time. They did eventually “graduate” and God led them into the Promised Land.

Things got better. They moved into houses they did not build and began tending vineyards they did not plant, Joshua 24:13.

You may be in boot camp now, but hang in there! God will get you to the other side. One day you will emerge mature and whole, no longer unlearned and ignorant (Acts 4:13). God will do His work, tutor you in the faith, and move you to “greater works than these” John 14:12.

AΩ.

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[1] Following the Day of Pentecost, the Jews were amazed at the preaching of Peter and John and called them “unlearned and ignorant men” Acts 4:13. But these men had just spent three years in a wilderness of sorts, walking back and forth across the country with Jesus, the greatest Teacher of all. The apostles had attended a university like none other. No longer were they unlearned or ignorant men. Have you spent that kind of time with Jesus? Have you gone to college with Jesus and allowed Him to become your personal rabbi and tutor in not only spiritual areas, but in all areas of life?