The Wilderness Wanderer'

Next Part The Wilderness Wanderer' 2

by Joseph Philpot, 1867

"They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses. And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation. Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness!" Psalm 107:4-9

We may briefly call Psalm 107 an epitome of Christian experience. If we view the Psalms, collectively as a general manual of the experience of God s saints in all ages, and a record or register of the varied phases of divine life in the soul, this Psalm, in particular, we may consider as a concise and expressive abstract of the whole. It is for this reason that it always has been highly valued by, and been particularly dear to, every one truly taught of God, and most especially to those who have been led most deeply into the mysteries of the divine life. Thus, though I have termed it an epitome or abstract of Christian experience, yet I should add, that it is more adapted to the advanced stages of the divine life than to its first beginnings, and is more suitable to the tried, the tested, and the tempted of the family of God, than to those who walk in an easier path and are led more gently into the ways of grace and truth.

I may observe, also, that in this Psalm there is this remarkable feature which makes it exceedingly interesting as well as instructive and edifying; that in describing various cases of Christian experience, the Holy Spirit has laid down certain marks and lineaments of the divine life which are common to all that are possessed of the fear and grace of God, and yet has traced out other points in which there is a clear and visible difference. This gives to the Psalm two prominent features, of which the one is unity, and the other variety; and what is thus so beautifully and so graphically wrought out in the Psalm exactly corresponds with what observation shows us is the case in different Christians, which makes it doubly instructive, and edifying. We see in them, as we see in the Psalm itself, a unity of divine teaching and yet a variety, so that though all are taught the same truths by the same Spirit, yet not all are taught in the same manner, nor learn them precisely in the same way.

Observe with me, then, several features stamped upon our text with some degree of prominence–
I. The description of the wilderness wanderer
II. The wanderings in the wilderness
III. The effects of the wilderness wanderings
IV. The cry of the wilderness wanderer
V. The deliverance of the wilderness wanderer
VI. The guidance of the wilderness wanderer
VII. The end of the wilderness wanderer

I. The DESCRIPTION of the Wilderness Wanderer

This is given, that you may have some evidence in your bosom how far the character is yours.

1. The wilderness wanderer we may briefly characterize as one whose heart grace has touched, and to whom the Lord the Spirit has communicated divine life. Now what are the feelings, the exercises, the experiences of a soul thus quickened into divine life?

One of the very first is to find this world a wilderness. There is no change in the world itself--the change is in the man's heart. The world is whatever it was, and whatever it will be to worldly men. But the wilderness wanderer thinks it altered--a different world from what he has hitherto known. His friends, his companions, his very relations, the employment in which he is daily engaged, the general pursuits of men, the cares and anxieties, hopes and prospects, amusements and pleasures, and what I may call the general din and whirl of life, all seem to him different to what they were; and for a time perhaps he can scarcely tell whether the change is in them, or in himself. This however is the prominent and uppermost feeling in his mind, that he finds himself, to his surprise a wanderer in a world which has changed altogether its aspect to him. The fair, beautiful world, in which was all his happiness and all his home, has become to him a dreary wilderness. Sin has been fastened in its conviction on his conscience, and a sight and sense of sin in himself has shown him sin in others. The Holy Spirit has taken the veil of unbelief and ignorance off his heart, and shown him light in God's light. He now sees the world in a wholly different light, and instead of a paradise it has become a wilderness--for sin, dreadful sin, has marred all its beauty and happiness.

As the figure of a wilderness is of such constant recurrence in the Scriptures, and as it is so very expressive, it may be as well to look for a few moments at its character naturally, so as to gather from it what the Holy Spirit intended to convey by it spiritually. In our English climate, naturally so humid and so continually refreshed with rains at almost every season of the year, giving us ever verdant fields and trees clothed in leafy green, except in the dead of winter, we have no idea of a wilderness, such as was familiar to those for whom the Old Testament Scriptures were expressly written. And yet I think I can give you a little idea of it.

Many of you have been by the sea-side, and have there seen a heap of sand spreading itself as far as your eyes could reach along the beach, and as you looked at it you would have observed what a contrast there was between this far-spreading beach of sand, and such a prospect as we are familiar with in the Midland Counties, where, on every side, we see grassy meadows, green hedges, and corn fields laden with crops of grain. Now in imagination take that long tract of desolate sand into a very hot climate and spread it in all directions, so as to have nothing else before your eyes, wherever you look, to the utmost verge of the visible horizon, and then picture a burning, almost vertical sun above your head, and conceive it beating down with tremendous heat upon this wide and desolate sand, without the least shade of the smallest tree to protect you from its beams. Toiling along a dusty road in the heat of summer, without a single tree, may give you some little idea of the heat.

Now conceive the case of a man, who having been accustomed to live among corn fields and green pastures, and to walk amid blooming hedges, finds himself unexpectedly in such a wilderness as this, with nothing but the burning sun above, and the hot, parched and glowing sand beneath. I have given you but a faint and feeble description of a desert or a wilderness, such as is known in Eastern climates, and especially in that part of the earth in which Palestine was situated. As far as regarded the land of Canaan itself, it was not a wilderness; for Moses describes it as "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates, a land of oil olive and honey." But on every side of this favoured land there stretched, especially to the east and south, what Moses calls "a terrible wilderness," a "waste, howling" desert. The figure, therefore, of a wilderness was very familiar to every Israelite.

But now, having thus gathered up what is a wilderness, literally and naturally, let us see how it bears upon the experience of a child of God when quickened by divine power, and made for the first time to feel what this world is; for you will recollect that this was the view which I took of it just now in my explanation. As I said before, it is not because the world itself is changed that he feels it to be a wilderness, but because he himself is changed.

Most of us know that our happiness, even naturally, does not consist in outward things. With everything around him that is naturally gladdening and beautiful, a man may be truly miserable; and many a young heart, with blighted affections and crushed prospects, has found a gloomy pall drawn over the whole face of nature, so that the very sky above, and the very earth beneath, seemed clothed in mourning. She who once was so gay and happy is now thoroughly miserable and the most beautiful scenes of nature cannot restore her to happiness and peace.

So it is spiritually with a soul quickened into divine life. There is nothing in this world which can really gratify or satisfy it. What once was to him a happy and joyous world has now become a barren wilderness. The scene of his former pursuits, pleasures, habits, delights, prospects, hopes, anticipations of profit or happiness, is now turned into a barren wasteland. What once was a blooming grain field, a verdant pasture, a glorious scene of hill and dale, trees and flowers, is now turned into sand and gravel, with the burning sun of God's wrath above, and the parched sand of his own desolate heart beneath. He cannot perhaps tell how or why the change has taken place, but he feels it, deeply feels it. He may try to shake off his trouble and be a little cheerful and happy as he was before; but if he gets a little imaginary relief, all his guilty pangs come back upon him with renewed strength and increased violence.

But even assuming that he is not thus powerfully dealt with, but is led in a somewhat milder way, it still comes much to the same point. God means to make the world a wilderness to every child of His that he may not find his happiness in it, but be a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth. He has various ways of effecting this end. I will name some, that you may compare your experience with it.

1. You have perhaps married the woman or man of your affections and dreams, and, in thus obtaining the desire of your heart, imagined to yourself a long series of years of wedded happiness; and the Lord may, for a time, have allowed you a share of the happiness thus pictured to yourself. But He knows full well that the heart of man so rests in, so idolizes the creature, that it must be dislodged from this nest, that it may find happiness in Him, and in Him alone. Thus it often happens, that before the Lord quickens the soul into spiritual life, or sometimes at the very time, using it as an instrument, He brings a blight over this happiness. Sometimes, for instance, He brings the body down with ill-health, or takes away the beloved husband at a stroke, or removes the wife out of her partner's bosom. Or if He spare the root, He may cut off some of the branches--He may afflict or take away the children. Now where is all the pleasure which you once so fondly anticipated, and even for a time enjoyed? It is all broken up, fled, and gone like a dream of the night. And now, what is this world to you? A wilderness; a barren, waste, miserable wilderness.

2. Or take another case which may have been the experience of some here. The Lord may have brought you down in circumstances. You have taken, perhaps, a farm, and were expecting crops that would repay you for your outlay of capital and unwearied industry; or you have entered into business, and seemed at one time to have had good prospects; or have embarked in the exercise of some professional pursuit, where everything appeared in your favour. But after a longer or shorter time, a reverse came over the scene, and everything seemed to go wrong; your crops failed, or your business fell off, or the profits of your profession dwindled almost to a starving point; and in this, or in some such similar way, all your blooming prospects were blighted, and poverty came in like an armed man.

3. Or assume another case, for I wish to meet the varied experiences of God's people as much as I can. The Lord may have sent upon you, from different quarters, trial after trial, and affliction after affliction. All has gone seemingly wrong with you--business, family, the poor body; and a variety of other circumstances have all opened up continual sources of grief and sorrow. Now what do you learn from these dispensations of God's hand? One of the first lessons is, that this world is not a place of grain fields and green pastures, with nothing around you but happiness and pleasures, but a barren wilderness. You begin to feel, that after all the attempts that you and others may use to make it a place of joy and happiness, it is a miserable world, and that you are a poor miserable sinner in it.

You will perceive that thus far I have been speaking of God's dealings in providence, for I have often observed, that God speaks to us in providence before He speaks to us ingrace. It is often indeed true, that, as Elihu says, "God speaks once, yes twice, yet man perceives it not;" but sooner or later "he opens the ears of men and seals their instruction," so that they are obliged to listen. When, then, He has made them see His hand and listen to His voice in providence, then He begins to deal with their soul. It is, then, especially when the Lord speaks home conviction to the heart, applies His law with power to the conscience, lets down a sense of His displeasure into the spirit, that He turns the fruitful land into a wilderness, as the Psalmist speaks in the Psalm before us--"He turns rivers into a wilderness, and the water springs into dry ground; a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of those who dwell therein." (Ps. 107: 33-34.)

The wide flowing river He dries up and turns into a wilderness; the gushing water-springs He stops at their very head, and changes the pastures which they watered into dry ground, and the fruitful land He withers and parches into barrenness. And why? "For the wickedness of those who dwell therein." This, of course, is a general truth; but we may take it experimentally.

When, then, he has a sight and sense of the wickedness that dwells in his heart, how it mars all earthly good; what a wilderness it makes this world to a child of God, and turns the rivers of former delight into a barren desert. Instead of the pleasure he expected to reap from this world, all, all is marred to him; and this is the prevailing and uppermost feeling of his mind--"I have an immortal soul; I have a holy God to deal with--how shall I escape the wrath to come, the wrath to come? What shall I do? Where shall I go? What will be the end of my poor guilty soul unless I get pardon and peace?"

Now, to this man the world is a wilderness. Offer him pleasures and amusements; give him money; set before him prospects of advancing himself in life, such as would make the eyes of worldly men glisten with eagerness and desire; and he would say--"What is all this to me, when my soul is at stake? The grand point, the only point which presses hard and heavy upon my mind is this--"What will be my portion when death closes the scene?" This concern and anxiety about his immortal soul has turned the world into a wilderness.

Thus far I have described somewhat of the first work upon the soul, and its effect in making the world a wilderness. But we must not limit it to the first work. It is the experience of all the "redeemed;" and those of whom I have thus far spoken are only just entered on it. The wilderness wanderer is more especially he who, like the children of Israel, has had his many years of toilsome pilgrimage in the waste, howling wilderness. He is one, therefore, who has had to wade through trial after trial, affliction after affliction, and temptation after temptation. He is one whom the Lord is continually exercising and trying, for "the Lord tries the righteous" one whom He is thus experimentally teaching that this world must and can never be to him anything but a barren wilderness. But I must not linger here, and shall therefore pass on to a further elucidation and explanation of the character in the text. I have called him a "wilderness wanderer." Let us now, then, come to his wanderings.

II. The WANDERINGS in the wilderness

"They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way." The wilderness had no roads in it of any kind, or in any direction. No beaten paths were there made, to guide the wanderers, and except from the stars they did not know north from south, nor east from west; wherever they wandered it was a wilderness still of wide, waste, barren sand, out of which it seemed scarcely possible for them ever to emerge. Taking the figure spiritually, does not this feature describe how many of the Lord's people are wandering in a wilderness world, not knowing where to direct their steps, and doubting whether they ever shall emerge out of it, often fearing that they shall die in it, and that without hope?

But two other marks are added–
1. that they found the wilderness "a solitary way;"
2. "that they found no city to dwell in."
We will consider both these features, and the last first.

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