Holy Ground | Week 5 (6-28-2026)

Dr. Woods Lisenby preaches on the subject, "The Wilderness."

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Transcript

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Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter said to him, If you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city, and he had him stand on the highest point of the temple. If you're the son of man, the son of God, he said, Throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning ye, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. Jesus answered him, It is also written, Do not put the Lord your God to the test. Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I'll give you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me. And Jesus said to him, Away from me, Satan, for it is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. This is the word of God for us as the people of God, and together we say, Thanks be to God. You may be seated. I give thanks for this wonderful morning of worship. If you want to hear uh Pastor Sarah's uh beautiful voice some more, please again join us tonight. Uh, she'll be leading a number of the songs as well, but I'm always appreciative of our band learning that new song this morning and doing a great job. So thank y'all. Will you pray with me? Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our strength and our deemer. And thank you for your word. May it always be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and all God's people said, Amen. Um, I have mentioned this before, so you you might already know this. And if not, let me just go ahead and tell you something that's very true. I'm really bad with directions. It is uh a fatal flaw because I'm so bad with it it gets me in into real trouble. I I'm the guy who comes out of a target and stands way too long at the front door trying to remember where he parked his car. You ever seen that guy that looks kind of lost? That's me. Because I know I put my car somewhere, I mean I got there, I just don't remember where. And so I start pushing that button, and you're like, somebody's breaking into somebody's car. I'm like, no, I've just lost mine. I'm looking for it. I'm the same guy who when I'm driving around the parking decks in Atlanta that are really big, I go the wrong way. Have y'all done that? And somebody's driving towards you, and you're like, I'm sorry, my bad, and try to back up, and there's somebody that's trying to back out, and you just make the whole thing a mess. That's me. I'm that guy. I'm sorry if that was you that I almost backed into. I'm the same guy who, whenever I go on a trip on the interstate and I get off to get gas, I get back on the interstate going the same way I came from. Have y'all ever done that? That's me. Like every trip, Brianna hates it about me. It's like it, I wouldn't say it's her least favorite quality of mine, because I'm sure there's others she'd point to, but it's definitely one of them. I'm just directionally challenged, and it took me a long time to admit it. But I came to terms with it. You know, it was hard to accept. I'm pretty stubborn. I I think I mentioned after I was late for two weddings in a row because of my lack of directions, that's when I was like, all right, I will I will embrace this fact. And you know, when you admit that you're not great at something, when you're able to release your stubbornness, it makes it easier in other places in life. Like it was a lot easier to let go of my hair when it started thinning. So I was like, you know what? It's just if it's just the reality of life, it's just where I am. Um, but because I was able to embrace this truth, I discovered something amazing. Uh I I began uh an experience with what is now my best friend. Her name is Helga, and she is the little uh blue dot on my GPS. And she talks to me and she tells me where I'm supposed to go and how I'm supposed to get there and where I am when I think I'm lost. Helga and me, we're like this. As long as I got Helga by my side, there's nowhere I can't get to. But let me tell you what, you know, like when you're driving around and you're using your GPS, and then your phone loses signal, and Helga turns into like a milk drunk toddler away after their bedtime, and she's just like wandering all over, not making any sense. And you know, you see the GPS start doing the spinning. That is like one of the worst feelings of my life. Because and it happens, it happens more than it should, and it happens in places you wouldn't expect. Like I was visiting somebody from our church not that long ago in Baldwin County, and I left their house and I didn't have a signal. And I'm down 181 between uh in the neighborhood over there in Daphne and the Belfast area, and it shouldn't be that hard to get back. But for me, when Helga was doing her spinnies and I couldn't figure out where I was going, all I could do is think, all right, I know I'm between 98 and 181. If I keep driving, eventually I'll hit one of those roads and I will make my way back. You've been there, right? Been driving around and all of a sudden your GPS stops working. And for those of us um of a certain age, we're not super familiar with those things called maps that maybe many of you have experienced in your life. And so that that panic that sets in, it's real because uh for most of uh the recent histories, you know, past five, 10 years or so, we've gotten really used to knowing where we're supposed to go. We've gotten so accustomed to having somebody tell us the way that we forgot what it feels like to be lost. Uh most of human history has not had Helga. They haven't had that little GPS arrow to point us in the right direction. I mean, for most of human history, people would cross an ocean, not knowing what it looked like on the other side or exactly where they were going to land. Or they would walk across the desert, not knowing when it would end, or how close they were to being there. All they had to go on were the stars, the constellations in the sky that they would look up to, and it would be the thing that pointed them home. Uh, as we're going through our Bible stories this morning, uh, this picture of uh not knowing exactly where we're going, I think is a perfect image I can put in your mind as we come to the end of our series called Holy Ground. Because where we're going this morning has no roads on the ground. It's a place that the only way uh through it is to keep your eyes up and follow a light which you did not make and you cannot control. This morning we're going to the wilderness. Because for four weeks we've been looking in the Bible at how the authors of the Bible used the story, the parts of the land to help tell the story, how the geography is part of the narrative, and how on the first week we went up on that mountaintop. And we were up on that mountaintop, you could see for miles, it was clear, and that's where the dew collected, and it came down the mount of Mount Herman, and it formed the Jordan River. And when you come down the mountain, sometimes you end up in those shadow valleys where they're dark, and it feels like you might be alone, but then you realize that the shepherd is going before you, and before there's ever a threat, there was already a shepherd. And then you journey through those valleys and you end up at the riverside. On our third week, we looked at Jeremiah and how those roots of the tree that are planted by the river, they go deep and they still flourish even in drought because they are touching the living water. That is when we bury ourselves, root ourselves deep in Christ. And last week we looked at the stories of the sea and how the sea represents chaos. Now, there is chaos in our life. It happens when these things pile up. But God is the God who ordered the chaos in the very beginning, and Jesus calmed the sea when he walked out on it. And so we've been looking at these stories, and in a way, they've all been preparing us for this particular moment, where we finish in the wilderness. I want us to think about two times in the Bible where we hear about the wilderness. Uh, the first uh is in Numbers, the beginning of the Bible in the first five books, there's a book called Numbers, and it's in Numbers chapter 10 uh that Israel is camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. In fact, it's the very story that Andy was just singing about a moment ago. They're there and they parked there for about uh the better part of a year. And then this happens on the 20th day of the second month of the second year, the cloud lifted up above the tabernacle. And then the Israelites set out from the desert of Sinai and traveled from place to place until the cloud came to rest at the desert of Peran. Now, you need to understand that they are experiencing the strangest form of travel plans and living. They are living in the wilderness because they've escaped Egypt. They have fled after their captivity and they've gone from Egypt, and now they are following a cloud, right? They've left Egypt and there's this cloud hanging out over the tabernacle, the place where they worship, the place where God resides. And the cloud is their Helga. It's their GPS dot. It is their map pointing the direction. When the cloud lifts up, they go follow the cloud. And when the cloud settles, that's where they stop and they stay. And here's the part that would have driven me insane. The cloud doesn't run on any schedule. Right? The cloud might stay for two days or for a month, or for in this story, a whole year. Uh uh, they didn't get a calendar, they didn't get an itinerary, they didn't say, here's where you're gonna go, and here's where you're gonna land. And as a person who really likes planning things, as a person who really likes to know if you're gonna be on time and if we're gonna be finished on time, uh, that would have made me crazy. The cloud got up, and their entire job was just to watch it and follow it and go where it went. And right at the end of this chapter, you get this beautiful detail. It's about Moses. And it says that whenever the cloud and the ark would set out in front of him, Moses would say, Rise up, Lord, and may your enemies be scattered. And whenever the cloud came to rest and the people would rest, he would say, Return, Lord, to the countless thousands of Israel. Whether they were going, whether they were staying, he had a prayer for both of them. Because in all of that, they were following the Lord, and Moses was declaring that no matter what, we trust God. Uh the other story about the wilderness is the one we read a moment ago from the chap from Matthew's gospel in chapter four. It's where uh Jesus was led out into the wilderness, and it was in the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil. He was out there for 40 days, and uh uh he was told, he was told, turn these stones into bread, throw yourself off the temple and let the angels catch you. Bow down to me, and I'll give you everything. When we set these two stories beside each other, uh we see a different, we see a couple different characteristics of the wilderness. In numbers, the wilderness kind of looks like a school, right? It's a slow, patient place where God uh He's teaching the nation of former slaves how to be led by Him. And in Matthew, though, the wilderness, it looks like a fight. It looks like the devil is showing up and and he's jumping Jesus and Jesus is is clapping back, but with kindness. And you would think these are completely different things, right? One's gentle, one's kind of violent or intense. But the truth is, these are the very same wildernesses, and they're both teaching us the same lesson. Look at what Jesus is actually being tempted to do. Take the bread now instead of waiting for the word of God. Uh force God's hand and and make sure that when you jump, you're gonna be caught, or or grab all the kingdoms today instead of receiving them God's way. The devil wasn't tempting Jesus to rob a bank. He's tempting Jesus to stop watching the cloud and telling Jesus to take control for himself. He's telling him, You can be your own GPS. And and that's the thing about the the wildernesses that neither of these texts leave out. The wilderness is the one place where you cannot navigate out by yourself. No matter how much control you try to take, it's the place where where if you are on your own, you're gonna have a hard time. You can't map it out, you can't schedule it, you can only follow where you are led. And the temptation, every single time we are in the wildernesses of life, is to quit following and to try to seize control. You know, I didn't grow up around the same type of wildernesses that they're talking about in Israel that the Israelites were in Numbers or that Jesus was going into in Matthew. I grew up in the Wiregrass, and and much like the area around here, um, for me, wilderness means woods, right? No pun intended because it's my name. Um, but but uh we have a little land. I was Sarah's just rolling her eyes at me. I'm not I I get it. I'm not as funny as I think I am, but I'm funnier than maybe you think I am, so we can meet in the middle. But uh, we have this little timber lamb in Ozarks, not very big, and and I grew up going there and you know cutting trees off, uh cutting limbs off pine trees and hunting, and that's where I grew up just playing in the woods. And the thing about those woods um is that there's a lot of shadows in the woods. Have you ever noticed? Like even in midday, the canopy makes it to where there are shadows that stack upon shadows. And so even uh if it's the middle of the day, especially if it's late in the afternoon, you could be like 10 feet from a snake or a deer and never know it. But but that's not the wilderness of the Bible. That wilderness is a desert. There are no trees, there are no shadows. Uh it's a whole different animal. Everything in that wilderness is exposed. There's no grass, nothing growing. You can see for miles in every direction. Do you know that there was actually some early Christians that would go out into that desert intentionally? They went out there about 1700 years ago when Christianity began becoming popular. We call them our desert mothers and fathers. Um, they went out there because they said uh that they were worried that being Christian was becoming too comfortable. Because everybody who's being Christian is becoming the main part of everybody's kind of religious experience. And so they went out there because uh they were afraid that their comfort was covering their sin. Think about that. Basically, it was this idea that shadows sometimes our comfort can be shadows to hide what's beneath the surface. And out in the desert, everything began exposed. Because the truth is, I mean, sin does love shadows. Sin loves to get covered up and to be hidden. Sin will will stack shadow upon shadow until you genuinely cannot tell your pride from your principles. I mean, think about it. Being wrong is not a sin. But pride is. And there is no time where you are more proud or slow to listen than when you are absolutely certain that you are right. That that's the scary part. Our sin hides in the things that we are so sure about. Inside the schedules that we are too busy to question. Our sins can be that favor we did for somebody, but that we can't stop bringing up or holding over their heads. The desert is the place where everything finally stands out, and there's nothing left to hide. And here's the thing about the deserts in our lives. We don't get to pick our wildernesses any more than the Israelites did. Because wildernesses tend to come without warning. For the Israelites, uh, it was the season right after one of the hardest decisions they've ever made as a people. They decided we're gonna leave Egypt. We've been here for 400 years, we're gonna flee. And where do they flee to? The wilderness for 40 years. They were probably thinking the hard part's over. We've gotten away from our captors, only to end up in the desert with nowhere to go, not knowing which way was up or down. I mean, I bet if you could ask them, they probably would have said, you know what, uh, let's leave Egypt and go straight to the land of milk and honey. Can we do that? That sounds a lot better. Can we just go straight to that lush area where everything is nice? You never know what is gonna take you into the desert. What's gonna leave you wandering in the wilderness? It might be those long months after losing someone you love. It could be that stretch between jobs, the one that has ended and the one you haven't found yet. Your desert might be the recovery that is just dragging on a lot longer than you would like for it to. It might be the move you didn't see coming, or the relationship that seems as dry as the desert you're in. And there are two features of the wilderness that are always the same. You can't see the end of it, and you don't get to choose how long you stay there. Both of those are really hard to sit with. When you're in the wilderness, you have no idea where the other side actually is, or when you will arrive. And so the biggest temptation for us when we're in the wilderness is to do exactly what Jesus and the Israelites were tempted to do. We try to become our own cloud, we try to point ourselves in the direction that we think is right, or we we stay camped in a place that feels comfortable even though it's not perfect, because at least it's familiar and I understand it. Either way, these are the same temptations that Jesus stared down for us to stop following and to try to take control away from God. When you read these texts, I mean you look at the people in the wilderness. I hope you don't miss what God actually does for those who are stuck there in those moments. Because what he gives might not be what they wanted or what they asked for, but it was a lot better than whatever they expected. Because that's how God works. Sometimes we think we know what is best, but God has something even greater in store. The truth in numbers is that God never hands Israel the map. God never says this is how long it will take. He never gives them control to know where they are going. He just says, Watch. He's one instruction, look up. And that might not sound like a lot of help until you see what it does for them, until you read more about the Israelite story. Because watching the cloud, trusting the Lord, uh it cures them of their need to know everything, or to try to control their own destiny and to trust instead in God, because they were people who spent 400 years in slavery, and every day was decided and dictated by somebody else, how they would spend their time and what they would do. And now God is teaching them slowly how to trust Him instead. That doesn't happen overnight in your own life. You've been so used to being in control for so long, it's really hard to let that go. It's really hard to actually give yourself over to the Lord, which is why sometimes we need those slow, methodical, patient reminders of that cloud in front of us. And one of the things I love about numbers is that God doesn't make them do it alone, right? If you read that same chapter, Moses turns to his brother-in-law, a man who knows the desert country, and he says, Come with us and you can be our eyes, which is kind of crazy, right? God has already given them a literal miracle cloud, right? There's a cloud for them to follow. And yet, because they're going through something difficult, God gives them somebody who understands the land. How many people in your life have tried to tell you, hey, I'm here for you? I I I don't know exactly what you're going through, but I've been through something similar. And how many times have you kept them at arm's length? I think sometimes the way God speaks to us is through the people He gives to us. There might be somebody who's been saying, I'm here for you. I've been in something similar. I want to journey alongside you. Listen to them, let them be your eyes, because that might be God's cloud in your life, trying to give you some direction when you are lost in this wilderness. Uh and did you notice when Jesus was talking uh with the devil when he's been tempted, Jesus never argues with him. He never trust like to negotiate, right? He just keeps putting himself back into what God has already said. Right before the verses in the wilderness, uh, before he's tempted, Jesus is baptized. And in his baptism, God parts the clouds and says, This is my son, with whom I'm well pleased. Listen to him. And in the very beginning of the temptation, uh, the devil says, So if you are the son of man, God says, He is the son of man. The devil's fine. If that's true, then you need to take the reins, then you should be in control. But every time Jesus answers straight out of God's mouth from the word, and he says, Not yet, not this way, not on your terms, I trust in God. And here's the part that we don't say out loud enough, but it is very true. The fact that Jesus got tempted is not a sign that something has gone wrong. Temptation doesn't mean that you have failed, and temptation itself is not a sin. In the story, the temptation is the whole point. One of those desert fathers, a man named Abba Anthony, one time said it perfectly. He said, Without temptations, no one can be saved. And he wasn't being gloomy, he was just telling the truth. Temptation is not proof that God has left you. It's in the temptation where we learn to trust God. Friends, the truth about the wilderness is that it's going to change you. It has to. That's kind of the point of it. That's what it's there for. Nobody in the Bible goes into the wilderness and comes out the same person. When Hagar goes in there as a runaway slave with no future, she comes out as the mother of a nation. When the Israelites went in there as a mob of escaped slaves, they come out as a people with a covenant and a new name. Even Jesus, when Jesus goes into the wilderness, he comes out knowing a bit more about you and me. Because he's experienced the temptations in the wilderness that you and I experience. Out there, the Son of God knew what it was to need help. And the angels came and attended to him, and he let them. So the real question is when you were in the wilderness, are you gonna let it change you? Or are you gonna try your best to stay exactly the same? Because we all know it is like to fight to stay the same, right? It's when we try to take control over everything. When we think our weights is the best way, when we don't let other people in to help us, when we stop taking time to pray and to seek God. Henry Nowan, one of my favorite authors, he once said this power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It's easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. When you can't see the end, and when you didn't pick the length of where you are, the easiest thing to do is to reach for control, to try to manage everybody around you, to try to force the timeline to your will. We try to become uh uh our own cloud because we don't want it to sit with one moment of discomfort of waiting for God. And the sad thing is sometimes that feels like strength, but it's not. You think, well, at least I'm doing something. You're doing the wrong thing. Because by trying to take control from God, you are guaranteeing that you are either staying in the wilderness or you are coming out unchanged. The harder thing, but the better thing to do is what Israel did. Look up and watch where God is leading. Like those earliest travelers. Let the stars be your guide, let God be your constellations. When you break camp because God says go, or you stay because God stayed says stay. You are giving yourself over to something bigger than yourself. You are trusting in something more than your own rightness. Mostly, I hope you hear the promise beneath all of this. Because this is the part that changes everything. You are not the first one out there in the wilderness. You're not the first one to journey where you were walking. One of mine and my wife's favorite musicians uh are Drew and Ellie Holcomb. We've seen them like 13 times. It's a bit obsessive. I know. We go every year. Uh but uh uh they have this one song that they have a lot of songs. One of the songs they have that we love is called Constellations. And I've been thinking about that song a lot this week, writing this sermon, because it has this line that says, You've already been in this desolate place. You've already been there, and you've made a way. That's the truth about the wilderness in one sentence. Before you ever set foot in the desert, God has already been there, God has experienced it, and God goes with you. He walked into the wilderness ahead of you, he faced down every temptation, he came out the other side, and so you are not alone in there, and you are not truly lost because you have the guide who has the best way for you to go. So, this morning, as we close out this series, um, I've enjoyed kind of walking through the land together. I've enjoyed thinking about the ways that God brings these things for us to think more about in the Bible. Um, and so you were given a bag when you came in here tonight, one I think for almost every adult. If not, be sure to grab one on your way out. And if you don't have one, maybe share with somebody next to you. Or just run up to the Narth X and grab one real fast. Um, and in there, you'll see a couple different items that should remind you of the different weeks where we've been talking about these things. In there, uh, you'll see uh uh there's a rock for that time that we went up on the mountaintop together. There's a candle uh for you to remember the light, the God lights that way in the shadow valley. Uh we in the third week, we touch the water to remember our baptism. Um, and then uh last week there's a shell to remind you that even though there's chaos, there's a God who calms it all and calms the sea. And lastly, there's a little jar of sand. It's very tiny. And you hold that and remember that even in the wilderness, God walked through that temptation. I don't know where you are this morning, but I know that you are on holy ground. It's not holy um just because uh uh uh it looks nice or because it's been consecrated or whatever. It's holy because of who's there. God is there. So if you are on a mountaintop right now and things are great, just know that you should give thanks because God brought you that mountaintop. If you are in the valley, just know that you are not alone and God is lighting the way. If you are by the riverside, then dig those roots deep down and know that God is going to nourish your soul. And if things feel like chaos right now, there is a God who can calm the storms. And if you are in the wilderness, even in the driest parts, you are never by yourself.