In his recent book ‘Scandalous’ , a book which is really the outcome of a series of sermons on aspects of the cross, Don Carson has a chapter on the slaughtered lamb of Revelation. In this chapter he has a comment about the woman who flees to the wilderness to be protected by God from the wrath of Satan in Rev 12.
Carson asks what this picture of the messianic community fleeing to the wilderness would have meant to a first-century Christian reader. Below is part of his conclusion.
The significance of the wilderness
The wilderness is the place through which the messianic community of the old covenant passed on the way to the Promised Land. As such, it was a time of testing,difficulty, temptation and judgement. It was not yet the Promised Land. It was the desert. But at the same time, it was the place where God had so miraculously provided for his people that the later prophets could look back on it as a time of intimacy, wooing and winning. There God performed wonderful miracles: water from a rock, the provision of manna and quail, the preservation of their shoes. God taught them wonderful lessons in revealed words and spectacular miracles. Because of God’s faithfulness to his covenant community as they passed through the desert on way to the Promised Land, the same expression is picked up later by the prophets. Thus in Hosea 2 when the people of God are again betraying him and committing spiritual adultery, God says, ‘Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her’ (Hos 2:14). The wilderness was not only the place of trial and testing; it was also the place where God led his people with the tender wooing affections of a courtier. God is winning his people, cherishing them, drawing them to himself, saving them, protecting them until the consummation, and preparing them for the move into the Promised Land.
…The desert is scarcely hospitable but it is prepared for the woman by God. So also in the church’s experience today: we may have to go through terrible hardships, but those hardships are accompanied by the wonderful, wooing, grace of God.’
I am struggling a bit with ill-health at the moment. I found this passage tremendously helpful… and true to experience.
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