Why Does God Lead Israel Into the Wilderness?

The Wilderness E4 — After God delivers the Israelites out of Egypt, he tells Moses to lead them to the promised land—through the wilderness. This is perplexing because a much shorter, safer route existed along the coast. So why does God lead his people along the longer, harder way? In this episode, Jon and Tim explore Israel’s wilderness tests, reflecting on God’s plan to create a new people through a relationship of radical trust and dependence.

CHAPTERS

1. Recap and Setup for the Israelites in the Wilderness (0:00-10:05)
2. God’s Intentional Path Into the Wilderness (10:05-27:11)
3. Three Wilderness Tests in Exodus (27:11-47:28)
4. Seven Wilderness Tests in Numbers (47:28-1:02:23)

OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

View this episode’s official transcript.

REFERENCED RESOURCES

• You can view annotations for this episode—plus our entire library of videos, podcasts, articles, and classes—in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.
• Check out Tim’s extensive collection of recommended books here.

SHOW MUSIC

• “Blue Sky ft. TBabz” by Lofi Sunday
• “Mist Of Blessing ft. Marc Vanparla” by Lofi Sunday
• “Chilling In London” by Lofi Sunday, Just Derrick
• BibleProject theme song by TENTS

SHOW CREDITS

Production of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer, who also edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. 

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