I once heard a comedian say, “The problem with the lessons of history is we never learn the lessons of history.” These primal days of Israel’s history as a nation liberated from bondage are far from glorious. Murmuring, doubting, hollering, “Back to Egypt!” The popular saying holds: “It is easier to take the people out of Egypt than to take Egypt out of the people.”

Looking back on the Exodus, Paul says, “God was not pleased.” How fantastic are we? We have the ability to please or to displease God. We matter to God that much.

Paul, living in cities, points to the wilderness—a real place also symbolic of the parched soul, the dryness of the spirit. Paul tries to comfort his readers: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common.” But the commonality is still tough. The powers of the world lure us away from God. Yet God trusts us enough to place us in tough spots believing we might trust in God to provide our way of escape.

Jesus, who overcomes temptations that would undo any of us, buttresses us with the grace and strength required to stand and not be undone. We should not think of temptation as garden-variety attractions in the world. Oswald Chambers suggested that “Temptation . . . is the thing we are bound to meet if we are [human]. Many of us suffer from temptations from which we have no business to suffer, simply because we have refused to let God lift us to a higher plane where we would face temptations of another order. . . . [Our] disposition on the inside . . . determines what [we are] tempted by on the outside.”* Despite the inevitability of temptation, Paul assures us that God provides the way for us to overcome it.

*Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 1927), September 17.