The Backside of the Desert – Exodus 3:1

Exodus 3:1

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

There is something very important in the way this chapter opens. Moses is not standing before crowds. He is not speaking with authority. He is not doing anything that would seem impressive in the eyes of men. He is keeping sheep. He is out on the backside of the desert. The man who once lived in Pharaoh’s house is now far removed from power, position, and recognition. And yet this is exactly where God is about to meet him.

That is often the way of the Lord.

He has a way of planting His servants in desert places before He begins to use them in greater ways. Moses was there. Elijah knew the desert. John the Baptist came out of the wilderness regions. Paul spent years in Arabia after his conversion. John received Revelation while exiled on Patmos. Again and again, God takes His people into lonely places, dry places, stripped down places, because there are lessons learned there that are not learned anywhere else.

Most of us do not naturally welcome those seasons. When the desert comes, we tend to ask where the presence of God has gone, why everything feels so dry, and why the sense of nearness we once knew does not seem as vivid. We wonder where the freshness is, where the emotion is, where the visible evidence is. But over time, if we walk with the Lord long enough, we begin to understand that the desert is not always a sign that something is wrong. Very often it is a sign that God is doing something deeper.

He is teaching us to live by His Word and not by our moods.

He is teaching us to stand on what He has said instead of on what we happen to feel that day. That is a necessary lesson, because feelings rise and fall constantly. They are affected by circumstances, by fatigue, by disappointment, by success, by family pressures, by physical weakness, by a hundred little things that shift from one day to the next. If a man builds his walk with God on feelings, he will never be stable. He will always be swinging up and down with whatever happens to be moving inside him at the moment.

But the Lord wants something stronger than that. He wants a man or woman who can say, Lord, You said You would never leave me. You said You would be with me. You gave me Your Word. So whether the day feels bright or dry, whether the season feels full or empty, I am going to stand on what You have spoken. That is one of the great purposes of the desert. It teaches us to trust the promise of God more than the pulse of our emotions.

And that is where Moses is now. He has spent long years in Midian. He has been emptied of the old confidence that once marked him. The palace is behind him. Egypt is behind him. The self assured man who acted too quickly has been brought low, quieted, and shaped in the solitude of the wilderness. Once he was admired. Then he became rejected. Now he is simply a shepherd leading sheep in a barren place. But this is not wasted time. The desert has been doing its work.

And now he comes to Horeb, the mountain of God.

That little phrase tells you the moment is about to change. Moses may have thought this was just another day with the flock, just another stretch of wilderness, just another ordinary path through familiar ground. But the Lord had brought him to the very place where heaven would break in. After all the long silence, after all the years in obscurity, after all the dry and hidden shaping, God is now about to reveal Himself in a way Moses could never have imagined.

That is one of the encouraging things about desert seasons. They feel slow while you are in them. They feel hidden. They feel uneventful. But often they are the very places where God is preparing a man for the clearest revelation of His presence. Moses came to the backside of the desert, but he was actually being led to the mountain of God. And many times that is exactly what the Lord is doing with us too. What feels like a dry stretch may actually be the road to a fresh unveiling of who He is.