In Ezek 20:33-38, the Lord YHVH expresses His dissatisfaction (could be an understatement) with His people, and speaks of gathering them out of the countries where they (we Jewish children of Israel) are scattered, and bringing us into the ‘wilderness of the peoples’dealing with us “face to face” as He did with our fathers in the wilderness of Egypt. The word translated as ‘wilderness’ here (midbar) is better translated ‘desert‘. This land that is the ancestral home for the Chosen People of God had lain a desolate and dry wasteland for all the intervening centuries of the dispersion of the Jewish people, and only with their return here over the past century or so has it begun to show its potential for regeneration.
As believers in Yeshua, we know that Israel today — representing most of the world — is a spiritual desert, with a few oases located here and there. The shepherd’s job and responsibility is to lead his flock to these pastures of food and drink on the way to being the final resting place — Zion.
Yeshua is dealing with His people ‘face-to-face’ in our own land, yet it is but a desert/wilderness. They/we have not yet entered the promised land which YHVH covenanted with an oath to give to the descendants of Jacob. The promise land is called here the Land of Israel. The Lord will not bring the rebels against Him and His covenant into that inheritance, which encompasses far more territory than now “possessed”, and where/when He will rule over them!
Israel finds herself vis a vis the nations similarly to the believers in Yeshua/Jesus here find ourselves vis a vis Israel: little or nothing they or we do to explain, defend, justify themselves/ourselves is taken to heart as sufficiently acceptable to change the envy and hatred without a cause towards either Israel in the eyes of the rest of the world, or of Yeshua and those who believe the gospel in the eyes of the powers that be in Israel. When we are not walking in obedience to the Word of God, our moral strength of conviction of HIS righteousness is weakened (2Cor 10:3-6). God is squeezing us all into a tight and narrow road that we will feel the pressure, either bringing about a humility of love for those we are mutually pressing and for the Lord Himself, or bringing about an unloving and self-preservation attitude from within the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.
If Israel today is a desert of the peoples, how much more so the spiritual reality in lands not chosen to be “the Holy Land“?