Matthew 7:14 NASB
For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. 

The wilderness represents that process and journey where you are made ready to enter the kingdom. But Israel did not want the kingdom – they wanted their own way. They looked back to Egypt. “They loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19).

‘Being saved’ out of Egypt (born again), strung between Egypt and Canaan, this example shows us that only a few out of the multitudes of believers ever enter the kingdom of our belonging.