‘And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’ (Exodus 16:2-3)
It is easy to think one is not an Israelite. We can be quite shocked at how, just three days after being rescued by the Lord in the most spectacular manner from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites start grumbling. Yet when we consider our own lives, we see that our hearts are so often the same. How quick we are to forget the blessings we have in Jesus and resort to grumbling, moaning and self-pity!
We may not openly claim to prefer God’s judgement to salvation. But all too often, we forget everything that God has done for us. We forget that he chose us in Christ from before the foundations of the world. We forget we have been adopted into his family. We forget we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Instead, we allow ourselves to be guided by our present circumstances. We wallow in our disappointments. We get stuck in the tunnel vision of self-pity. We fail to look outside of ourselves to consider others, or that God might just have another plan, a better story, a different angle.
But we mustn’t! God could have provided a Tesco Express and an ice-cold drinks station every few miles in the desert, but he didn’t. God was teaching the Israelites about their necessity to depend on him daily for their needs. They needed to learn that he was trustworthy and would take care of them – their salvation was proof of that.
Would the God who had triumphed over Egypt with ten plagues, who had provided a way to be passed over the angel of death’s judgement, who had turned the Egyptians’ hearts to give all their gold to the Israelites as they left, who had parted the Red Sea so they could cross on dry land and then swept Pharoah’s chariots away in a wave of judgement now desert his people?!
Yet how we easily we too forget. We need to learn the same lesson today!
Would the God who sent his only Son to triumph over sin and death and the evil one, who has provided a way for us to be passed over his final judgement by the blood of the Lamb, who made a way on the cross to bring us back into an intimate and loving relationship with him now desert his people?!
In Paul’s words, ‘he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?’ (Romans 8:32)
In the midst of a chaotic, confused and busy world, we need the same daily dependence on the Lord that he was teaching the Israelites. Like them, we are still in the wilderness on our way to the promised land of the new creation. We need to cling to Jesus through the ups and downs of life, family, work, ministry, church, health, friendship, marriage and finances. Where else have we to go but our good and sovereign Lord?