Exodus 16:2-15
For Sunday, September 21, 2008
Proper 20
As sinful human beings we tend to be unrelenting grumblers. This is what is on display in Exodus chapter 16. Just a month and a half previous the Israelites were delivered from slavery in Egypt under miraculous circumstances. Yet now "the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron . . . If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death" (vv. 2-3).
Sounds like my 12 year-old. Israel just couldn't grasp why God had brought them into the desert. He brought them there in order to get them to the Promised Land. He brought them there to shape them for living redeemed lives. He brought them there to teach them that He really was capable of providing everything they needed. He brought them there for them to learn to trust and obey.
What are we grumbling about? Job? Marriage? Finances? Our church? Our pastor? If you want to keep grumbling, you can: just as God answered the Israelites in the midst of their grumbling so will he answer you. Yet a better response might be this: God, how do you want to bless me where I am now?
Your Heavenly Father loves you more than you could possibly know. He knows the plans he has for you, for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope (Jer. 29:11). He sacrificed his own son so that you could be freed from the slavery of sin and begin a journey toward a life filled with promise. Let's together commit to stop grumbling, and instead start remembering, trusting, and moving forward.
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