Exodus 16:1-3

One person in the Bible who definitely didn’t live an easy life was Moses. There were many hard things that he had to go through. One of the things that I want to go over today is about how the Israelites were treating him after he led them out of Egypt.

The Israelites those days basically had their hearts set on complaining. The people were first complaining because of how the Egyptians were treating them. The Israelites didn’t like being beaten up and treated like slaves. That’s understandable. They later complained about things such as not having enough food and water to drink. That was not understandable and yet they wouldn’t give Moses a break from their complaints.

God Will Lead Us

Exodus 16:1, “They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt.”

Something you should keep in mind is that the Israelites weren’t walking around lost. The Israelites were walking the direction that they were because God was guiding them with a cloud by day and a fire by night. Sure… the fifteenth day of the second month would mean that they were walking for a month straight. That is a while to walk. They should have at least kept in mind that they were following God’s path. It wasn’t that Moses was a bad leader or that God didn’t care about them. The Israelites were complaining simply because they didn’t want to see things the way that they actually were.

Worn Out With Desires

Exodus 16:2, “And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness,”

That was definitely not something that God was proud of. They were basically showing hatred against Moses and Aaron. God has said that hatred in your heart is equivalent to murdering against God.

Do you ever have moments like this? Moments that you are just so worn out of not having what you want that you start grumbling against others? Well… you’re not alone. That’s pretty natural for mankind. We’re not perfect and God has accepted that. As this example in the Bible will show, God doesn’t simply leave you in the dark. He cares about you.

God Will Provide

Exodus 16:3, “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.’”

Wow. This verse is very emotionally painful. The fact that they didn’t die by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt is a very true statement but, sadly, it’s also true that they didn’t die where they currently were. Instead, they died in the wilderness. When it comes to having sat by the meat pots and had eaten bread to the full, that is hard to believe and the wrong way to see things. First, it’s hard to believe that the Egyptians, as merciless as they were, desired for their slaves to be completely full and would’ve given them time to sit down by the meat pots instead of having them work. Also, it’s not right to see it that way because that is not the way that God saw it. God didn’t desire to take them out of Egypt so that they could literally starve them to death. In all honesty, God took great care of them throughout it. One example is that God led them through a cloud by day and a pillar of fire instead of forcing them to find their own way… which would definitely be worse. Another example is that God didn’t actually make them starve.

In all honesty, God made food for them rather simple. They didn’t have to harvest it themselves, walk over to a place to buy the food, make the food themselves, or whatever. Instead, God simply made it rain bread so that they would right away have good food every day that would fill them.

Just like how God listened to the Israelites when they were complaining about not having enough food, God listens to your complaints. How he decides to go about it is up to him, but he has his love for you in his mind whenever you call out to him. You could think of it like when Jesus told people, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value then they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Mathew 6:26-27)