Last night, scripture had a profound impact upon
my life in regard to God's provision. The wilderness travelers of Israel,
for 40 years, saw the Hand of God move over and over - where your fathers
put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Hebrews
3:9. I don't want to be like them in any way. You know, the kind of
people who want the best and can never find a place of grateful contentment.
Read below and see God's provision and then how they ultimately saw His
provision among them.
God’s Goodness and
Israel’s View of It
God’s Care for them in Wilderness
Deuteronomy 8:3-4 - And he humbled you and let
you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your
fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread
alone, but Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell
these forty years man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the
LORD.
Nehemiah 9:21 - You gave your good Spirit to
instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave
them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in
the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear
out and their feet did not swell.
Exodus 13:20 And they moved on from Succoth
and encamped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness. 21 And the Lord
went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way,
and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might
travel by day and by night. 22 The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar
of fire by night did not depart from before the people.
Psalm 105: 39 He spread a cloud for a covering,
and fire to give light by night.40 They asked, and he brought
quail,
and gave them bread from heaven in abundance. 41 He opened
the rock, and water gushed out;
it flowed through the desert like a river.
Deuteronomy 29:5 - I have led you forty years in
the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals
have not worn off your feet.
Deuteronomy 2:7 - For the LORD your God has
blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through this
great wilderness. These forty years the LORD your God has been with you. You
have lacked nothing.”’
Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its
appearance like that of bdellium. The people went about and gathered it and
ground it in handmills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made
cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil.
When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it.
(Numbers 11:7-9 ESV)
Joshua 5:11-12 - And the day after the Passover,
on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and
parched grain. And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the
produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel,
but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.
Israel’s View of God’s Goodness
All of this happened for
them and they continued to complain.
·
When the Egyptians pursued them at the Red Sea (Exodus 14:11)
·
When they had no water at Marah (Exodus 15:24)
·
When they had no food in the wilderness of Sin (Exodus16:2-3)
·
When they had no water at Rephidim (Exodus 17:1-3)
·
When they prepared to enter the Promised Land (Num. 14:1-4)
Numbers 11:4-6
Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of
Israel also wept again and said, “Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the
fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks,
the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is
nothing at all but this manna to look at.”
Exodus 16:1-3
- 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. 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.”
Numbers 14:26-35
- And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “How long shall this
wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the
people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, ‘As I live,
declares the LORD, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead
bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the
census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one
shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except
Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, who
you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land
that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this
wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years
and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies
lies in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied
out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity
forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.’ I, the LORD, have spoken.
Surely this will I do to all this wicked congregation who are gathered together
against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they
shall die.”
Numbers 32:10-13 - And the
LORD's anger was kindled on that day, and he swore, saying, ‘Surely none of the
men who came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the
land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, because they have
not wholly followed me, none except Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite
and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have wholly followed the LORD.’ And the
LORD's anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the
wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the
sight of the LORD was gone
