Manna again! It is easy for us to condemn the Israelite’s for complaining of the monotony of constantly eating this same food, even though it was God-given and theirs for the gathering, but human beings crave variety and soon lose sight of their blessings and take them for granted.
“And the children of Israel wept again, and said Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely ; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick : But now our soul is dried away : there is nothing at all beside this manna before our eyes.” Numbers 11: 4-6.
It was certainly a restricted diet, after the variety to which they had grown accustomed and, no doubt, few of them recognized the significance of this “bread from Heaven”.
When they were in Egypt they dreamed of deliverance from their lives, since Pharoah had decreed death for all their male offspring. But after God had shown His might and supremacy by bringing the plagues on Egypt and taking them bodily out of Egypt, they forgot all their former problems and remembered only the good things to eat which they now lacked.
When they heard the report of the spies who had gone to see what conditions prevailed in the land of Canaan, and found there were difficult situations to be met they even went so far as to plan to return to Egypt.
“Would God we had died in the land of Egypt. Or would God we had died in this wilderness ! Wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey ? Were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt”. Numbers 14: 2-4.
How can we profit by studying the lives of these people, who have been dead for thousands of years ?
They were natural Israel and we are “spiritual Israel” and have been taken out of the world, spiritually, just as they were taken, physically, out of Egypt. “Not that we loved God, but that He first loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” I John 4:10.
They were all baptized unto Moses in the sea and the cloud and emerged a free people, with a divinely appointed leader, and they should gladly have served God and rejoiced in their deliverance. We have been baptized, and have put on Christ, our divinely appointed leader, and we, too, are a free people (and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free — John 8:32) and should serve God gladly, and rejoice in our deliverance from sin.
Just as the Israelite’s left behind the fish, melons, leeks, onions and garlic, we will have to leave behind many of the pleasures of the world, and there may even be times when we find the “bread from Heaven” monotonous fare by comparison, but there is peace for him whose mind is attuned to God, and freedom from worry about what is coming on the earth, and the joy that is set before him in the promise of a place in the Kingdom if he is faithful to the end, and these more than make up for any present privation.
When we see difficulties ahead, let us not contemplate a “return to Egypt” but let us rather ask of God who giveth wisdom to those who seek it, remembering that he who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One