Read: Numbers 11-13
The people complained because they wanted a variety of things to eat instead of the free manna they got that tasted like fresh oil. I have to think that fresh oil would have been something delicious and not something they had the privilege of eating in Egypt. It sounds like food for a king and it was. Spiritually, fresh oil would be a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit. I have seen revivals that continued to last for long seasons of time ebb and die because man started nitpicking and complaining. They became accustom to the move of God and wanted to control it. That is what happened to the children of Israel. Every morning they received a miracle from heaven and were fed and they got ungrateful. This grieved the heart of God and the heart of Moses.
Moses went to the Lord with their complaint and God gave them what they wanted but it didn’t satisfy them. It made them sick. Those quail represented indulgence. They personified sluggishness since they fly so slow because of their weight. Sin is a weight that causes you to slow down and be drugged in your walk. The quail ended up being a plague because they overate and got sick.
Moses had to experience the joys of being leader. His right hand man and woman gossiped against him because he had a Cushite wife. Instead of defending himself, Moses let the Lord defend him. The sin that Miriam had tried to expose in Moses came upon her in the form of leprosy.
Chapter 13 of Numbers is one of the saddest chapters to me. Moses sent out the 12 spies into the land God had promised to give them and route their enemies out of and they only saw the giants. Only Joshua and Caleb wanted to go in and possess it. The land was everything God had said it would be; full of fruit, milk and honey but they let their fear keep them from enjoying it.
Lord, help us to not shy from fear when you show us the land we are to possess.
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