Exodus
16:2-3 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The
Israelites said to them, “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 out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
So, God provided
for their needs. He gives them explicit instructions on how to plan ahead.
Exodus
16:4-5 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for
you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this
way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the
sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as
much as they gather on the other days.”
Why does God
do this? Moses tells the people why.
Exodus
16:6-8 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will
know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you
will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against
him. …. Moses also said, “You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you
meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because
he has heard your grumbling against him.”
The Lord
also provided meat.
Exodus
16:13 That evening quail came and covered the camp…
God
instructed them to gather… verse 17…“just as much as they needed”. They
were then told by Moses that, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
They were not allowed to horde the quail and manna. In this way they would need
to rely on God for provision. This of course is echoed by Jesus in Matthew.
Matthew 6:25-27 ~ “Therefore,
I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about
your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more
than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store
away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more
valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your
life?
In other
words, plan ahead a little but don’t be a certifiable moron hording toilet paper,
hand sanitizer, bread, meat or milk.
Of course,
true to human nature the Israelites ignored sound advice given to them for
their own well-being and followed their own poor decisions to their own
detriment. This is surpassingly like people being advised to stay in their
homes during the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. The fallout of this is
a vastly higher death toll than should’ve been necessary.
Exodus
16:20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it
until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So, Moses was
angry with them.
So, the
pattern of disobedient behavior continued. Somehow humanity seems to always extrapolate the wrong conclusion from a scenario/incident. How often do we assume that because a
person has not been punished it is okay to do something wrong? God’s silence is
often mistaken for his approval when in reality it is God restraining his hand
of judgment.
But then came
the Sabbath.
Exodus 16:25-27
“Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a sabbath to the Lord. You will
not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to gather it, but on
the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.” Nevertheless, some of the
people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. Then the
Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my
instructions?”
In truth the
Israelites went out again the seventh day. In the Sabbath when they should’ve
been resting as commanded by God. Why did they go out? The same reason people were
beating one another over the head for toilet paper and hand sanitizer. They
were hording. Why, because they didn’t trust God to provide for their needs.
They attempted to take things into their own hands. They tried to control the
outcome God intended. What happened when the Israelites kept hording and taking
for themselves? Spiritually their hearts were corrupt. God inevitably punished
them for their disobedience, ungratefulness
and complaining.
Numbers
11:31-33 ~ Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea.
It scattered them up to two cubits deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s
walk in any direction. All that day and night and all the next day the people
went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. Then they
spread them out all around the camp. But while the meat was still between their
teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the Lord burned against the
people, and he struck them with a severe plague.
So why was hording
considered an offense worthy of being killed? It’s because hording isn’t an act
of survival. At it’s heart it is an act completely repulsive to God. At its
heart hording is greed and worse a complete distrust of God. You
therefore assume and make God a liar. It also has you acting the exact opposite
the way God wants you to. You become a taker not a giver. You try to control. You try to play god.
Stop hording
people. Bread, meat, toilet paper. What's the difference? Look outwards right now not inwards. Help others and love your neighbor as yourself. Realize God's always on his throne...therefore you don't need to be on yours.
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