Yesterday we found Moses going to the Lord and pouring out all his feelings to Him. Moses is weary and burdened down with the huge responsibility of managing such a large group of people. He's frustrated by their complaints. He's alarmed at the anger they feel toward him, which in turn makes him feel angry toward the Lord for calling him to perform this monumental task. He basically said to the Lord yesterday, "If this is how it's going to be, kill me now. The people are about to turn on me and either reject me as Your chosen leader or even take my life. Rather than have either of those things happen, I'd prefer You just take me on out of this life now."
I mentioned in yesterday's study that a lot of Bible scholars have criticized Moses (unfairly, in my opinion) for confessing to the Lord that he feels angry with Him. In response to Moses' confession, we don't find the Lord criticizing him at all. The Lord understands that Moses' exhaustion and worry are manifesting themselves as anger. I think Moses did the best thing he could do with his negative feelings: he brought them to the Lord. The Lord responds in our text today by issuing helpful instructions. I can't help wondering if the Lord might have issued these instructions earlier if only Moses had confessed his feelings to Him earlier, but we can't know for sure that Moses held these feelings inside for a while. Still, I think there's no better way to handle negative emotions than confessing them to the Lord as soon as possible. He knows about them anyway. We might as well get them into the open where they can be dealt with.
"The Lord said to Moses: 'Bring Me seventy of Israel's elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the tent of meeting, that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.'" (Numbers 11:16-17) Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking we have to perform every aspect of a job ourselves because we believe that only we can do it right. We often place a larger burden on ourselves than the Lord intended us to carry. Earlier in the Old Testament we found Moses' father-in-law instructing him not to judge all the legal cases himself. Moses was on the verge of collapse from hearing cases all day long every day, so his father-in-law told him to select men capable of good judgment and allow those men to judge all but the most serious and difficult cases. Now we find the Lord giving similar advice regarding managing the enormous crowd of people and their complaints.
I can't help imagining Moses' huge sigh of relief when the Lord says He will anoint seventy other men to help him carry this heavy load. Why did Moses have to be told by his father-in-law and later by the Lord that it's okay to delegate some of the work? Why did Moses seem to never think of this himself? I can only draw upon my own experience but I tend to be the type of person who takes things completely over. When given a large task, it hardly ever occurs to me to delegate parts of it or to ask others for help. I just try to take it and run with it, which sometimes ends up with me feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. That didn't have to happen and it wouldn't have happened if I'd asked several other people to join with me in the work. I think Moses has what is called a "Type A Personality" and he just naturally tries to perform all the work himself. The Lord has given him this job. Moses takes the job seriously and wants to do his best, but he's made the mistake of thinking that doing his best means doing it all. I'm sure you've heard the expression that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. That's actually not true. If it were true then pretty much all businesses would fail because it's impossible to run a business (or a government or a society or an army or anything else that requires more than one person to be involved) if multiple people cannot be trusted to faithfully perform their duties.
The Lord has given Moses the help he needs. Next He will give the people what they've asked for. They're wailing about the lack of meat and He's going to give them meat, but in so doing He's going to show them that when human beings reject the good things God has given them and crave something that's wrong for them, happiness does not ensue.
He says to Moses, "Tell the people: 'Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, when you will eat meat. The Lord heard you when you wailed, 'If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt!' Now the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat it. You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month---until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it---because you have rejected the Lord, who is among you, and have wailed before Him, saying, 'Why did we ever leave Egypt?'" (Numbers 11:18-20) There will be so much meat that the people won't be able to stand the sight of it. Why? Because we see in verse 20 that in rejecting the nutritionally complete manna sent by the Lord, they've rejected Him.
What's really going on here, at heart, is that they want to live on their own terms and they want to live in ease and comfort. I am sure they wanted to be rescued from slavery and I am sure they want to possess the promised land. But they want it to be easy. Lest we feel judgmental toward them, let's remind ourselves that reaching a place of promised blessing isn't always easy and that we don't always enjoy the journey. We want the Lord to take us from Point A, which may not be such a great place, to a better location at Point B, but we don't want to feel uncomfortable on the way there. We don't want it to be difficult. We don't want it to require us to build and flex some spiritual muscle. We don't want to take leaps of faith and trust the Lord for the path ahead when we can't see very far ahead. It's possible to feel so uncomfortable with the things required of us on the journey that we'd almost rather turn back. That's why we find the Israelites longing for Egypt. Was slavery a fun lifestyle? No, but they had grown comfortable with it. They were familiar with it. They knew exactly what to expect day after day after day. It didn't require them to step up their faith game. It didn't require them to face anything new and unexpected. The Lord says they've rejected Him because in complaining about the manna and thinking fondly of Egypt they're really saying, "Never mind, Lord. We'll just skip the promised land. We know You have plans for us there and have had these plans for a long time, at least as far back as Abraham's lifetime. But this is too much to ask. We're okay with going back to Egypt and staying there. We knew what to expect in Egypt. We were used to our lives there. It's hard to imagine what the promised land might look like and it sounds like a lot of work to take it over from the heathen tribes currently occupying it. We know You've said You'll help us take it, but if it's all the same to You we'd rather not."
Don't misunderstand me and think I'm criticizing the Israelites. I've done the same thing they're doing in Chapter 11. There have been times when the journey to a great blessing has seemed so difficult to me that I'd have rather turned back. I have actually said, though perhaps not in these exact words, "Never mind, Lord. I liked it better where I was. I know it wasn't all that great where I was but at least I was used to it. I didn't have this constantly changing situation day after day. I didn't have to rely on faith every day. I knew exactly what to expect. If it's all the same to You, I'd rather not keep going forward."
I'm reminded of a meme that's been derived from the "Footprints" poem. You know the poem where the guy looks back over his life and sees only one set of footprints in the sand during his most difficult times and asks where the Lord was during those times? The Lord replies, "That's when I carried you." Well, in the meme I'm thinking of the guy asks about a long groove in the sand that appeared during his most difficult times and the Lord answers, "That's when I dragged you kicking and screaming." I confess that sometimes the Lord has had to drag me kicking and screaming toward a great blessing He had in store for me. I'm ashamed to confess it but maybe you can relate because you've had to be dragged kicking and screaming too. The Lord is going to take Israel to the promised land. She may not always enjoy the journey. He may have to drag her kicking and screaming. But He'd never have to drag any of us if we'd only trust Him. What He has in store for Israel is a thousand times better than what lies behind her in Egypt. What He's had in store for me has been better for me, spiritually speaking and in a lot of other ways too, than what lies behind me in places where I was perhaps comfortable but certainly not growing in the faith. We need to look toward the future with eyes of faith, believing that the Lord loves us and wants the best for us, instead of looking back over our shoulders at the past. To quote a modern platitude, "Don't look back. You're not going that way."
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