Provision–Spiritual Material

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Opening Prayer

Gracious Father, Your open arms receive the lost. Your embrace is a home for the wanderer. How great You are!

Read NUMBERS 11:16-35

^[16] 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. ^[17] 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. ^[18] “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. ^[19] You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, ^[20] 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?”‘” ^[21] But Moses said, “Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!’ ^[22] Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?” ^[23] The LORD answered Moses, “Is the LORD’s arm too short? Now you will see whether or not what I say will come true for you.” ^[24] So Moses went out and told the people what the LORD had said. He brought together seventy of their elders and had them stand around the tent. ^[25] Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took some of the power of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied-but did not do so again. ^[26] However, two men, whose names were Eldad and Medad, had remained in the camp. They were listed among the elders, but did not go out to the tent. Yet the Spirit also rested on them, and they prophesied in the camp. ^[27] A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” ^[28] Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses’ aide since youth, spoke up and said, “Moses, my lord, stop them!” ^[29] But Moses replied, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” ^[30] Then Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. ^[31] 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. ^[32] 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. ^[33] 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. ^[34] Therefore the place was named Kibroth Hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had craved other food. ^[35] From Kibroth Hattaavah the people traveled to Hazeroth and stayed there.

Meditate

“God…richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Tim. 6:17). Sometimes enjoyments can overtake us and morph into excess.

Think Further

Burnout and binge eating are two symptoms of the pressures of living in a fast-paced, change-addicted Western society. For this reason we resonate with both Moses and the people he led. At the beginning of today’s reading Moses is stressed out! The “burden of the people” (17)–their incessant grumbling–had become intolerable. The great leader of the Exodus who defied Pharaoh goes to pieces (11-15)–but, thanks to the Lord’s provision of spiritual helpers, he recovers. On the other hand, the grumblers go from bad to worse. In their greed they misuse God’s material provision. They gather huge quantities of the divinely provided quails–no person collects less than 63 bushels (32)! Faced with such a hoard, the bored-with-manna Israelites, overcome by greed, go on a month-long quail binge. The splurge ends tragically in extensive loss of life due to plague. The infection may have been food poisoning occasioned by a failure to use salt in the preserving process (33).

Two practical lessons follow. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:23), to be manifested in our eating as much as in other behaviors. Junk food from takeout, supersized popcorns at the movies, and fancy five-star restaurant delights make morbid obesity an epidemic in our country. Churches are major purchasers of doughnuts on Sundays. Is the God who judged the Israelites standing at our door (33; cf. Jas. 5:9)? The second lesson is the value of shared leadership. Too many Christian pastors today are stressed because those they lead have become more a burden than a blessing (17). Often this is because the pastor is a one-person band. God’s desire, in contrast, is that leadership be shared just as it was between Moses and the seventy elders (16,17). How might pastors do a better job of affirming everyone’s vocation?

Apply

Can you think of a time when you coveted something and then God gave it to you in abundance? Did you become sick of it?

Closing prayer

Lord, I ask that the desires of my heart be in line with the teachings of Your Word. I pray that, like Paul, I will be content in You.

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