Proper 13: First Reading, Exodus 16:2-15                                   

Exodus 16:2-15

One of the first lessons I learned as a new student of the Bible was that repetition meant something. Whenever you find something repeated over and over in the Scriptures you want to sit up and take notice. And I have found that to be true especially when that repetition comes in a small space. 

In today’s reading we have the English word “grumble” and words like it some eight times in just fourteen verses. Who are the grumblers and what in the world is the problem? Well the problem is actually provision. Not something we usually associate with the practice of grumbling or complaining. Why here? Why now?

Grumbling or complaining is usually a practice of children. And I find that term has little to do, in this case, with chronological age. Children can be eight or forty. God has delivered His people from the hands of Pharaoh in a miracle unparalleled in all the Bible, short of creation or resurrection. I mean parting the Red Sea is a big deal. But for some reason that didn’t convince the newly-liberated that their God would continue to provide. Writing this is uncomfortable. Do you perceive it in reading it? Whenever we see a failure on the part of God’s people in history, it’s “mirror time.” Are you following me?

“Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Exodus 16:3). Waaa, waaaaa. I don’t know how to spell that. But you get it. On the far side of the most dramatic intervention the people of Israel had seen to date, all they could do was complain because the bill of fare didn’t come up to their high level of expectation. Oh brother!

Read on. Because what God does in response not only meets their need, but it preaches the gospel in advance pointing to a Living Bread that will ever satisfy them … and us. If our receiving is “mixed with faith.” 

We pray: Father of mercies and God of all comfort, keep us from grumbling. But if it does escape our lips, close our mouths and heal the hearts from whence it springs. Lift our heads to You, O deliverer of Israel. Amen!