Exodus 15-17 - The Israelites Begin Their Trek

This one is a bit harder for me today, because I don't want to get into the cliches about the Israelites complaining and how they are ungrateful for everything that's been done for them already... and how we're like the Israelites in our complaining and ungratefulness. I'm sure that's been talked about plenty already.

It's weird, but one thing that caught my eye in this reading is a date: "The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt" (Exodus 16:1).

So, assuming that a month is 30 days, and then add 15, and you get 45 days before Israel gets their first taste of manna. Now if you give or take a few days, one could make a case that they have been in the wilderness for around 40 days when they get hungry. Now, I suppose obviously they had stores of food from before they left Egypt (they did plunder the Egyptians after all); and I highly doubt that the Lord would send them on this journey and expect them to fast right away... but the devotional thought would definitely stay the same regardless. They were in the wilderness for 40 days before being fed by God.

Does this sound familiar at all? Jesus fasted for 40 days while in the wilderness. In fact, he was so hungry that Satan first tempted him with a simple thing such as bread. "Tell this stone to become bread," the devil said (Luke 4:3). "It'll be nice and tasty," he said (Brian's imagination).

But the thing about giving into temptation is that it sets us up to be our own gods. When we give into temptation, it's really us telling God that we know what is best for us and that we should do what is in our best interests, otherwise we will wither away and die... ("but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death" (Exodus 16:3b)).

In doing so, we completely forget that God has actually created us, formed us, and given us life. God knows how this human machine works, and he knows our inmost being (Psalm 139:13). As C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity: "God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way..."

Therefore, I do suppose God is indeed testing his people to see how they react and as we can see, they don't (and continually won't) react well. Christ, on the other hand, knew and practiced that it's through God's words, laws and promises that we do indeed gain abundant life.

Other questions to think about (and that I didn't have time or space to write about):
- Anyone else get an interesting picture in your heads with about 1,000,000 people trying to seek shade under 70 palm trees in the desert? (Exodus 15:27)

- I wonder how creative the Israelites got with their manna... Oooh! That'd make for a great Top Chef challenge - nothing but bread and quail, and maybe a few spices :)

- I'm sorry, but another interesting/funny picture has entered my head: wouldn't it have been an interesting sight to behold that when Moses' hands went up they were winning, and when they went down they were losing? (Exodus 17:8-16) It just sounds very Jack Benny-esque, doesn't it? :)