Quail in the Desert



Texts: Numbers 11; Mark 10:17-31

 I think we can all relate to Moses. Whether it is in our home or at our job, we have all dealt with complainers. We have all encountered irrational and outrageous demands, whether from the mouths of children, or, far too often, from the mouths of adults. For me, when I am the one that receives these complaints, I find myself thinking about the ways in which I am being wronged in that moment, the grief that I am having to put up with, so that I am even less inclined to see if there is indeed a kernel of genuine need in the complaint. Ironically, I find myself planning about how I am going to complain about this complainer later to someone else. In this way, complaining begets more complaining.

And that is what happens with Moses in Numbers 11. Having wearied his ears with the complaints of the people, who long for the days of slavery in Egypt all because at least there, they could get a decent plate of fish, Moses turns his own complaining up to 10 and addresses God, the one who has tasked him with leading such a complaint-prone people. Moses gets just as dramatic as the people, too, because he wishes, according to verse 15, that God would kill him if his life is going to go on like this. 

If you have ever felt like everything depended on you and you were the only one who could make a certain situation right, you know the pressure Moses was feeling. He was responsible for 600,000 people. That had to have been a burdensome weight. Just as the people were hungry for meat, Moses was experiencing a starvation for energy, as he was constantly poured out for the sake of his people. 

As it turns out, Moses needed the same reminder as the people. God is in control. Raymond Brown writes in The Message of Numbers that God’s response to Moses gives to us the necessary ingredients for a “theology of sufficiency”: “the Lord’s complete adequacy, and …his total reliability.” Both Moses and the people needed to trust that God would come through, even when the tangible evidence suggested otherwise. 

God was in control of the food supply and he is in control of the leadership structure of Israel. God provided quail for the people to eat, and God provided a leadership structure in the giving of God’s Spirit to the 70 elders, so that Moses’ burden as leader could be delegated among other capable persons. 

When our view only extends to our own desires and needs, as it was for the people and for Moses, it is harder for us to see the sufficiency of God, harder still for us to trust him when circumstances are tough. We live in a “make-a-name-for-yourself/pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps” world, and so we are formed at a very deep level and from a very early age to lean on our own understanding and not to trust in the Lord. 

The problem about trusting in ourselves or in what we have achieved or amassed for our ultimate sense of hope is that in doing so we make an idol of those things; we make an idol of ourselves. 

The rich man in Mark 10 walked away sad and dejected from Jesus, unable to follow him, because his identity was wrapped up in what he had gained for himself. It has been pointed out many times about this passage, but is worth repeating, that Jesus does not include the commandment against coveting, against greed, when listing the commandments that must be kept to inherit eternal life. And so, the man can answer honestly that he has kept those that have been listed from his youth. The rich man cannot give up what he has; he cannot relinquish his trust in material circumstances and follow Jesus, and so he goes away discouraged. 

Even though they were not rich, the people of Israel in the desert were subject to the same weakness. They trusted more in tangible circumstances than in God. We don’t have to be extremely wealthy to idolize our things and put our faith in only what we can see, though of course, the more we have, the easier it is to put our trust in it. The question that we all must face is this: Do we trust God in spite of our tangible circumstances?

 For many of us, most of what we would call our normal life is on hold due to coronavirus. The things we are used to, accustomed to having are not there. Do we choose to believe today that God is sufficient and reliable in spite of our circumstances?

We are called to put our hope in the one who is sufficient, the one who is reliable, the one who provided meat in the desert, and the one who will see us through this time of trial. Put your trust in him today. 





Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Source for quote: Brown, R. (2002). The Message of Numbers: Journey to the Promised Land. (A. Motyer & D. Tidball, Eds.) (p. 95). England: Inter-Varsity Press.

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