(Numbers 11:1-29)
“You’re not together!” If you’re sitting in a room of instrumentalists playing a certain musical piece and you here those words, it probably means not everyone is playing at the same tempo, which throws off the musical piece considerably. A coach yelling those words to his team is lamenting the lack of teamwork as players are too focused on their personal stats or showcasing their individual skills instead of putting the team first.
As God looks over his church, he might say the same thing as he watches Satan isolate believers and pull off one successful attack after another. So we want to see that our “followership” of Jesus is something that is best carried out together. Yes, we know we are never alone because of God’s promise to be with us to the very end of the age, but let’s also understand that many times God shows up and keeps that promise through fellow believers as we follow Jesus together.
It doesn’t sound like “together” is the word Moses would have used to describe how he was feeling in Numbers 11. Leadership is often lonely, and that loneliness was being exacerbated by all of the constant griping of God’s people. Take note of the effect of all the grumbling and complaining. It is not harmless! “The Lord became exceedingly angry, and Moses was troubled” (v.10).
It ought to be enough for us to see how the Lord feels about it. Complaining is never really about what we’re lacking physically as much as it is a spiritual issue. What it shows to be lacking spiritually is gratitude for what God has given us. We complain when we forget that 1) we deserve nothing from God and 2) we aren’t getting the consequences we actually deserve from God. But when we remember those things, are we in a place of gratitude instead of grumbling. Oh, and if you aren’t sure how God really feels about complaining, check out the first three verses at the beginning of this chapter to see how God had just finished his own little pyrotechnic show to demonstrate how he feels about ingratitude!
But we see that God wasn’t the only one affected by Israel’s complaining; it troubled Moses, too. How much? It’s not hard to determine how heavily it weighed on him when we hear Moses’ emotional plea to God. He was fed up and beat down by all the complaining, so much so that he actually asked God to mercifully end his life instead of having to keep dealing with it all!
This is not Moses joking around with God while rolling his eyes at those slow-to-learn Israelites! This is Moses, struggling with a degree of depression that honestly considered dying as the preferred option to having to continue putting up with incessant ingratitude. So the next time you think your grumbling and complaining are no big deal, remember this account. Consider how much it sets God off in anger, but also how much damage it does to those around you.
If that was the only takeaway from this account that we’d leave with, we’d all still be better off for it. But that isn’t even the most memorable part. No, that comes in how God chooses to respond. God delights in deliverance, and he often reveals that not only by not punishing us in ways that we’d actually deserve, but in giving us more than we even complained about or asked for!
God’s solution for Moses might at first seem odd to us. He directed Moses to round up seventy of the leaders from camp and have them gather at the place where God interacted with his leaders in camp, at the tent of meeting. Once there, God came directly to Moses 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” (v.25). The people complained about the lack of variety they had in their diet, and God did them even better: he fed them his Spirit, pouring out his Word on his people through prophecy.
Still today God provides for his people by feeding them with his Word. This is how he deals with his people in the richest way – through his Word. There is no greater gift that can be given. There is no greater gift that can be received.
Yet how do we often receive it? With the same ingratitude that got the Israelites in trouble. We complain. “Just the Word? Just worship? Just passages and promises in a book? Is that it, God? I’d actually appreciate it more if you fixed my health issues. Can’t you find me the one I get to spend my life with instead? Just provide the financial cushion to pay my bills and get ahead. Make my friends like me. Give me a better job. Can’t I have a bigger house?”
Just like the Israelites, we forget where we came from. They remembered the Egyptian food being flavorful and savory, while forgetting the cost that came with it: labor and slavery. We take for granted how good we have it as God’s chosen people, forgetting how lost we were before him. How easily we forget that we were once heading for the ugly eternal torment waiting for all who are not in Christ Jesus! Distracted and disoriented by our disillusion, we don’t want more of the Word, but more of the world.
But when dealing with us through his Word, God is dealing with us in the richest way possible. There is no greater gift that can be given. Though the promises revealed through this Word are free and for everyone, they came at a great cost to God, who could only offer them for the price of his only Son. Woven together with the gift of his Son are countless other gifts free for the taking: serenity that flows from peace with God, uplifting hope anchored to an absolutely certain future, unconditional love lavished on us without limit, full forgiveness for all wrongs – past, present, and future, no matter how great or small – that cannot be found elsewhere.
This is but a small sample size of the enduring gifts God showers on us through his Word! That’s why this Word is preached and taught in churches, so that those gifts can be accessible all day long, every day, to everyone who has it. This is how God deals with his people in the richest way possible – through his Word.
And he does so in abundance! It wasn’t just the seventy elders who received the Spirit; there were two more who hadn’t shown up at the tent of meeting who were running about the camp prophesying here, there, and everywhere.
Since that wasn’t part of the plan God had revealed, others took issue with it and came to Moses to alert him. “A young man ran and told Moses, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.’ Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses’ aide since youth, spoke up and said, ‘Moses, my lord, stop them!’” (v.27-28). Who were these rogue individuals and what were they doing?
As it turned out, they were doing exactly what God wanted them to do. Moses, rather than being insecurely threatened by them, had the kind of response we’d expect of the man referred to in the Bible as the most humble man on earth. “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!” (v.29). He wasn’t jealous or worried at all, but rather thrilled to see the Holy Spirit at work in such a powerful and visible way!
Quite a turnaround from the same individual who just a short time ago had been pleading for God to mercifully end his life rather than have to continue putting up with all the complaining! Here he was rejoicing at how God had come to his aid by surrounding him with so many Spirit-filled followers. Moses wasn’t alone.
Notice how God deals with his people. He didn’t just give his people a gift far greater than food when he gave them his Word, prophesied in a special way. He also gave Moses hope – a reminder that he wasn’t alone in leading God’s people. God revealed his intention of providing help for Moses in anointing the seventy: “They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone” (v.17). God’s people were served with his Word. Moses was uplifted and encouraged.
Oh, and God wasn’t done just yet. He also gave them the meat they were complaining about… and not in miserly fashion! God was going to provide for them, and then some, all while teaching them a lesson in the process. He told Moses to pass this along to the Israelites: “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?’” (v.18-20). What a reminder to be careful of what you complain about!
Moses was feeling lonely. God intervened in multiple ways to address the complaining while also providing for his people. For Moses, God provided a meaningful reminder that he wasn’t serving the Lord alone. As the Lord led them all through the wilderness to the land he had promised them, they followed together.
I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting God to take the same approach in reminding you that you aren’t alone, but you don’t have to look very far to see that you’re never really following Jesus alone. Look around and see those gathered together in worship on a Sunday morning. One of the goals in the congregation I serve is carried out through the ministry of our school: we share with parents the same goal of helping our children follow their Savior together. That goal is reflected in the stated purpose of our school: “Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran School strives to educate students while developing the God-given talents of the total student – spiritually, intellectually, physically, and emotionally – in a caring Christ-centered community.” That last phrase, “Christ-centered community,” is a reminder that we are following Jesus together.
That blessing extends beyond the walls of the classroom and into our congregation. Many know the blessing of being a part of a local congregation, a group of fellow followers walking in Jesus’ footsteps together. If you don’t, know that you are welcome to be a part of our family of believers so that you are well aware that you never follow Jesus alone, but always together, with others who rejoice in having been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus our Savior.
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