Bible Notes: Exodus 16:3
Welcome to “Bible Notes!” Read more about this series here.
Right now I’m sitting upstairs at my desk in my bedroom. The sun is shining and my children are being quiet. This is a rare moment. But an hour from now, I’ll be heading to the funeral home. Some sweet girls I know lost their mother a few days ago. Can you imagine? Right before Mother’s Day. My heart breaks for them.
There is so much! Every family is grieving something and if we aren’t careful, we might think in our heads: “Does God really care about me?”
The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” Exodus 16:3
Their circumstances dictated their belief about God.
If we read through Exodus it is easy to condemn the Israelites. A quick look at the timeline shows us that from the time they left Egypt to complaining about no food, it was about two weeks. Two weeks from the miraculous signs and wonders done in Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea. Only two weeks into their trek to the Promised Land we find them complaining.
So often, I let my circumstances dictate my belief about God. Mentally, they knew God was capable of providing for them, but they had yet to see Him do so. Mentally they knew God cared for them, but their empty stomachs and their children crying from hunger caused them to doubt. I find myself doubting as well.
Maybe it has been more than two weeks since God showed up for you. Maybe it has been months or even years since you have clearly seen the hand of God in your life.
Two questions I would challenge you to consider:
- Is your belief in God related to your circumstances, or does your faith rest in the knowledge of God revealed to us through His word?
- Have you been looking for God’s goodness?
What I find interesting is that the Israelites had to be physically shown God’s presence through the cloud. They had to physically be shown that God loved and cared for them through the manna and the quail. How much more do we need? And we have it!
God’s written Word, the Bible, is our pillar of cloud and our manna.
We look around at our lives and see only what is not there to prove that God is absent and God doesn’t care. Our health might be failing, or a prayer might be going unanswered (for years!), or we might find ourselves with one heartache after another. God did show up for the Israelites and God will show up for you!
What if we looked around at our lives and saw what was there and rejoiced in that?
Through the health problems, we might see God working to provide the right doctors and medication. Through the prayers being unanswered, we can trust that God always does according to His will. If something is not His will, He has something better for us. The heartaches we face might feel overwhelming, but we know God is with us.
There is a difference between knowing with our heads and knowing with our hearts that God is present. One of the ways we can really be sure and not doubt is if we are in God’s Word. Although life rarely goes as planned, we can trust that God’s goodness is always there.
You and I can believe that God is good, that God is good to us, and that God is good at being in control.
For more on Moses’ story, you can check out my book, I Didn’t Sign Up for This: How to Rest in God’s Goodness When Our Stories Shift. In this book, I open up and share about several events in my life where it felt like God had left me or I was on the “wrong” path. Through the hard things, God revealed aspects of Himself to me that I would love to share with you.