Why Don’t We Heed God?


Exodus 16:10-21
10And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. 11And the Lord said to Moses, 12“I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’” 13In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. 14And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. 15When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. 16This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’” 17And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. 18But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. 19And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” 20But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. 21Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.

There are many Bible stories that it would be my joy to experience personally and the morning delivery of Manna is one of them. I’m not so excited about the evening delivery of quail that will be discussed tomorrow as I don’t care for birds flying around me all the much. But to get up every morning and have the day’s food supply delivered to my hands would be lovely. Just imagine how great it would be to not have to figure out what to make for dinner tonight!

The Manna delivery served a couple of great purposes for God. He is trying to develop the people’s willingness to trust Him, testing Israel to see if they would obey not only those commandments that made perfect sense to them but also those that did not. What remains a mystery for me is why the people insisted on defying Moses (and thus God) by doing exactly what He said not to do – collecting more than one day’s food at a time (except for on Friday’s in preparation for the Sabbath.) This Manna was miraculous stuff. It arrives in the morning, is collected by everyone, and then the leftovers simply melt away. Now if you were foolish enough to try and horde some of it, it became putrid and filled with worms. You’d make that mistake only once, I think. God states a serious command about the Manna collection but some insist on not heeding God’s voice. We know what that looks like today too even though we don’t receive a daily delivery of Manna.

If people think God demands a behavior that runs against their intuitive sense of what is right, or pleasurable, or reasonable, or just “not so bad” (sex outside of marriage, e.g.), it is easy for them not to take a commandment seriously, which (although few realize it) is the same as not taking God seriously.
Stuart, D. K. (2006). Exodus (Vol. 2, p. 375). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Just because God’s ways don’t immediately make sense for us doesn’t mean we should call Him into question or disregard what He says. We may find that our manna has taken on worms. It is interesting that God provides for the people the perfect food and they get to witness and daily miracle for the next 40 years. The Manna is His response to their grumbling but it is absolutely fantastic and they wouldn’t have had to grumble for Him to provide this for them. He would have done so had they simply asked Him in prayer in the first place. 

Just as the Hebrews couldn’t have possibly imagined such a food delivery system as the Manna (and Quail) so too we couldn’t have imagined our own salvation through the brutal death of God Son. But He will always do the most amazing and miraculous thing. We need only stand back with our gathering basket ready to receive what He has planned.

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