The Mixed Multitude Complains (Numbers 11:4-9)

12/23/2008 11:06 AM

SPIRITUAL DIARY

My Worship Time                              Focus:  The mixed multitude complains

Bible Reading & Meditation               Reference:  Numbers 11:4-9

            Message of the verses:  “4 ¶  Then the foreign rabble who were traveling with the Israelites began to crave the good things of Egypt, and the people of Israel also began to complain. "Oh, for some meat!" they exclaimed.  5  "We remember all the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic that we wanted.  6  But now our appetites are gone, and day after day we have nothing to eat but this manna!"  7  The manna looked like small coriander seeds, pale yellow in color.  8  The people gathered it from the ground and made flour by grinding it with hand mills or pounding it in mortars. Then they boiled it in a pot and made it into flat cakes. These cakes tasted like they had been cooked in olive oil.  9  The manna came down on the camp with the dew during the night.”

            It is unknown how this foreign rabble came along with Israel whenever they left the bondage in Egypt, but they are the ones who caused the trouble that was started in this section that is being looked at this morning.  These people were not of the covenant for they were foreigners and so they probably did not understand all of the things that had been done by the Lord.

            They complained about the food selection that was given to them at no cost six mornings a week.  Manna was probably the most nutritious food that has ever been on the planet and I am sure that it could have been fixed in a variety of was so that it was not like eating the same things every day, but these people stirred up trouble as they remembered the food that they ate in Egypt, but forgot the reason that they left Egypt.

            Jesus spoke of a parable in Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 called “The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares,” and in that parable a farmer had sown some wheat in a field and then while he was sleeping an enemy sowed some tares in the same field.  The tares were darnel which is a plant that looks like wheat while it is growing, but when it is fully grown it is not wheat at all.  The parable speaks of the church and in the church there will be “darnel” planted by the devil and these will be people that seem to be believers, but they are not believers and will cause all kinds of trouble within the church like these foreign rabbles did in the section of Numbers I am looking at.  Jesus went on to say after someone asked to remove the darnel that this would not be done until the end of the age because if it was done then some of the wheat might be taken out of the ground too and not allowed to grow and mature.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I do not want to be the person who causes trouble in our church unless there is something that I need to stand up for that would go against the teaching of the Scriptures.

My Steps of Faith for Today:

1. Trust the Lord to give me a great time with our family today.
2. Trust the Lord to guide my path.
3. Trust the Lord to teach me and for me to learn contentment.

Memory verses for the week:                                  Romans 6:5-15

5.  For if we have been untied with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6. knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin,
7. for he who has died is freed from sin.
8. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
9. knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again, death no longer is master over Him.
10. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
11. Even so consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,
13. and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
15. What then shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?  May it never be!

12/23/2008 12:31 PM