Beware of the Means of Blessing

“And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host.” (Ex 16:13 AV)

Whatever you do, don’t let your mind wander and research the tie between the quail and the manna.  Praise the LORD that we don’t know the composition of this manna.  The name means, “what is it”.  The Hebrew children could not discern the composition of the manna.  This would make sense.  If they could discern the contents of the manna and how it came to be, perhaps they could duplicate it without dependance on God.  This is not my observation this morning.  What I noticed was the mention of the quail.  There is a relationship of the manna and the quail.  What that is, we do not know.  Somehow, the appearance of the quail in the evening meant manna in the morning.  What we want to notice is it didn’t take long for the children of Israel to lust after the means of the blessing and not the blessing itself.  The means of the blessing became more desirable to the children of Israel than the blessing itself.

Did you ever wonder why Israel brought animals from Egypt, yet those flocks were not sufficient for their food?  Perhaps it wasn’t enough.  Or, perhaps meat alone was not a balanced diet.  Who knows?  What we do know is that Israel lusted after the quail.  They wanted more from God than the manna.  They wanted the means by which the manna came.  We have to remember that Israel existed for ten generations under the care of government assistance.  They labored to build Egypt’s cities.  Egypt, in turn, provided them with the means to make brick, a place to live, and food in their bellies.  It didn’t matter that their masters more than abused them.  Being dependent on a greater power for life itself makes it hard to break away.  So, when they began to complain, it wasn’t that they were starving.  It was that they didn’t, or couldn’t, comprehend self-reliance.  They had sheep and oxen.  They had goats for milk.  They had what they needed, but were so used to Egypt taking care of them, this dependence transferred to the LORD.  Now that God was kind to them and provided manna, they could not shut off the immature need for more.

God is good to us.  He really is!  We may not always see it, but He is.  Why He loves us so, I will never understand.  What Israel had a hard time with was trusting that God’s best for them was the best for them.  When the LORD told them to go up the first time and conquer Canaan, they balked at it.  This meant for 40 years, they would wonder.  The children of the fearful learned how to trust the LORD.  They saw their shoes last an entire lifetime.  They saw God provide in miraculous ways.  They were the first generation in ten generations who learned a little of self-reliance.  They also saw the cost their parents paid for not trusting the LORD.  When they crossed Jordan, the manna ceased.  They never complained.  They never lusted after that which God had not determined for them.  Other than Achan who took of the accursed thing, the people of God learned to be satisfied with what God had determined.  One might think that if God never related the quail with the manna, they would never have lusted after it.  Perhaps.  But they would have lusted after whatever else the means of bringing the blessing to them happened to be.  The short of it is, we need to be satisfied with the blessings God has already given without demanding more!