From Our Mouths To God's Ears Series

After Jesus was baptized, the Gospel writers say that Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness where He was tempted by the devil for 40 days (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13). During that time, Jesus ate nothing. At this point, the devil attempts to use Jesus’ hunger to distract or to tempt Him. “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread” (Luke 4:3). Jesus responded, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone’” (Luke 4:3).

“One does not live by bread alone” (Luke 4:3). Very familiar words … words that were very familiar to the Jewish people even before Jesus spoke them and, in fact, Jesus spoke them for that very specific reason. “One does not live by bread alone” (Luke 4:3). Anyone know who first spoke these words? They were spoken at a time when the Israelites were in the wilderness and were sorely tempted to turn around and go back to Egypt.

The first place that the Israelites came to after they had been liberated from bondage in Egypt was the wilderness of Shur. They only had a few days’ supply of water when they left Egypt and their supply was getting dangerously close to running out. They needed to find water … and soon. At first, it seemed like their prayers had been answered. They came to “Marah” but they could not drink the water because it was bitter (Exodus 15:23). Frightened and justifiably concerned, the people approached Moses and complained. “What shall we drink?”

“[Moses] cried out to the LORD; and the LORD showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. Then the LORD made for them a statute and an ordinance and there He put them to the test. He said, ‘If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give heed to His commandments and keep all His statues, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians for I am the LORD who heals you.’ Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees; and they camped there by the water” (Exodus 15:25-27).

God took care of their immediate problem … the lack of water … by making the waters as Marah drinkable but He also had a long term solution to their problem … leading them to a place that had 12 springs and 70 palm trees … and I love that last line: “they camped by the water” (Exodus 15:27). They went from no water … a dire, life-threatening situation … to one where they were camped by an oasis where they could drink all the water that they wanted. Surely proof that God not only hears our prayers but will answer them in pretty amazing and miraculous ways, amen?

From Elim the Israelites leave the wilderness of Shur and enter the wilderness of Sin. There is no theological significance to the name but it could be foreshadowing of them traveling to Mount Sinai … which was in the wilderness of Sin. Luke makes the point that this happened “on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 16:1) … which was exactly six weeks after they had fled from Egypt and crossed the Red Sea.

Again, the people began to grumble. “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Exodus 16:3).

It is so, so easy to pass judgment on these people … but can we? We need to put ourselves in their shoes … or sandals, in this case. Yes, they had seen YAHWEH do astounding feats of power that brought the Pharaoh to his knees and forced him to let them go … but in letting them go they had left behind everything. Even if it was miserable, it was familiar and predictable. Now they’re being led by some old shepherd and his brother into unfamiliar territory heading to some “Promised Land” flowing with milk and honey … a place that, frankly, sounded too good to be true and, given the fact that they’re about to run out of food, sounded more and more like a hopeless fairy tale. They had to leave in a hurry in the middle of the night, so they took what food they could … that’s what Moses said God commanded them to do but now they were faced with a very dire and life-threatening situation … again! First it looked like they were going to die of thirst … now it looks like they are going to die of hunger … both very unpleasant ways to die, amen? So their “grumbling” is understandable.