One of the recurring themes in the book of Numbers is the continual sin and rebellion of the Israelites as they travel in the wilderness. 
And I mean continual. It almost gets old as you’re reading it. You get to, “The people spoke against God and Moses…” and you’re like, “Oh come on, guys! Again?! Don’t you get it by now?”
And you know, their problem doesn’t begin in Numbers. Even before that the Israelites are complaining. But what’s their problem? What are they complaining about? Mouse over the verse references:
- Exodus 16:3 – There’s no food out there in the wilderness, like there was in Egypt.
- Exodus 17:1-3 – There’s no water out there in the wilderness, like there was in Egypt.
- Numbers 11:1 – Complaining of adversity
- Numbers 11:4-6 – They miss the meat, fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic that they had in Egypt. All they had was the manna.
- Numbers 14:2-3 – They’re worried that their enemies will overtake them and that their wives and children will become plunder. They’d rather have died in Egypt.
- Numbers 20:2-5 – There is no grain, no figs, vines, or pomegranates. Neither is there water. They’d rather have died in Egypt.
- Numbers 21:5 – More of the same. They loathe the food God has given them.
Could you imagine putting up with these people? Our God is a God of supreme patience.
And did you catch their problem? Either they have no food, or they have no water, or they’re afraid that the peoples of the land of Canaan are going to destroy them and take their families as plunder. Even though those might seem like legitimate concerns, it manifests clear unbelief in the God who has promised to bless them, and who has already proven Himself willing and able to bless them as long as they’ve known Him.
But amidst all their complaining, most foundationally they’re upset because they think they had it better in Egypt.
I’ve gotta say, that is just amazing. This is the land in which they were enslaved, the land in which their hard labor and affliction caused them to sigh greatly and to call out to God for deliverance! This is the land whose people treated them as less than human, the land in which an edict was issued to kill all their sons. They had it better?? There?!
It actually gets worse. Do you know what their proposed solution was?
“So they said to one another, ‘Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt'” (Num 14:4).
They wanted to go back.
This is the land that Yahweh Himself had judged with the most amazing display of successive judgments since the creation of the world, culminating in the drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea! If there was any doubt about their God’s opinion of Egypt, there it was. And if that’s not enough, how many times since the beginning of Exodus has Yahweh said, “… so you will know that I am Yahweh who brought you out of the land of Egypt“? God wants them to remember forever that He brought them out of Egypt.
I mean, what do you call someone who wants to go back to slavery?!
Insane?
I call them, “You.” I call them, “Me.”
Just as God had delivered Israel from their slavery of Egypt, so He has delivered us from our slavery to sin. And yet, we want to go back. We want to go back to prison. It doesn’t matter that God has accomplished the most glorious events that have ever taken place in history, that ever will take place in history — namely the incarnation and death of God Himself — to deliver us from our slavery. It doesn’t matter that it cost Him the life of His Son. It doesn’t matter that it brought shame, disrepute, scorn, and hatred on the most precious Being in the universe. It doesn’t even matter that it made our lives miserable.
We want to go back. Despite all of that, we prefer our sin. We want to go back to our slavery. Somehow, in those moments when the flesh gets the upper hand, we think we had it better in Egypt. God forgive us. Could you imagine putting up with such people? Our God is a God of supreme patience.
And we deserve the fire to come out from His presence and consume us (Num 11:1). We deserve the plague (Num 11:33; 16:46, 49). We deserve the fiery serpents to poison us (Num 21:6). We deserve the ground to open up and swallow us into Sheol (Num 16:31-33).
But because of the perfect sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, we don’t get that. He got that. We got adoption as sons (Rom 8:15). We got every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies (Eph 1:3). We got God Himself (1Pet 3:18)!
But we still want to go back to Egypt.
Dear friends, I pray that God gives you and me the grace to see how insane that is. I pray that our spiritual eyes would be so opened and so fixed on the glory of Jesus — on the glory of what we’ve got now as compared to what we deserve — that our sin looks ludicrous to us. It’s easy to criticize the Israelites sometimes. But the next time you think to do that, let their bad example, recorded in that mirror which is the Word of God, show you that you do the exact same thing. And as it points to the One who was punished in your place for such things, let it cultivate in you the strength and the desire to put off such attitudes, and put on Christlikeness.
Don’t go to back Egypt. There isn’t anything there for you but miserable slavery for eternity. We’ve got a better country: a heavenly one. One that God Himself has prepared for us.
Hate your slavery.
Prefer the better city.
And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out,
they would have had opportunity to return.
But as it is, they desire a better country,
that is, a heavenly one.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God;
for He has prepared a city for them.
– Hebrews 11:15-16 –