“For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food” – Numbers 21:5
They were in the middle of one of the most mindblowing miraculous times in the history of the world, and they didn’t see it. The children of Israel were in the midst of the Exodus, and daily, out in the middle of the wilderness, God would provide them their daily (meat and) bread. There was quail, there was manna. Bread that they did not have to work for – the curse laid upon Adam (by the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread) is for a time reversed.
And they didn’t see it. They despised it. They complained about it.
We know what happens next. The fiery serpents come, and the people of Israel are driven to repentance. And God has Moses put a serpent upon the pole, and anyone who looked upon it would live.
We are in the middle of one of the most mindblowing miraculous times in the history of the world – the very last days. What the prophets and patriarchs longed to see – we have seen in Christ Jesus. They knew that someday a Savior would come – we know that Jesus has come. They merely saw a bronze serpent, we know that Christ was lifted up upon the Cross to utterly crush that old Serpent Satan under His heel. And to top it off, God gives us bread today, but not just bread – but His Body in, with, and under the Bread, His blood shed for us in, with, and under the wine.
And often we are tempted not to see this. That’s what the world does; that’s what our sinful flesh does. But God is merciful and gives us repentance and bids us behold Christ Crucified again, indeed places Christ Himself upon our lips and tongues, and because of Him, we live.
