God took their suffering away and in the process, showed them first hand, His mighty power and presence. Before they even departed Africa, they had seen the plagues and then saw the Red Sea open for them to cross and how the Egyptian army drowned.
Amongst other things, they saw food fall from the sky, without any need to irrigate for 40 years, and yet starved not. They saw water coming off a rock twice. They saw God at the foot of Mount Sinai as a heavy cloud and a thunderous sound, that they even said to Moses, ‘Tell God we do not want to meet with Him again, He may kill us’.
Despite all this, they complained, comparing their situation to the one in slavery. They would ask Moses whether there were not enough graves for their burial in Egypt because he wanted them to die in the desert. After one such incident, when they said Egypt had meat for them to eat, and that they were tired of manna, God said he would provide them meat for them to eat ‘until it came out of your nostrils’.
This was His order to Moses; Numbers 11v18: ‘And say thou unto the people, Sanctify yourselves against to morrow, and ye shall eat flesh: for ye have wept in the ears of the LORD, saying, Who shall give us flesh to eat? for it was well with us in Egypt: therefore the LORD will give you flesh, and ye shall eat.’
‘ v19: Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days; v20: But even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you: because that ye have despised the LORD which is among you, and have wept before him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?’
This sounds like us sometimes. God takes us out of one bad situation so we can rise and grow to another level. When we face a challenge, instead of fighting to push through, we take the very fighting energy and strength for regret and self pity, regressing and wanting to get back to a worse situation. God’s heart bleeds exceedingly at this ungratefulness.
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