019. Of Moses As To The Manner In Which The Lord Will Give The People Flesh To Eat.
Of Moses As To The Manner In Which The Lord Will Give The People Flesh To Eat. The Prayer as recorded.—Numbers 11:21-22. The Answer.—Numbers 11:23.
God had promised in answer to the last prayer of Moses to send a sufficient quantity of food to supply his people; the largeness of his promise startles Moses, for the supply was not for a day, or even ten, but for a whole month, and this too for six hundred thousand footmen. We will quote from an intelligent traveler a short passage, for it will the better enable us to comprehend the spirit in which the prayer now under consideration was made: “No reflection forced itself upon me so often or so urgently as the utter and universal inaptitude of that country for the sustenance of animal life; it really seemed to possess no element favorable to human existence besides a pure air, and no present appearances favor the idea that it was ever any better. I am filled with wonder that so many travelers should task their ingenuity to get clear of the miracles which, according to the narrative of Moses, were wrought to facilitate the journey of that vast host, for they could not have subsisted three days without supernatural resources.” T he quiet and mild rebuke to Moses, in the Lord’s answer, encourages us to come to him with every desire, however impossible it may seem in its fulfillment, so long as it springs from love to God; “His arm is not shortened that it cannot save.” Let us ask great things, then, for Israel. Are his people hungering and thirsting? the Lord has plenty and to spare. Are they languishing and drooping? The Lord’s spirit can revive them. Prayer, persevering prayer, will come from a heart that truly feels for the afflicted people of God; we have only to implore the great Giver, as did Moses, and the supply will be forthcoming. The children of Israel had inordinately desired the meat the Lord promised to give; he therefore made it by its quantity loathsome to them. It is ever thus with man, in his desires greedily pursuing a fancied good, covetous and over-anxious to acquire this or that, and if he obtain, and find the possession cloys, yet he turns to another object, still to pursue, still to be disappointed.
“Sweet world!
We all still cling to thee, though thou thyself Passest away.” The spirit severed from its God is ever longing, ever restless, for some imagined good, forgetful that “the heart must shed its pleasures, as the eye its tears.” Let our desires come, then, from a heart full of love to God, but let the measure of them and their fulfillment be of the Lord.