Exodus 16:2-3

The Israelites here make a ridiculous statement. It is ridiculous! In this verse, they say how good it was to sit around the pots of meat and eat to the fullest. The fleshpots (KJV) were garbage pots. That is what they were, it was garbage they were getting, brethren. Do you think the Egyptians were feeding the Israelites T-bone steaks, cauliflower with cheese sauce, and big baked potatoes, and then for dessert some homemade apple pie and some vanilla bean ice cream? Do you think that early in the morning, when the sun was just rising and the Israelites were getting ready to go to work, that the taskmasters had coffee and donuts for the poor Israelites?

Exodus 16:1-7

We see here again that those who had been delivered from God by the mightiest of hands, His hand, and He had provided for them in the wilderness, again were complaining into the second month. We also see in God's mercy that He granted their requests for what they physically desired, but He also began to give them the most important lesson that they would have with them day by day, week by week for nearly 40 years. As it says in verse chapter 16, verse 4, the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not."

Exodus 16:1-3

Their memories were not very long. These people were slaves. You would have the idea here that they were living high off the hog. "When we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full."

Israel murmured in a multitude of places and circumstances during their wilderness journey. And these are, at least, partly recorded for revealing their fears to us. What they feared was what they murmured about! That is how you can tell what they feared. Often, what they feared was that they were not going to be fed.

Exodus 16:2-3

The first attitude I want to talk about is from the passage that we just read. This is the attitude of comfort, instead of spiritual growth. Brethren, when Israel longed to go back to Egypt, they showed a lack of faith in God, choosing instead to revert to what they had built up in their minds as comfortable things; the pots of meat and the bread were both things of comfort to Israel were a complete fiction.

Exodus 16:2

Just one month out of Egypt and what were they doing? Murmuring, moaning! Now I want us to notice who they are murmuring against—Moses and Aaron. I want us to see Moses' interpretation of their murmurings.

Exodus 16:2

Do you think those people who were doing the murmuring did not think that they were victims of Moses and Aaron? They most surely did. Of course, in their carnality, they turned around and blamed them.