When we wait and watch, God’s need-quenching blessings spring forth
By Dean Collins
The Israelites were some 38 years into their wilderness journey. It could have ended more quickly if God’s people had trusted and followed his plan. It seems stubbornness and pride produce setbacks and the consequences of sin always make things harder. Those consequences, in fact, have slowed God’s plan since the early days in the Garden.
The Israelites did a lot of complaining about the basics of food and water. It wasn’t that God wasn’t providing either. It was more that what God provided wasn’t the preferred or instantly visible resources the people wanted and sometimes even insisted on. Their demands took their toll on Moses and on Aaron and frustrated even God.
God would provide
Numbers 21:16-20 records the 12 tribes continuing to Beer. In Hebrew Beer means well. It was here that the Lord said to Moses he should gather the people together so that he might give them water. Maybe this passage is a hint that slowly Israel was beginning to understand that God was not only capable but willing to provide for every need. In this section of Scripture, we see no complaint about the lack of water. It appears God already knew and already had a plan to provide. Let that sink in.
What if the same is true for us? What if God is always working just ahead of our needs? What if our job is simply to stop and even sing songs of expectancy before the almighty God who is both the giver and sustainer of life here and now and forever?
The text reads as if this song was already known by the children of Israel. Maybe it was first sung in celebration of previous provision from God’s well of resources. We should note that the song includes that God provided and that he also used humans, including rulers, to provide his people’s needs (“…the well that princes made, that the nobles of the people dug, with the scepter and with their staffs”). The tools used to dig the well were not implements typical of digging. They may have simply been what the princes and nobles had available. It seems this well was a partnership of the divine with his creation that resulted in a spring bursting forth with water.
God has his reasons
I don’t know why God does things the way he does, but we can trust that he has reasons far bigger and richer than anything we could plan. The question we must wrestle with until we surrender to God’s plan is whether we trust God to know enough and to have enough to meet our needs. The great preacher of the 1800s said this about this text:
“Believer, your supplies shall never vary, and your greatest necessities shall only illustrate the fulness of the Lord your God. Be not afraid, but go forward. Though it be dark and dreary in the prospect, yet if God bid you advance, tarry not, for he has surely taken care to forestall your necessities when they shall arise.”
To be fully surrendered we must learn the rhythms of knowing when to be still and know that God is God, and we must also learn the moment we are to move forward trusting that he will do what we can neither see nor do ourselves. That is faith. The writer of Hebrews tells us that without faith we cannot please God.
Lord, today we pray that you would increase our faith so that we would fully trust you. Thank you for your faithfulness to us in the quiet places and in the barren places. Today we will pray and even sing that you would spring up and provide for our every need. We do not sing to the resources, we sing songs of praise to you as the provider of all things. We eagerly await your provision today and every day. You are our daily bread. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Your time with God’s Word
Numbers 21:16-20 ESV
Photo by Leo Rivas on Unsplash
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