"And the people spake against God, and against Moses, 'Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.'" Numbers 21:5
Additional readings: Mark 10:17-31, Psalm 136
The children of Israel had been led out of hard bondage in Egypt and were on their way to a land of their own where they would be free. Yet hardly had they set forth when they began to complain "Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, and when we did eat bread to the full" (Exodus 16:3). Then the manna was given them every day a portion sufficient for their needs. Now, near the end of their journey to the land of Canaan, the people murmur again and speak the words of our text.
The Bible is the story of our spiritual development, of the states through which we pass in regeneration.
Love is the life of man, and those things in which we delight are as the food by which we live. We are born natural, and our first delights are natural delights. These natural delights are very real to us. The delights that come to us through the senses—sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell—are marvelous in their degree and appeal. Into these loves we are born. They form the basis of the life of the natural man. They urge us to explore and conquer the secret forces of the earth, to produce a multitude of things that add to our comfort and pleasure. They call forth the development of the arts and sciences; they sharpen the mind and develop many skills. They make life worth living to the natural man.
What has spiritual love or its delights to offer against the very definite and assured delights of the natural man?
The Lord began His sermon on the mount with the Blessings, blessed are the poor in spirit, they that mourn, that hunger and thirst after righteousness, that are persecuted and reviled. And further on in His Gospel He says, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23) and "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 16:25) and "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). There are indeed rewards mentioned. It is said that those who give up will receive a hundredfold in this world, and in the world to come life everlasting. And we are told of the delights following upon serving the Lord and serving others—the delight of peace with the Lord and with men. But all these to the natural man seem vague and shadowy as compared to the apparently vivid and more real delights of the Egypt state, the delights of the love of self and the world. In Scripture language to be led out of Egypt is to be led out of slavery to our natural lusts into the freedom of heavenly love and it’s delights.
Do we really believe this? Do we know, acknowledge, and understand that our natural loves hold us in bondage, and that in the exercise of spiritual loves alone is freedom?
We are taught and affirm that the health of the spirit is of infinitely more consequence than the health of the body, and we know that many who are severely afflicted in body are strong in spiritual growth and health. The Word of God caters to the spirit of man. It gives light to his mind, nourishment to his soul, and the power to interpret life. It enables him to distinguish between right and wrong, giving him eternal standards which don’t change.
But when the Divine laws conflict with some of our worldly interests, many are prone to turn away with the excuse, "It will not do to mix religion with business." And when we think of heaven, do we not often think of it as a place where all our external delights will be satisfied, wishing it to be a place where we shall be given the delights we may have been denied in the world? Do we find it hard to believe that the delight's of heaven are something other than these, that with the angels the glories amid which they dwell are thought nothing of save as representatives of the interior spiritual things in which alone they place the reality and the joy of heaven? Do we murmur at the restraint which the Word puts upon our natural loves? Can it be said of us, "Our soul loatheth this light bread?"
It would be foolish as well as hypocritical to deny the value and desirability of our natural desires and the delight in their gratification, but they should not be the life of life to us, making heavenly delights vague and shadowy. The love of gratifying natural needs and wants may become so great that one will seek dominion over the whole world in the effort to amass to himself its riches. So laws have to be made to protect men from each other. Everyone is born into this love of self and the world. But we are told that we must be born again. Our first loves are not heavenly loves, and inmostly they have in them hatred for the Lord and for the heavenly kingdom. Yet the Lord in a marvelous way bends them to His service and gradually supplants them with love to Himself and to the neighbor.
He begins in our infancy, even before we are born, by planting "remains." In childhood, when the senses are most awake and plastic, He leads us—through our self-seeking love of finding out about all manner of things—to learn about the material world. This prepares the way for our taking part in the affairs of the world. So the mind is stored with various knowledges. But this is not all. If our development stopped here, there would be nothing heavenly in it. In John 1:12 we read, "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God"—not by our natural inheritance, nor by our natural desires, nor by any process of purely human thought, but of God.
When mature thought is reached, when man can think and choose for himself, there is a disposition inseminated to obey the Lord rather than self, a perception that there is something higher and better than natural delights, the perception that if our natural desires are allowed to get control, we shall cease to be our own masters and become enslaved. How and when this change comes we may not tell. It may come quietly and imperceptibly; it may be an awakening at some great crisis of life. In either case it is not an instantaneous and complete change from earthly to heavenly. Natural loves still exist, and for a long time their delights will appear the greatest in life. We should not be discouraged by this. The Israelites, when they left Egypt, did not immediately come to their homes in the Holy Land. The Lord does not take away our natural delights. We may enjoy the good things in the world, but there must be the love of use to others to purify our enjoyment of them. Little by little, under the Divine providence, the hold of natural loves is loosened and heavenly loves are developed and increased. At first we give natural delights first place and uses last, but in time this order is reversed, and love to the Lord and the neighbor come first and natural delights become secondary.
"If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:
"Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it" (Isaiah 58:13-14).
