“Those Hormonal Israelites”

 

BIBLE READING: Numbers 9-11

                In my younger days I served as a youth minister for a few congregations.  I often joke, though tongue in cheek, that being a youth minister is one of the hardest jobs a man can have.  Not only do you serve as a youth minister, you also must be a food coordinator, travel agent, childhood counselor, athletic director, song leader, camp leader, missionary, Bible class teacher, and gaming guru.  Yet probably the most difficult task I had to deal with as a youth minister, was constantly keeping young people motivated.  It seemed like a never-ending task to keep them encouraged after an amazing mission trip or uplifting retreat.  You may have already heard about it, but teenagers have this thing called “hormones”.  These “hormones” keep them on an emotional rollercoaster 24/7/365.  They may attend a great devotional where they are convicted to be a better person, only to the next day be grounded because they were disrespectful or disobedient to their parents.  The highs were always very high, but the lows were always very low.  Although I know that Moses wasn’t what you would call a traditional Youth Minister, it seems that he had to deal with a great deal of hormonal kids in the children of Israel.  I know that the majority of them were adults, but judging by their actions in Numbers 11, you would think that they were a bunch of disrespectful, unappreciative hormonal teenagers.  Within this passage of Scripture, they have just left the spiritual uplifting experience of a lifetime at the base of Mount Sinai. One might think that their experience might carry over to motivate them to worship and service, yet all they seem to want to do is complain.  It must have just frustrated Moses and Aaron to hear them talk about how good things were in Egypt; all the meat, the melons, the fish, the cucumbers and the onions (that must have been some great cucumbers and onions).  The one massive detail that they had so quickly forgotten was that THEY WERE SLAVES!  How is it possible that they had forgotten that they had cried out to God for a deliverer in the first place!  However, it doesn’t take long for me to think, aren’t we the same way? I wonder if God sees us in the same way He saw the nation of Israel.  We have been delivered from the much more condemning bondage of sin, and yet we seem to take it for granted.  We complain just as much and maybe even more than the Israelites did.  Maybe God had Moses record passages like this so we could see how juvenile our attitude really is to Him.  I pray that we be more grateful for all the blessings that God has given to us and do our best to cease all our complaining.