How many times have we watched our favourite sports team almost win the game of the season only to be defeated by…themselves? Critical mistakes, foolish moves, perhaps over confidence caused the whole winning strategy to recoil against themselves regardless of their opponent’s skill. The same holds true in our lives. Often we are our own worst enemy.

Israel’s wandering in the desert was a training ground. God needed to teach the people how to be faithful to what they knew to be true about him; to trust and not complain.

Israel’s massive camp began to move from the sea out to the relative safety of the Desert of Shur. Now, after three days, the supplies were running low.

As an immigrant family in the very early 50’s we knew what it was to be poor. Once, when I was only five years old I overheard my mother praying. She was asking that the Lord would supply food because there was none. That very afternoon the local pastor delivered bags full of groceries. He did not know the depth of our need, but he understood our circumstances. God will give us our daily bread when we seek him for it.

Ever wonder where God is when the roof seems to be falling in on our heads? Non believers ask this question out of scepticism but Christians ask this out of a lack of faith. We follow God, we witness for him, are obedient, yet God seems to allow severe testing. These tests cut deeply and cause many to stumble.

No matter what the Lord God did for the Israelites, when conflict came they turned on Moses and were extremely critical.

When Moses ran from Egypt forty years earlier he had married into Jethro’s clan, a nomadic shepherding family in the land of Midian. Now, when more than six months had passed since Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and the sheer managerial logistics were becoming unbearable, Moses received news that his father in law, Jethro, was coming for a visit.

Jethro was a High Priest of a religious sect that, like Abraham, worshiped the one true God.

These next two chapters are central to the story of the Old Testament. God is coming down to meet and speak with his own people. They are his own because they are descended from Abraham, and he has led them back from slavery in Egypt. God has redeemed them from the might of Pharaoh. He has provided for them in the wilderness and he has been with them in the pillar of fire and cloud.

This psalm was to be sung on Sabbath. It’s the only psalm in the entire canon where Sabbath is mentioned and it sums up the spirit with which Moses taught the Hebrew slaves about the need to observe a day of rest. In Deuteronomy 5, Moses links the observance of Sabbath with God’s deliverance of the Hebrews and his promise of freedom. They were to stop all work and remember a sea that had parted, a pillar of fire, rocks from which water had gushed, sweet food that fallen from heaven.