Our understanding of reality can cause us to miss true reality… and supernatural provision.

There’s a passage in Exodus that seems to show justified frustration towards a God who failed to provide:

Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water.  When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”  And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”

Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.
Exodus 15:22-27

What’s happening here?

• The Israelites are on an unknown adventure unlike anything they have experienced
• They just endured weeks of hefty trauma on top of generational trauma
• As God leads them where they’ve never gone, there is no water
• When they finally find water, yet it is undrinkable; they get upset at what seems a cruel prank
• God hears them, and not only gives them sweet water, but soon after an oasis.

Was it wrong for the people to grumble against Moses?  It seemed understandable; what they knew experientially is they needed water.  They had experienced the effects of dehydration amidst their lifetime of hard labor; they likely even knew that three days without water could lead to coma or death.  After non-stop excessive hard labor followed by an intense escape from Egypt, they now found themselves trekking through the wilderness without one of the most vital resources for life, and this frustrated them.  “What shall we drink?!”

They needed water, and Moses had left them high and dry; their anger was logically justified.

God provides water, though the lack and delay seem odd:

• Was God not aware they were thirsty?  This seems unlikely for an all-knowing God.
• Was God trying to test them?  This seems off without any prior heads up from God.
• Was God simply being mean?  This seems out of character for a God who is love.

This passage does not give a clear answer; all we know is the people did not have water, the human body needs water, and after complaining God provided it.

What if their problem was not a lack of water, but a lack of understanding God’s reality?

I would like to submit something crazy: what if they actually did not need water for the journey?

This may seem foolish, though Scripture reveals several examples of this very thing occurring:

• The Apostle Paul went three days without water when he fasted after his conversion (Acts 9:9)
• Queen Ester went three days without water when fasting before approaching King Ahasuerus, and invited her people to do the same (Esther 4:16)
• Ezra went an unclear span of time without water when lamenting the unfaithfulness of his people (Ezra 10:6)
• Elijah seems to have gone forty days without water on his journey to meet God at Horeb (1 Kings 19:8)
• Not long after this water debacle, Moses went forty days without water while meeting with God on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 9:9)
• Jesus went forty days without water while praying in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2)

It is entirely possible that God equipped the Israelites to make the journey through the wilderness without water or food!  Remember, this is the same God who had already done an abundance of miraculous things; three days before the grumbling he parted an entire sea and freed them from the Egyptian army!  Their belief that three days without water was bad was not based on God’s reality, but their assumption of how things work.

The preceding chapters are filled with God providing for His people; there is no statement about Him choosing to withhold provision (in fact, Moses’ song implies the opposite).  In the absence of an overt command to fast water, even as water was inaccessible, there is no evidence that this was a spiritual discipline or sacrifice.  In other words, there was no conversation about what would or would not happen regarding water, and they merely journeyed until they noticed the lack.  Where they actually thirsty, or did they simply believe they were supposed to be?

Here is what is striking: there is no indication they were experiencing dehydration.

After two days without water, a person experiences extreme fatigue, cramps, headaches, and significant cognitive decline; blood pressure drops, organs begin to fail, and by the third day coma and death are possible.  The timeline depends on many factors like age and body composition, and this group of people included both infants and the elderly.  Logically, many — if not all — of the people should have been barely functioning by day three.

Of the hundreds of thousands of travelers, there is not a single mention of any of these detrimental effect, much less coma or death.  In fact, not only is there no mention of any impacts from dehydration, on the day they should barely be able to move or think they are actively hiking and grumbling.  This fact alone is evidence that something supernatural was occurring.

And they missed it.

They were so focused on how they believed reality worked that they missed the supernatural reality active in their midst.  They were so focused on how they wanted things to work that they missed that God had given them superpowers.  It is like Peter sinking amidst the waves because he knew he couldn’t walk on water… right after he physically walked on water.  Just as Peter rejected the chance to take a divine wave-top stroll with Jesus all the way to the shore, the Israelites gave up the ability to journey without hunger and thirst.

God, knowing they missed the supernatural provision, simplified it; not only did he filter the water with a stick, their very next stop held not one but twelve springs of water, and seventy palm trees for shade for extra emphasis.  For days they had seen no water but a bitter pond, and suddenly they relaxed in a luxury resort.  Even when the provision was logical, they missed it, making it only two verses before they start grumbling again.

We are prone to the same.  We too grumble at God and miss that He is supernaturally sustaining us.  We demand response to specific prayers even as “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness”? (2 Peter 1:3)  Just like the Israelites — three days out from the parting of the sea — it doesn’t matter how we have seen Him work in the past; our limited logic tends to win out over trust in the incomprehensible.

There is much we can learn from this passage:

• By assuming they needed water, the Israelites may have rejected the supernatural ability to live without water; God may be equipping us supernaturally, and our limited logic can lead us to deny it.
• Where they saw a lack of provision, God saw an oasis around the corner, yet the oasis was a mere stop, while the sustaining would have taken them all the way; our longing for the overt displays of God’s provision could lead us to reject the greater gift.
• Their self-fulfilling limitations repeated through their journey, ultimately leading them to reject God for the life of their choosing; our belief in how things should be can lead us to reject who God is and the “immeasurably more” He is creating.

Perhaps you feel thirsty right now, and are crying out — even grumbling — for God to provide water.  What if water is not what you need?  As Jesus noted:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:13-14

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive
John 7:37b-39a

Jesus knew they did not need water; water is merely biological tool God can use to sustain a body that will eventually wither.  Jesus offered life for an eternal body, and it came in ways no one could have asked for or imagined; their invitation was to accept the incomprehensible, supernatural gift.

Whatever you are crying out for today, consider the God who “knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8) and “who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.” (Ephesians 3:20)  When your limited logic tells you to grumble, rest in this invitation:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.”
Proverbs 3:5-6