“As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians coming after them! The Israelites were terrified and cried out to the Lord for help. They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Isn’t this what we told you in Egypt: Leave us alone so that we may serve the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

If you have taken the journey of parenthood, do you remember when your kids went through their whiny phase? If you don’t nip this in the bud as a parent, what starts as a fairly natural phase can become a personality trait that sticks with them to the eventual frustration of everyone around them, but that’s a conversation for another time. What is it that prompts a kid to whine? The same thing that tempts us to it: not getting our way. When the Israelites saw the Egyptian army heading toward them, they felt like they hadn’t gotten their way…and they were terrified. Their response should have been a major red flag for Moses, but that’s only really visible thanks to hindsight. Israel had a great chance here to demonstrate great faith in the God who was in the process of rescuing them. Let’s talk about what they did instead and why it is a warning for us.

This is one of those stories in the Scriptures that makes you want to beat your head against a wall…a little like perhaps you feel when your kids are whining at you. But let’s see if we can give Israel at least a little bit of credit here. They were beside themselves with excitement that they were finally leaving behind the suffocating slavery they had endured for multiple generations in Egypt and on their way to the land God had promised to give them. None of those Israelites knew anything about this land. There were stories about it that had become legendary over time, but they didn’t really know. They hadn’t seen it since long before any of their collective memories.

But then, when they were just a couple of days out of Egypt, they look up one afternoon to a big cloud of dust on the horizon. Scouts soon report that it is the Egyptian army, bearing down on them to attack them. When we are in situations of high stress or fear or extreme frustration, we often cease to think rationally or critically. Israel played into this fault beautifully. In spite of everything God had just done for them; in spite of witnessing His revelation of His power and authority over the course of the ten plagues; in spite of politely plundering the Egyptian people as they marched out in victorious military formations, the threat of the Egyptian army in that moment saw them embrace a single thought: We’re toast. They were convinced in that moment that Egypt was going to attack them, kill them, and there was nothing they could do about it because they were on their own.

Now, reading this from the standpoint of historical hindsight, we are utterly flabbergasted at their total and pathetic lack of faith. How could they possibly have convinced themselves that God was going to abandon them to death after everything He had just done for them? There was nothing rational about their thinking at all. They reverted fully to their lizard brains and couldn’t see anything else.

Of course, we know God had a plan. We know this because we can see the whole story. We know this because God had already told Moses what He was planning back at the beginning of the chapter. And Israel should have trusted anyway because of the record of faithfulness, not to mention power, God had just demonstrated for them. He had singlehandedly broken the power of Egypt to let Israel go. Did they really believe He was going to abandon them now to die by Egyptian swords and spears?

The short answer is: Yes, they did. And, honestly, we would have probably joined right with them in that belief. Our faith is rarely as strong as we imagine it to be. Real faith is revealed not in the mundane of daily life, but in the crucible of testing. This is why God allows us to face some of the hard things we do. In the heat of the moment, what is fluff burns away, and we are able to see what real substance there is to us. We certainly don’t seek out the crucible moments, but neither do we run from them. The trick is having the presence of mind to recognize we are in them, and to put into practice the things we have been preparing in case of those moments’ arriving.

That, by the way, assumes we have been preparing for their arrival. And how do we prepare for them? By staying faithfully consistent with our engagement in the Scriptures; by intentionally cultivating a discipline of prayer; by doggedly embedding ourselves in a church community. We do faith-strengthening exercises like those when things are good and easy so that we have some muscle built up for when they are not. Israel was still learning. Their faith muscle was weak. Rather than judging them for it, though, we are perhaps wisest to remember that our faith muscle might be weak too…and to do something about that.