A wealthy entrepreneur was consternated to find a fisherman sitting lazily beside his boat. "Why aren't you out there fishing?" he asked.

"Because I've caught enough fish for today," said the fisherman.

"Why not catch more than you need?" the rich man asked.

"What would I do with them?"

"You could earn more money," came the impatient reply, "and buy a bigger boat so you could go deeper and catch more fish. You could purchase nylon nets, catch even more fish, and make more money. Soon you'd have a fleet of boats and be rich like me."

"Then what would I do?" the fisherman asked.

"You could sit down and enjoy life," said the tycoon.

"What do you think I'm doing right now?" the fisherman replied as he looked contentedly at the sea.

In today's text, the people of Israel play the role of the rich tycoon and God wanted them to be like the contented fisherman. The people of Israel would have killed for some fish to eat in the middle of the desert as they wandered, but all they had was an attitude: "We detest this miserable food" (v. 5)! It was manna, heavenly food, angel's food, but they were tired of it. Some scholars say that the word "manna" came from the word meaning, "to despise," so that the very name of the daily provision from the hand of God was being mocked every time they gathered it in the morning.

The Israelites are not any different from us, and I believe God teaches us a three-part lesson through this experience of the children of Israel: first, their impatience (vv. 4-6); second, their petition. (vv. 6-7); third, God's prescription (vv. 8-9).

Impatience

Here is a list of all the miracles, saving actions, provisions, and general people-keeping that God had done for his people in the recent years before this story:

• Enemies routed by spectacular means
• An invisible tour leader of fire and cloud
• Ten devastating displays, "but none came near their house"
• A path through water that shouldn't have been there
• Instead of a faucet, they just "turned on" a rock
• Fire and smoke and quaking on Mount Sinai

God had given them protection, provisions, leadership, and day by day wisdom, yet they forgot all his goodness and could only see the hard side of life. What short memories they had of times when God bailed them out and of how much better life was when they followed him. Were they really starving or dying of thirst? There was food; it was just not the kind they liked and they were tired of the "worthless stuff."

They remind me of the grandma who took her grandson to the beach on a windy day. As she lay in the sun getting a tan, her grandson wandered away unnoticed. She only knew of his whereabouts when she heard him screaming for help in the surf. He had wandered too far into the water and was in danger of being swept away by the tide.

Immediately Grandma started to pray, "O God, help my grandson!" No one else heard his cries and she couldn't swim, so she was helpless to do anything. She could only pray. Moments later a big wave simply lifted her grandson safely onto shore. She ran to him, held and comforted him, but instead of thanking God, she looked toward heaven and said, "Where's his hat? He had a hat when he went out there."

What about us? Impatience before God is not something we often think of as a sin. Discontentment, despite his good gifts, indeed is an offense against God. No, it's not as visible as other sins, but how often do we get an attitude about the way life is dealt us or look up toward heaven and complain about the "food" God has sent us?

The "food" could be physical provisions. (Lord, why can't we have more "stuff" like our friends?) Or it could be how your family gets along. (Do something, God, with my sister!) We might struggle with thanking God for our daily emotional strength or our position at work. (It could be better, Lord!) We forget about all the good gifts he has lavished on us -- because we want more!

The area where many people struggle is contentment in the moment -- enjoying what one is doing and is blessed with now, instead of always looking for something in the future. In my house one would have heard this conversation frequently at night between my wife and me as we lay in bed, until I realized what I was doing.

Me: I'm tired. I can't believe the day is over already.

Susan: It's been a good day. Let's pray and go to sleep.

Me: I wish I had more time in the day. I wish I would've had time to work in the yard. I hope tomorrow I get more done.

Susan: No wishing, Paul. You can't change today or control tomorrow. God has all your times in his hands.

Me: Yeah, but I wish we could just escape, get away.

Susan: Sweetheart, let's just enjoy this moment and thank God for what he did do through us today.

Who are we really speaking against when we complain? Not our spouse, but God who gave her to us. Not the government, but the Leader who enthrones all leaders. Not our house, but the One who provided us with a place to live. We are complaining against God Almighty -- if we believe he is still in control.

Petition

The Lord didn't take kindly to the people's complaining, and he sent snakes to punish the people. Like the grandma, Moses prayed on behalf of the people. He interceded for them when they asked. It's a good thing Moses was there to stand between them and God or else the whole nation might have been wiped out. His petition for mercy from God was all the people had.

This wasn't the first time Moses interceded for the people. Moses knew that role well. Obviously, Moses had been their representative to Pharaoh to get them out of their slavery in Egypt. He was the go-between at Mount Sinai when he received the law the people were to live by. And at least one other time, Moses saved the people from certain destruction when God's anger burned against them after they worshiped the golden calf. "But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. 'O Lord,' he said, 'why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?' " (Exodus 32:11). Moses was definitely a petitioning prophet!

There are other examples in the Bible of people who intervened for others who were displeasing to God. Job did it for his "friends" at God's request and God said, "I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly" (42:8). Paul wrote to the new Christians at Rome with such "great sorrow and unceasing anguish" that he would be willing to be cut off from the covenant with God if that would help save more of his countrymen who were dying in their sins. And Jesus himself intercedes before the throne of his Father as a result of his perfect going-between for us as epitomized in his cry from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing!"

Perhaps the cure for impatience is to petition. What better time is spent than praying for others when we feel cheated? What better attitude can we have than praying for others in the midst of an encroaching disgruntled spirit!

Prescription

Aren't you glad that God doesn't punish the sin of discontentment and bellyaching today the same way he did in Moses' day? Would any of us be alive? But the answer, the medicine, the healing balm -- the prescription -- is still the same: something lifted up.

When Moses petitioned God, God heard. But he asked Moses to do a strange thing: make a cast in the form of a snake, fill it with liquid metal and fashion a bronze snake. Huh? Then God said something even more strange, "Have the people look up at the snake attached to a pole and they will not die." Wow! I wonder if Moses hesitated at all.

Why a snake? Perhaps because it represented the death of a snake and therefore the substitute for a man so that he could live. Perhaps the bronze, reddish color would be a foreshadowing of Christ's atonement and purification through blood.

Why were they required to look at it? It took faith to believe that acknowledging the presence and power of something lifted up could take away the death threat clinging to their legs. I'm sure some of the Israelites thought it was stupid. They also died. Others probably remembered the blood on the doorpost to which they looked for salvation many years earlier and listened to God's servant Moses once again.

The prescription is still the same. From the time a snake first caused sin in Eden because of an unspoken complaint by Eve to the bronze snake on a pole at Moses' time to the time Jesus crushed the serpent's head at Calvary and beyond, the medicine is a substitute and faith.

The deadly poison of sin has existed in man since the Fall. The bronze serpent had no poison in it. So also when the perfect Jesus was lifted up on the cross in the likeness of sinful flesh, he took our place. He took our poison. He endured the punishment we deserve for our incessant impatience and grumbling. All God asks is that we look with faith to that pole of Calvary to see our freedom there. Some people think we're stupid for trusting in the power of the cross. No, it doesn't make sense. But it does save. God can't and won't punish us as Christians, even though we complain, because his Son already endured that penalty. He crushed the conniving snake once for all. We need not fear the devil.

Jesus saw this story as so significant for our spiritual life that it is the only Old Testament picture he applied to himself. The snake on a tree foreshadowed himself nailed to the cross: "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32).

This account is the last recorded complaint of the wandering Israelites. Perhaps they learned much from this event. Have you?

You don't have a big boat? You've never caught your limit of fish? Everyone else seems to have more than you do? Your hat was lost at sea? You never even knew your grandma? You feel like life is one monotonous day after another?

Let this still your disquieted heart: someone is praying for you that you might have all that you need. And he also has the desire to give it to you! And that same Someone, who owned the whole world but gave it all up, was lifted up for you that you might know that he loves you.