They Were Right By An Oasis All Along!

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Exodus 15:25b-27

There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, 26 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.” 27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.

 
 

Three days out from the Red Sea, the people run out of water and cry out to the Lord. He supplies it, thereby teaching them that He can be trusted. Here, the Lord makes the lesson explicit:

“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.” [15:26]

The lesson: just obey my voice rather than assuming that you know what’s right by your own eyes, and things will go well with you.

And then, the very next place they come to is a desert oasis! If they had just trusted the Lord previously, they would have ended up there sooner.

A good lesson for us: the Lord’s way—obedience—is always the best way.

P.S. Note that the Lord calls the Egyptian plagues “diseases” and connects them to the Egyptians’ disobedience. In other words, the plagues were a consequence of the Egyptians’ rebellion against the Lord.