Leadership Lessons from the Wilderness Wandering

The desert has a way of stripping the veneer of our cozy little christian lives. It has a way of removing the layers of our hypocrisy and exposing the seedy insecurities hiding in the shadows of our existence. In Numbers 11 & 12, the people's true nature is exposed. How a people could witness all the incredible things they had in the shadow of Mount Sinai and come to this place of complaining is a testament to how ungrateful and shortsighted we can be. As Christians there are more than a few leadership lessons for us to learn from these two chapters in the life of God's people.

Highlight:

Entire Passage

Explain:

The never ending saga of the children of Israel’s drama continues through Numbers 11 & 12. The problems of the wilderness begin to creep in and steal the vision from the people of God for the land that God had provided for them. The every day clouds their view of the great day. The mundane existence In the wilderness gives rise to restlessness in the camp and what was once a great assembly that had beheld the greatest of blessing were now taking those very blessings for granted.

This people had seen the marvels and the wonders of God and now those marvels and wonders were only opportunities for them to complain about what they didn’t have rather than recognize the miracles of what they did have. This is what the wilderness does to a person who forgets where they came from and where they are going. They were disoriented by the confusion of the wilderness and they begin to complain. The chapter begins with “the people began complaining openly before the Lord about hardship.”

Moses is so exacerbated by the complaints of the people. Moses and God have about had it with these ungrateful slaves. God’s anger burns against them and burns the outer edges of the camp. He is ready to consume them and Moses prays for them and the fire dies down.

The first instance has Moses praying that God doesn’t consume them, and the next one has God caring for Moses. Moses has finally had enough. Every leader has this moment.

After more complaining Moses comes to God and says, "'Moses heard the people, family after family, weeping at the entrance of their tents. The Lord was very angry; Moses was also provoked. So Moses asked the Lord , 'Why have you brought such trouble on your servant? Why are you angry with me, and why do you burden me with all these people? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth so you should tell me, ‘Carry them at your breast, as a nanny carries a baby,’ to the land that you swore to give their fathers? ' Numbers 11:10-12

God graciously sets apart 70 elders and gives some of takes some of his Spirit and puts it on them to bear some of the responsibility and the load. God then tells them to get ready because He is going to give them meat. At first Moses questions how God will do this and God’s response is “is the Lord’s arm weak?” At the same time there are two of the seventy who had not come to the tent of meeting. While they are all prophesying two of them are still in the camp with the people. When Joshua finds out Eldad and Medad are in the camp and not in the tent prophesying, He is worried for Moses and his leadership. He pleads for Moses to stop them from prophesying (the obvious evidence that the Lord’s spirit is on them). Moses response is ‘are you jealous on my account?’

Just then a wind blew quail in from the sea on suicide missions 3 feet off the ground and people had more meat than they could eat. As they are consuming what they were complaining for, God’s anger burned against them and a plague broke out among them.

When chapter 12 opens, Miriam and Aaron revolt against Moses. Moses humility was not to defend Himself but to allow God to defend his leadership a lesson no doubt learned in chapter 11 with the prophets who were prophesying in the camp. Moses was not jealous for leadership, He actually was trying to get rid of it at the

beginning of chapter 11.

God vindicated his leadership however by striking Miram with a disease. When Aaron pleads with Moses for her health, God sets her outside the camp for 7 days alienated from the people and then after she is restored they set out again on their journey.

Apply:

Looking at these events, there are so many applications for us. In a sense this is a community who is moving from bondage to sin to freedom in the land of promise and the lessons learned along the way should inform our journey as well. The church is a community of redeemed slaves who have been delivered from our own bondage and are in progress towards our own land of promise. What the wilderness wonderings can teach us are very informative and enlightening on our own journey especially as a leader of a community of nomads.

1. There will be moments of incessant complaining. As a leader we should expect that the journey will be tiring and there will be seasons of open complaint before the Lord just as there was in Numbers 11. It is important to recognize that God is the One who is bringing this people along. They are His people not mine and God is the One who is leading them, providing for them, directing them. I am only responsible for leading in accordance with God’s plans not for their responses to it.

2. The people will always long for the past. It’s natural for people to want what they had rather than what they will eventually receive. These people couldn’t see the promised land and the pull of the comfort of the past will always be greater than the hunger for the future because the people can’t see the future blessings yet. This. will. always. happen. Even if the past included chains and slavery and hard labor, people forget those things. They leave them out of the pictures. Songwriter Sara Groves nails this sentiment in her song, “painting pictures of Egypt”. The chorus reads, “I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt, leaving out what it lacks, the future feels so hard and I wanna go back. But the places that used to fit me, cannot hold the things I learned and those roads were closed off to me, while my back was turned.” What a great reminder. As a leader we can’t get frustrated by this.

3. There will be moments as a leader that feel overwhelming. The weight of the people had grown too much for Moses and he does the right thing with it, HE TAKES IT TO GOD! There is only one refuge safe to divulge the weight of leading God’s people and that is at the feet of the One who called you to lead them. Moses doesn’t join a coaching network, He doesn’t spout in a passive aggressive manner on social media, He doesn’t belittle his people or take it out on his family, He takes it squarely to the One who can hear and answer Him, God the LORD! In my moments of being overwhelmed is this my response? Or would I rather complain about my people complaining about God. How am I any better than them when I complain openly to anywhere but God.

4. Don’t get jealous when God takes some of His presence off of you and put it on others. When you feel overwhelmed, the only way out of being overwhelmed with that load is to delegate responsibility to faithful men. Those faithful men (called Elders) shoulder the load of responsibility of God’s people. But they can’t lead if you don’t empower them. Moses does a great job of understanding this by how he treats the two leaders prophesying in the camp. I know so many leaders who are jealous of God’s spirit on others within their congregation, but these are the very people God has raised up to help shoulder the load of the people given by God when the leader is overwhelmed. But rather than empower them and trust them to lead, many leaders are jealous of having God’s spirit on them and they quash their leadership thereby hindering them from being the leaders God has raised them up to be which is the very solution to the leader being overwhelmed.

5. God will always vindicate the leadership of a man who doesn’t feel the need to defend his own leadership. God vindicated Moses because Moses didn’t defend Himself. When we walk in jealousy for God’s leadership within His community, we expose our own insecurity in the fact that God called us. We can defend ourselves or God can defend us, the leader who walks in humility before God as Moses did isn’t jealous of that leadership, and allows God to vindicate Him.

Respond:

God please help me remember these applications to my own leadership.

1. Help me to remember these aren’t my people they are Yours. Help me to be faithful in leading them as an undershepherd, but always to remember they are Yours and help me to treat them accordingly.

2. Help to remember that people will always crave the past instead of longing for the future, but that view is often clouded by their own comfort to their own chains. We romanticize the past forgetting our slavery. Help me to stay focused on the future.

3. Help me to take the pressures of the ministry to God and God alone. Don’t let me take it out on my family, guard me from speaking critically to others, help me carry the burden of ministry and its pressures to God and no where else.

4. Help me to empower leaders around me and to resist the temptation to be jealous of the Lord’s spirit. They are the very answer to my prayers, don’t let me quash God’s ability to answer that prayer by my own jealousy and insecurity.

5. Help me to remember to walk in humility and let God vindicate my leadership and resist the temptation to defend it for myself.