AELW 8:200
"This was the cause of all the idolatry among the people of Israel, even in the desert, as Ps. 78:8 testifies: “A generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.” For they wanted to be led and governed in such a way that they did not live from faith in the promise but from what was actually present. On the other hand, God wanted them to rely on faith and not to long for the things that were pleasant at the time. Therefore they raged in indignation, saying: “God should not feed us with words. No, He should give us what we need.” Thus they seek what is plainly contrary to the will and government of God, and if at this time they do not get what they seek, they look for another god. This perversity of human minds is described throughout the aforementioned psalm, where we read: “They did not keep God’s covenant, but refused to walk according to His Law. They forgot what He had done, and the miracles that He had shown them.” (Vv. 10–11.) Likewise in Ps. 106:13: “They soon forgot His works, they did not wait for His counsel”; that is, they refused to believe. Stephen reproaches them with the same thing in Acts 7:43: “And you took up the tent of Moloch, and the star of the god Rephan, etc.”
"This was the cause of all the idolatry among the people of Israel, even in the desert, as Ps. 78:8 testifies: “A generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.” For they wanted to be led and governed in such a way that they did not live from faith in the promise but from what was actually present. On the other hand, God wanted them to rely on faith and not to long for the things that were pleasant at the time. Therefore they raged in indignation, saying: “God should not feed us with words. No, He should give us what we need.” Thus they seek what is plainly contrary to the will and government of God, and if at this time they do not get what they seek, they look for another god. This perversity of human minds is described throughout the aforementioned psalm, where we read: “They did not keep God’s covenant, but refused to walk according to His Law. They forgot what He had done, and the miracles that He had shown them.” (Vv. 10–11.) Likewise in Ps. 106:13: “They soon forgot His works, they did not wait for His counsel”; that is, they refused to believe. Stephen reproaches them with the same thing in Acts 7:43: “And you took up the tent of Moloch, and the star of the god Rephan, etc.”
Therefore one should carefully observe these things in the Holy Scriptures, which contain accounts far different from the records of the heathen, which do not have the promises of God. On the other hand, God makes promises to His people, to be sure; but at the same time He also tests and exercises them in the faith and teaches that they should live more by the Word than by bread, as Moses testifies in Deut. 8:3–4: “He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”
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