Following a mixed multitude can only produce mixed fortune! We already made reference to what happened when Israel murmured. The task today is to show what inspired them to that destructive way. The immediate cause was their unmet desire for meat. However, the remote cause was the instigation by what the Bible describes as “mixed multitude”. It was a small group of people that had a pervasive influence on how the assembly reasoned and spoke. Who were they by the way? They are described variously as “foreigners” (GNT), “riffraff” (MSG), “the rabble” (ESV). I think they were a group of people who loved what the God of Israel could do but they were not willing to subject their carnal appetites to His Lordship. They had enough grace to leave Egypt but refused to take extra grace to get Egypt out of them. They were neither here nor there. You can call them the company of the Laodiceans.
The cardinal lesson here is that the people in our world can influence us more than we can imagine. In several portions of the Bible, we are admonished to be circumspect concerning the people we let into our lives at a deep level. It was not in vain that God warned His people to not be yoked unequally with the Gentile nations around them. It was for the simple reason that those they let into their lives would change them one way or another. Check your life right now; you will see traceable marks of the people around you in your life. We all need to be careful about those we allow to inspire our taste and guide our choices. Those who recreate the appeal for old lifestyles will work a ruin someday. The safety path is to disconnect from such contacts and trust God to open new relationships. I am always wary of social media influencers with thousands of followers. Following some of them is a recipe for accident in destiny.