Manna From Heaven

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INTRO

Are. We. There. Yet??

Almost everyone in this room has heard or said, or shouted, or groaned those words at some point, amiright?

In our passage this morning, it’s been 45 days since Israel left Egypt. We see in verses 1-2 that they’re wandering in the wilderness called Sin, which is a huge, dry, hot, empty place. There’s no sights to see, and all that Israel really knows at this point is that they’re running away from Egypt.

Jason did a fantastic job last week unpacking grumbling for us, so I’m not going to spend much time on it this morning, but already, again, we see Israel grumbling to Moses and Aaron in verse 3, saying “Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Again, Israel is discontent. Again, they’re longing to go back to the familiarity and ‘comfort’ of their slavery. They say that with Pharoah they could eat their fill, and worst of all, they’re accusing Moses and Aaron, and God himself, of a planned genocide; of bringing all of Israel into the wilderness to kill them.

Now, was Israel in a tough spot? Of course they were. They didn’t have homes, I’m sure there was little or no shade for long stretches of the day, and water was scarce at best. On top of all of that, you’ve got a couple million people going through whatever food and resources they left Egypt with, probably pretty quickly, they didn’t know where exactly they were going or how long it was going to take, and so it makes sense to me that they begin to panic and complain and think the worst.

Maybe you can relate?

Maybe your finances are tighter right now than you’ve ever experienced and you’re starting to freak out about where the money or food is going to come from. Maybe you have or are starting a family and the math just doesn’t make sense.

Maybe the christian life has been really hard and long for you, and you find yourself recently asking God, ‘are we there yet?’. Maybe you feel like God has been teaching you the same lesson for years and years, and you just want to be done. You just want to arrive. You just want to rest.

Friends, the things you’re facing, the doubts and fears that you have, they’re addressed here in this passage. I’ve been praying that all of us would see and know and believe more of our great God through this chapter, and that he would confront our fears and doubts with his Word, and build up our faith in Him and his never-ending love, mercy, and faithfulness.

To that end, we start this morning with God’s response to Israel’s continued grumbling, look with me, starting in verse 4:

Exodus 16:4 ESV

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.

Friends, this is incredible! Don’t you love how generous and loving and patient our God is??

He doesn’t just wipe them out, He doesn’t punish them or even scold them. He doesn’t threaten them with a “don’t make me pull this car over…!”

No, He responds in love and patience. He responds by speaking directly to their specific concern and providing for them in miraculous ways. That’s what we’re going to see this morning.

But, God isn’t just dolling out the provision and miracles and encouraging his children to keep on grumbling. No, there in verse 4 He says that he’s going to provide in such a way that tests them, seeing if his children will keep his commands.

We’re going to see this over and over throughout the rest of Exodus: the wilderness is a proving ground.

It’s one of the clearest, most beautiful pictures that we have of the Christian life in the Old Testament.

We are on an incredible journey from slavery to sin and death to the promised land of heaven. The christian life is the wilderness, friends. There are all kinds of ups and downs and twists and turns. It is full of trials and tests from the LORD. But through it we are sanctified. Through it we know and love and trust God more. Through it, with the Spirit’s help, we become a little more like Jesus every single day, keeping his commands and following him with our whole hearts and lives. Day by day drawing closer to the permanent lasting home that God has promised us in heaven with Him.

So let us begin this morning to trust him a little more and to obey and follow him through the wilderness.

As we get into the rest of the passage this morning, what we’re going to see as our main idea is this:

Main Idea :: Because God has delivered us and provides for us, we must keep His commands

Now the question to ask is:

How do we best position ourselves to keep His commands?

We’ve got two points to help us this morning:

1) Remember God Delivers

2) Remember God Provides

So first up, we have...

1) Remember God Delivers

We see this in Exodus 16:6-7 “So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord.”

So again, in response to Israel’s grumbling, God chooses not to punish them, but to provide for them and remind them of who He is and what he has done for them. And he says that he’s not just going to stop there with the miraculous provisions, but to reinforce the reminder he’s going to show them his glory.

God is saying to his people: “Let me remind you that those 10 plagues on Egypt and Pharoah and their Gods? That was me. You being set free from your bondage to the strongest empire the world has ever known? That was me. You being guided by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire? That was me. You crossing the sea on dry ground and Pharoah and his army being drowned in the same waters you safely passed through? That was me.”

See, fam, God’s reminding them that He and He alone has delivered them, and He’s telling them that they must trust him to provide. He is with them and will guide them on their way to the Promised Land.

Obeying God’s commands starts with us remembering that He has delivered us. That’s why he starts with this reminder to Israel. He tells them how he’s going to provide, and he tells them it’s going to be an ongoing test of faith, but it is all built on the foundation of God delivering His people from their bondage.

So this morning, be reminded. If you belong to Him, if you believe that God has saved you, our great God. Yahweh. The LORD. He has delivered you.

What has he delivered you from? Namely, your sins. He has delivered you from your bondage to sin and the death that it deserves. We all choose sin, and we were all running towards hell, and God in his mercy has chosen and delivered you.

How has he delivered you? Through the Gospel of His Son, Jesus. Jesus laid down his life to be the perfect, spotless, Passover Lamb for you. His blood was spilled to cover the doorposts of your life, so that death loses it’s hold on you, and to wash away your sins. He gave his very life for you because he loves you more than anything in the world, but then he rose from the dead conquering sin and death, rescuing you and setting you free from your bondage. He ascended back to heaven and sent you His Spirit to assure you and guarantee that you belong to him, and that he will come back.

Friend, if you believe that Gospel, then you have been delivered. God has delivered you by the redeeming work of Jesus, amen?

After being delivered, now you’re living in the wilderness of the christian life. You have faced, are facing, and will face many tests of your faith, but you can be sure that through them your God is with you, and has designed these tests to help you trust and obey him more and more throughout your life!

Now how do we best position ourselves to remember that God delivers? It’s an easy thing for us to forget in our day-to-day life. Just look at the example of Isreal forgetting over, and over again who God is and what he has done for them. We are no different than the Israelites in this regard. We are prone to forget who God is and what he has done. So how do we actively remember that He delivers?

I’ve got 4 quick suggestions for you:

1) Read the story of the Exodus. (You’re doing it now, and we’re going to be in it together for a while as a church, so good job!)

This is one of the biggest benefits of sitting under the preached Word every week as a church. We are regularly reminded of God’s activity, grace, and faithfulness to us!

2) Read the Gospels, and letters of the New Testament often.

They not only show us who Jesus is, but they remind us again and again that God has delivered us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

3) Recount your salvation, very often. Daily, throughout your day, maybe. Recall who you were and who you would be apart from God’s saving grace, and let that remind you that he has delivered you.

Friends, this can be done as you’re getting ready for your day, or it can be done as you’re getting ready for bed. Spend time daily thanking God for saving you and making you new. Recounting your salvation this frequently will make it much harder to forget that God has delivered you and will continue to provide for you.

4) Ask to hear other’s testimonies.

When you’re hanging out with other believers, if you’ve never heard their story, or maybe just haven’t heard it in a while, ask them about it. Hearing about how God has saved and been faithful to others stirs our souls to live our lives for him, and is an excellent reminder for us to be sharing the hope that we have in Christ with others, so that they might hear about and know and believe the saving, transforming power of the Gospel. Friends, we really do need these regular reminders of God’s faithfulness.

All of these are ways to be regularly reminded that God has delivered you from your sin, and that should fill you with hope and faith in Him, to follow and obey him every day, no matter the circumstance. That’s not always easy, but praise the LORD that we’re not alone and have each other, to remind us of our salvation and deliverance in Christ.

Church, we must Remember God Delivers. It helps us to begin to truly believe that...

Because God has delivered us and provides for us, we must keep His commands

Not only do we need to Remember God Delivers, but our second point is a call to...

2) Remember God Provides

This is coming from verses 13-31, and this is where we’ll spend the bulk of our time this morning.

God provides miraculously for his people in two very incredible ways. Two ways that give them exactly what they asked for: meat and bread.

First, God provides meat by sending enough quail that very evening to, like it says in verse 13, ‘cover the camp.’ Now, I dunno if you guys know how big a quail is, but it ain’t big… and how many quail are needed to feed 1 or 2 million people a dinner has got to be an insane number… Some people will try to argue that this wasn’t really a miracle because quail were native to the land and they migrate in large groups, etc. But I don’t care what anyone says, for that many quail to show up to feed that many people exactly when God said it would happen, which was the same day he said it would happen, is absolutely a miracle. That’s not a coincidence, that is the miraculous, generous, intentional provision of God for his people.

But it leads me to ask you the question: how has God provided for you in seemingly “normal” ways?

Not that I’m saying the provision of quail was “normal” by any means… but that the quail itself was a normal food source that wasn’t foreign to the Israelites.

One of the ways that we can remember that God provides is by pointing out, recording even, and recalling how he has done so in our lives.

Maybe you had a bill or an expense come out of nowhere, and you got an unexpected gift or bonus that was just enough to cover the cost. Maybe you’ve been feeling lonely and isolated and someone reaches out to catch up or introduces themselves to you on a Sunday. Maybe you know that appliance is on it’s last leg, and yet it just keeps running. All of these, and so many more, are “normal” examples of God’s provision. Friends, they’re not random or “normal.” They are miraculous, generous, provisions of God for his people. Remember that God Provides.

Now the second miracle God provides for Israel is just mind blowing. Look at verses 14-15 with me:

Exodus 16:14–15 ESV

And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

What in the world is this stuff? Well, that’s exactly what the Israelites were asking!

Down in verse 31 wee find a description of it: Exodus 16:31 “Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.”

Sounds dope. I was talking to Amanda about it a lot this week and her response has repeatedly been “dude, I will take honey wafer cookies any day.” (I love her…)

But for real, what is it? God himself describes it as bread from heaven back in verse 4. Here in verse 15 Moses answers the question by saying that “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.”

There’s a few different theories that are all based on real-life occurrences, and any of them could be what manna really was. I’ll let you go discover more about those yourselves. But the problems that we encounter when we try to logically and scientifically determine what manna really was is that those possibilities are native to the area, so “what is is?” would be an odd response from the Israelites, AND, all those possibilities are seasonal, only appearing for a handful of weeks each year, AND, the sheer quantity of manna needed to feed this many people is really just impossible naturally.

All this to say: we don’t know exactly what it was, but most important to see right now is that the God who delivered his people daily provided for their biggest physical need. We must remember that God Provides.

But when we look beyond what it is, we see how God instructed his people to gather and use it, and this is where it gets even more incredible...

Read with me starting in verse 16: “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, (which verse 36 tells us is a day’s worth of food) according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’ ”

Alright, Drew, what’s so crazy about that? Well, friends, first of all, look at that; God is responding directly to their complaint about being able to eat to their fill in Egypt. Here he says ‘gather as much as you can eat in a day,’ Eat until you are full. But it gets better! Keep reading with me in verses 17-18:

Exodus 16:17–18 ESV

And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat.

So not only was the manna miraculously provided, but it miraculously was exactly enough for what each person needed. In other words, God’s miraculous provision is perfect, lacking in nothing. No more, no less. God provided perfectly.

But now look at verses 19-20:

Exodus 16:19–20 ESV

And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them.

Now hang on, if nobody had gathered too much, how could they have leftovers?

Well, as people who are very prone to forget about God’s deliverance and provision, and who are quick to doubt God, do you think maybe some people were like “I’m gonna store some of this away in case there isn’t any more manna in the morning...”? You better believe it!

Verse 20 says that they didn’t listen to Moses and some people left some till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. That’s gross. I could give you illustrations and tell you stories about gross things, but I feel like this is vivid enough... By trying to hoard the manna and not trusting God to provide more the next day, their lack of faith results in rotten, worm-infested food. God told them it would be a test, and yet on the very first day people are failing to trust him and keep his commands.

Friends, we must remember that God provides, and he does so perfectly. His blessing of provisions for our true needs will never run out if we trust him and keep his commands.

But if we keep reading, we see yet another test of faith in God’s Word and provision. In verse 22 we’re told that they followed instructions and gathered enough manna for two days, in order to rest on the sabbath, and still have food to eat.

But wait. The leftovers rot and have worms, don’t they? Not on the sabbath they don’t. Here’s another issue with trying to prove what mana was: it rots overnight every day of the week except on the sabbath? Craziness. But it’s true! And as the people obeyed and gathered twice as much on the sixth day, there was no new manna outside. yet they had exactly enough for what they needed on the sabbath. God’s provision was perfect. It had no lack. It didn’t run out. But look at verse 27 with me. Even after all of this, there’s still people who aren’t listening, who aren’t remembering, who aren’t obeying God’s commands:

Exodus 16:27–30 ESV

On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.

Church, over and over we see in Scripture, we see that we must remember who God is and obey His commands. He Delivers us, and He Provides for us.

Now maybe you have the question, how does God provide for us today? It’s a fair question, and I think it’s one that God is eager for us to be able to answer readily and with lots of examples!

Friends, our Bible is absolutely full of God’s promises to provide for us and help us.

There’s also an excellent devotional book I highly recommend to you, called The Promises of God, by Charles Spurgeon. Get it. Read it slowly, and be reminded of God’s promises to you.

But for today, I just want to share some verses to remind you that our God is perfect in power and strength. His wisdom is beyond our understanding, and his faithfulness, mercy, kindness, and love towards you is truly immeasurable. He cares for you and he wants you to be well aware of these realities:

Deuteronomy 31:8 “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.””

2 Chronicles 7:14 “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Psalm 32:8 “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.”

Isaiah 41:10 “fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.””

Philippians 4:19 “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Friends, that’s just a fly by sampling of some of the promises of God to be with us and help us and provide for us.

These passages and so many more remind us that God provides for us exactly what we need, and that his provision is perfect. And as we live in his provision we must obey him, and trust that it is enough. Even though we so often want to take things into our own hands, like trying to store some manna for tomorrow, we need to trust him. Even though we so often don’t trust Him to provide, like going out to gather manna on the sabbath, we need to rest in him, and while we do we must trust him to provide.

Church, let Scripture move you towards prayer: Bring God your concerns and your cares and ask for his help and provision! And then trust that what he provides is exactly what you need.

Try taking the night before your day off to take all your burdens and worries to the Lord, and asking for his help. Lay your weary head down, and go to sleep, entrusting everything you need provision for to the Lord. Start your day off by spending some extended time with the Lord, reminding yourself that He is your God, and that he will help you and provide for you. And then go about your day resting in Him first, and trusting that He will provide for you, even when your checklist for the day doesn’t get done.

Try the same thing on Saturday evening before we gather as the church. Then take some extended time, even after a whole morning together, to be with the people of God and allow your soul to be refreshed, finding rest in God, and trusting Him to provide for all your needs.

Another way to see how God provides for us today: Take some time to recount how God has provided for you throughout your life.

Start by thinking about the big things: job, school, house, family, whoever shared the gospel with you, friends. Recount specific stories for these things; how did God provide each of them for you?

Then start to think about other things: favorite places and hobbies, meaningful memories, prized possessions, etc. It could be the littlest thing that reminds you personally in a very personal and particular way that God provides for you.

Church he knows you better than you know yourself, and he knows exactly what you need and when you need it, and he has promised to provide for you.

So how do we best remember that God provides? Read our Bibles, spend time in prayer, and record and recount all the ways he physically, tangibly provides for us. But the best way to remember God provides is to look to Jesus, who is the single greatest provision that God has ever given for us.

John 6 may be a familiar passage to you. It’s where Jesus feeds the 5,000. There in verses 1-14 are some really beautiful parallels with our passage this morning. I’d really encourage you guys to read Exodus 16 and John 6 over or after lunch or dinner today and talk about the connections you see. Jesus talks about testing his disciples, and about the people eating their fill, it’s really incredible.

But what I really want to look at in John 6 is found in verses 26-35. I’m going to read this for us, because it is here that Jesus compares himself to the bread of heaven sent by God in our passage in Exodus this morning, and makes significant, life-changing, world-altering claims:

John 6:28–35 (ESV)

(The day after he had fed the 5,000 many from that same crowd travelled to find him in Capernaum

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

He continues in verse 47:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”

Friends, do you ever have doubt that God is in fact who he says He is?

Do you ever have doubt that he has truly delivered you from your bondage to sin?

Do you ever have doubt that he is with you or that he is guiding you towards heaven with Him?

Do you ever have doubts that he will provide for each and every one of your true needs?

Do you allow those doubts and fears to wreak havoc on your faith, and then take matters into your own hands?

I certainly do! I cannot tell you how many times I’ve forgotten, or chosen not to trust, that God is good, and for me, or not believed that he has delivered me and will provide for me…

I do not like to depend on or trust in anyone else. It makes me vulnerable. It makes me feel weak. It makes me feel like I have no control. It makes me feel helpless.

But believer, that’s the point.

The point of the manna was to test the faith of God’s people and help them to trust God for their needs on a daily basis. It was to test their faith and help them to keep and obey his commands. And we need that, too. The meaning of the manna for us today is that all we need is Jesus.

He IS the bread of life. The bread of heaven sent by God down into the world to provide for our deepest, darkest need: salvation from our sins.

But He is also the bread of life, the bread that we need on a daily basis to know and love and follow and obey God with our whole hearts and minds and bodies and lives.

Remember that we are in the wilderness. We are traveling from slavery to sin to eternity with God in Heaven. The point of the wilderness is to sanctify us and make us more like Jesus.

Because God has delivered us and provides for us, we must keep His commands

We cannot deliver ourselves, and we cannot provide for ourselves. We need Jesus.

We must remember God delivers, and remember God provides, amen?

To start wrapping this up, let’s look at verses 32-36 together.

I love this section because it shows us that God himself is commited to helping us remember that he delivers and provides. It’s a helpful reminder that it’s not just up to us.

In verse 32 we see that God commands Israel: Exodus 16:32 “‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’ ””. Verses 33 & 34 tell us that that’s exactly what they did.

Why does this matter? Because it shows us that God could preserve the manna. He could keep it from rotting and being infested with worms. He was able to do that and he would for this specific jar of manna so that the people could see and remember how God had miraculously provided for them over and over throughout the whole 40 years in the wilderness.

So these verses reinforce that the wilderness and the manna, they were tests. Could God have provided a never-ending food source that would never go bad? Of course he could! But because He loves his children and wants them to trust him and obey him, God was testing Israel’s faith, just like he tests our faith now, to trust and believe that he will provide for all our needs.

These verses matter because we see that God provided for them a physical, tangible reminder of his deliverance and provision.

Believer, ask yourself: what physical, tangible reminders has God given you of his deliverance and provision? Let me put forward first and foremost, the Bible, because in it we find recorded everything we need for salvation and life and godliness. This book recounts God’s entire plan and promise of redemption through the Gospel of Jesus and it is THE thing that we have to help us remember that God delivers and provides.

God knows that we are quick to forget, that we are quick to doubt, that we are quick to fear and not trust him. So, in his unending kindness He himself has given us an incredibly valuable and effective reminder of who he is and what he has done and what he promises he will do. THIS BOOK is the best reminder. It is where we look to remember everything about God, and where we look for help to follow him and obey His commands.

And while we unpack this keeping, preserving language, we can’t miss tying God’s preservation of the manna into God’s preserving of His people.

Remember that for us today, the biggest point of the manna is that Jesus, the bread of Life & Heaven, is all we need. God preserves our souls and our lives through Jesus.

Jesus gives us life from death, he sustains our daily lives, and he has secured and is keeping eternal life for us in heaven with him.

What a picture! What a reality! What a hope and assurance we have in Jesus, friends!

If you believe that Jesus died for your sins, for you, if you believe that he has saved you from death and hell, then you belong, body and soul, to Him.

He is all you need, he has delivered you, and he will provide for you, giving you life today, and tomorrow, and for the rest of your days, and he will preserve your life and soul forever in heaven with him.

HE is the bread of life, and we must follow and obey his commands, amen? Amen.

Because God has delivered us and provides for us, we must keep His commands

CLOSE

Now, because of its proximity to verse 36, which simply explains what an omer is, I think Verse 35 can be easy to overlook.

But friends, I think this verse is one of the most challenging, vision-casting, encouraging verses of this chapter.

Exodus 16:35 “The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan.”

Why do I think it’s so great? Because when I think about my life being the wilderness, this verse casts a vision for me of trusting God for the rest of my life.

It helps me remember that God has delivered and redeemed me from my sin, only by the blood of Jesus.

It helps me remember that God has provided for my biggest need already, and that He will provide for all my needs as I follow and keep his commands.

It reminds me that for the rest of my days I need Jesus to sustain me and help me, because He is the bread of heaven, the bread of life.

It reminds me that until I reach the shores of heaven I have all that I need in Jesus, and that he will not abandon me or cast me aside.

It reminds me that my God is good all the time, and that he is patient, and gracious, that he is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

It reminds me that I am in fact being guided by the LORD towards eternity with Him.

It’s easy for us to forget all that, isn’t it? So I’m really grateful for a verse like this that prompts me to remember all that God has done, and all that he has promised to do.

Friends, let us together help each other follow God and keep his commands, helping us all to remember that God delivers, provides, amen? Amen.

Let’s pray.

PRAY