God Provides

We are continuing with our sermon series “God with Us. We are working our way through the book of Exodus and discovering different ways that God was with the Israelites. We have seen how God saved and then gave the Israelites a leader named Moses.

How he gave them a way out of captivity. How God helped them escape the Egyptian army. This week we will focus on how God provided for them and also will provide for us. Our scripture comes from Exodus 16:2-15. The words will be on the screen.

2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”

6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?” 8 Moses also said, “You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.”

9 Then Moses told Aaron, “Say to the entire Israelite community, ‘Come before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’ ”

10 While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud.

11 The Lord said to Moses, 12 “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’ ”

13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.

Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.

Please pray with me…

Many of us are very good at compartmentalizing our lives. We let some people into some part of our lives and not others. This way of living might not be healthy, but this is OK until we make the same decision regarding God. We need to interact with God in all parts of our lives. We need to let him in, and allow him to work in every aspect of our lives.

God desires for you to let him know the ways that he can provide for you. He wants to hear from you. He wants you to tell him what you want from him. As was mentioned last week, not just in your spiritual journey, God wants to be a part of every part of your life. Your work life, your personal life, and of course your spiritual life.

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God wants to provide assistance for you just as he did in this case for the Israelites. He wants to be a part of your life journey, and he desires to help you on that journey. But at the same time, he usually will not force you into accepting his assistance.

He desires for us to let him get close enough in order to provide for us. He doesn’t want us to keep him at arm’s length. He wants us to be willing to allow him to be in community with us. God desires to be as close to you as you are willing to allow for him to be.

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God wants us to have the faith to believe that he can provide for us. We not only need to ask him, but we need to also believe that he can do it. Most of us have asked for something at some point in our lives never expecting that we are going to receive it.

We believe it’s not going to hurt to ask, but that does not mean it’s going to happen. God wants us to believe that when we ask for it, that it will happen. He wants us to have enough faith that he will answer our request with a yes.

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Both of Our scripture readings for today help lead us into an understanding that there are times when God provides for us because he recognizes our need for his assistance. We may not even have to ask for his help. God sees the need and helps to fix what needs fixed.

In Exodus this involves a group of people in the wilderness without any food. This is going to be an ongoing issue and so God not only offers a way for them to eat right then but be also lets Moses know that he will be providing enough food for them to live on for each day.

In the case of our reading from Luke, he also provides food. The difference being that he wanted the disciples to have the faith that with God’s help they would be able to provide the food. When they didn’t have the faith, he becomes the example to them on how when they trust in God, he will provide them with what they need and also with what others need.

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There also may be times when God will provide for us even when we don’t believe. Our reading from Exodus has a group of people that are hungry and asking Moses why he brought them out into the wilderness to starve to death.

They had already seen God working through Moses to allow for them to leave Egypt and no longer be slaves. They had seen God through Moses parting the Red Sea so that they could cross and get away from the Egyptian army. They had seen these amazing things, but they still did not have enough faith to believe that God would be able to provide them with the food that they needed to survive.

If you have been here or watching as a part of our You Tube worship experience for other parts of this series than you know this is a trend. Things get tough and the people get upset with Moses. What they don’t seem to recognize is that when they get mad at Moses, they are really getting mad at God.

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Moses didn’t want to head back to Egypt and free the Israelites. Moses didn’t want to lead the people through the wilderness. Moses is choosing to follow the will of God. It is God that is leading while Moses is following.

This is a great reminder for us. Even when we are doing what God desires for us to do it doesn’t mean that we are not going to face pushback. Following the will of God doesn’t automatically lead to others choosing to follow.

But what does happen when we follow the will of God is that God will be with us. God will attempt to help us change the hearts and minds of those around us. He will be on the journey with us providing us with help along the way.

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That is what God does in today’s scripture. He tells Moses to let them know that food will not be an issue. The food might not be plentiful where they are in the wilderness but he will provide it from Heaven.

It will be called manna, bread from heaven, and it will be available every day but the Sabbath but there will be enough the day before the Sabbath for them to have their food covered that day as well.

But it is also important for us to see that God didn’t just drop the manna off at their doorstep. He did make them go out and pick it up each day. This would allow for the Israelites to remember each day where this gift is coming from. That it is God providing for them the food they need each day.

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He may choose to do the same for us. God may provide what we need but also make us work at getting it. This is where we find the line in the Lord’s prayer “give us this day our daily bread.” When we are asking for this, we are acknowledging that we need God with us to help provide for us. We are saying that we need him to keep us on the right path.

We need to be willing to let God provide for us what we need when we need it. God wants to be there for us, and he is willing to be there for us. What can stop him from providing for us is our unwillingness to ask or accept what he is giving to us.

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What comes to mind is the story of the person who has flood waters rising up around their house. They go up to the roof and ask for God to save them as the flood water continue to rise. They have a friend in his rowboat come by and offer to help him off the roof, he turns them down because God is going to save him.

The water continues to rise and a person in a motorboat comes by and offers to give the person a ride to safety. The person again turns down the offer because God is going to save him.

The water at this point has almost reached them when a helicopter comes and drops a rope ladder for the person to climb up and be saved. Again, the person declines because God is going to save him.

The man drowns and when he gets up to Heaven, he’s upset with God for not answering his prayer. It is at this point that God tells him I did answer your prayer. I sent you two boats and helicopter, but you refused my help.

God wants to provide what we need when we need it. We need to be willing to accept help from God. Humans at times can struggle acknowledging that we can’t make it on our own. We need to accept the help God is attempting to offer to us even if it is through others around us.

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You may have noticed I did not say that God will provide what we want when we want it. We will sometimes get our wants, but we will receive them when our wants match what God believes is a need.

We are in a society that wants what it wants. We are also a society of instant gratification. Meaning not only do we want what we want, but we want what we want when we want it. That is not how God always works. We can ask but that does not mean we will receive it unless we need it. It also does not mean that we will receive what we want when we want it.

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There are a number of ways that God regularly provides help for us. One area that God will intervene if we ask him is to provide comfort when we need it. When we suddenly lose someone or something God will be there to help us through it. He wants to lead us through our grief. He wants to help us become who we were before but different because of what we have experienced.

God wants to provide us strength when we feel weak. When it seems like the world is on our shoulders and there is no relief in sight, God is there. It is God that has helped many people get through tough times in their lives. God wants to help us become the person he created us to be.

He provides us with peace of mind. This is another area that God has been helpful to many people. Many people deal with anxiety. God desires to help us with our anxiety. Scripture tells us to put our troubles onto him. Let God deal with the weight and anxiety associated with what we are currently going through.

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We need to have the faith to say to God “this is weighing me down. I can’t handle it anymore. I turn it over to you.” Let God take the weight of what you are struggling with. Take a deep breath and turn it over to him. Let God carry the burden for you.

Doing this doesn’t mean that life is going to be perfect. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to turn out just the way we want it too. But what it does mean is that we realize that the worry we have today is not going to help us get through tomorrow.

Try to focus on living instead of worrying. Try to focus on being a child of God and trusting that he will be the type of father that will carry you through the tough times and will walk with you when things are going well.

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We should also remember the most important way that God has provided for each one of us. God provided a way for us to overcome the power of sin. He brought us out of the darkness that sin had held over humanity and brought the world into the light of freedom.

God did this through his son Jesus who came down to earth to live amongst us. He was an example for those that were willing to listen and follow him during that time. And then he died on the cross and provided each one of us the opportunity to have our sins forgiven.

If you are watching and listening right now and you do not have a relationship with God through Jesus, I want you to know that God provided Jesus for you just as he did for me. It does not matter what you have done.

It does not matter how you have felt about God in the past. God wants to give you a clean slate. God wants to provide you the opportunity to have him provide you with the comfort, strength and peace that I have spoken of earlier plus so much more.

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No matter if you have just started believing, fell away and are coming back, or have followed God for practically your whole life, you should decide to let God provide for you what you need. You should decide to have him walk with you through life, right beside you, communicating with you the whole time.

You should decide to let him guide you on the path that he has set for you. Each one of us have been given a unique set of gifts for us to use for the purpose of serving God and serving those around us. Our God wants us to let him to be as the scripture tells us, “A lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.”

And remember to keep God with you day in and day out. Don’t choose the times that he is around. Don’t say that my devotion time is for God and the rest of my time is for me. Let God be with you and offer you provision all day, every day.

Let us pray…