The Wandering: Provision for Protestors

Intro - Exodus 16 and the background.

The Mindset

Mindset of slavery

There is a problem with man’s deliverance…although someone can be removed from slavery, many times slavery can’t be removed from the person.

Here we see that upon arriving out of Egypt, in a matter of months, they were starved.

Let’s not forget how they left Egypt...

Exodus 12:33–38 ESV

The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste. For they said, “We shall all be dead.” So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders. The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians. And the people of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.

Do you have any idea how much livestock, flocks, and herds 600k people can shepherd? And yet here they are 6-8 weeks later STARVING.

Something happens when a slave is freed…it is when the person is all of a sudden given an abundance of things that they previously didn’t have, and may have not earned, and they consume it as fast as they can because they don’t know when they’ll get another chance.

And just as they were before, soon they’ll return again, to poverty because they have consumed it all.

It’s hard for them to trust in anything other than what they have in front of them.

Something happens in the comfort that momentarily grips the heart…I remember hearing one preacher say that Christians in America have mistaken a loss of comforts as persecution!

So we, like the Israelites, grumble against leaders, waiting for them to save us all the while we distort where we were years ago believing that to be better than where we are today all because we spurned the moments of plenty.

We must be careful that we don’t yearn for our old masters...

What do I mean? Well the Israelites described their old masters as providing them with “meat pots and bread to the full”..

We can do much the same, we want selective things out of the world, our “old master”…we possess selective memories of that world.

Let me be honest…there is a desire in me for the love of money, that it will somehow allow me to purchase all these worldly things and that will bring me comfort…but I’M SHOPPING AT THE SAME STORE!

The same store that has taken my mother from me, taken my father from me, corrupted me with seductive images, torn apart the homes of friends, used me up then abandoned me....yet I desire to return…like an addict

Be careful of those old masters…those “pots of meat” and “eating bread to the full” come with the lash, pain, and heartache…

Yet, the Lord provided nonetheless and advised them to only gather manna and quail 6 days and to rest the 7th.

However, the people refused God’s rest and instead sought to work…possessed by the greed that is rooted in self-sufficiency.

What are they really saying about God though? They are saying that at least their old master didn’t forget about them...

Adulthood is a beast. I remember wanting to be an adult as a kid thinking it granted me freedoms! Now I know it only gives responsibility and if I’m honest the overwhelming belief that it’s…all…on…you. You must provide for yourself. If you don’t, you will be forgotten because no one else is going to do it for you.

The Lord granting rest but they’re driven mad by their overwhelming desire that they must provide for themselves.

Think of how much we are driven in the same fashion…although freed from slavery to sin and death, we willingly work like slaves for the same joys it supplies, not realizing they’re already given in Jesus.

The Israelites gathered and gathered, saved even though God promised them provision for tomorrow but they didn’t trust, worked even though God promised them rest but they didn’t trust.

Much like the Israelites, we yearn for freedom from oppression of others only to abuse ourselves by becoming our own masters!!!

So we go from place to place, gathering, hording, searching, hunting for provision…and not just physical but emotional, spiritual, intellectual, relational, just like our old master taught us to do not realizing the provision is in God!

We use each other and when someone proves to be deficient in providing us what we’d like…we turn on them.

TR: Yet, in doing so we miss the message...

The Message

The message of they’re not grumbling against people but against the God that put them into that situation

Here’s something that some of us need to hear…that spouse, job, child, relative, friend, is that one God may want you to have to display His glory to.

I believe there is a profound truth in Scripture…IF you adopt an eternal perspective then a beneficial relationship is a sanctifying relationship…a beneficial situation is a sanctifying situation.

The purpose of the giving wasn’t purely to provide but was to ‘test’ them and show them what they were about.

God provided regularly and sufficiently and yet they failed to learn to trust...

Make no mistake about it folks…there is NO coincidence that although they plundered the Egyptians that God WAITED to supply their every need until they had exhausted everything which they had gained...

While so many of us covet the things of this world and at times, you are allowed to “plunder” it…maybe you hit it big, get a good job, or advance in some way…NEVER MISTAKE the reality that those goods will run out...

The sufficiency of that person, place, or thing is insufficient

And while God may not give you all that you may desire He will consistently supply your needs BUT He’ll do so in a way that grows your faith rather than just grows your belly...

And this was the EXACT purpose of the manna…it had NOTHING to do with FOOD!!!

Deuteronomy 8:2–5 ESV

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And 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 man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.

The VERY REASON THAT YOU are hungry the way you are hungry and fed the way you are fed is so that you will grow in trusting in the Lord.

THAT’S why that person, that job, that money, that situation isn’t sufficient for you....IT’S NOT MEANT TO BE!!!

We continue to try to gather gifts from the Lord and hold them tightly as though there aren’t more to come!

This LIFE itself is fleeting…let it go!!!

I remember all of the weddings that I’ve ever done…you want to know the thing I liked the least about all of them? The dress rehearsal…and only because during the dress rehearsal…everyone arrives on their own time, it always seems prolonged, is more painful than it should be, everyone has an opinion on how it should go, and the groom of the Bride is never included in planning…ladies and gentleman…life for the church is a gigantic dress rehearsal.

This ENTIRE thing is a dress rehearsal!!!

Why are we storing up treasures here on Earth knowing that tomorrow they’ll perish! Even the physical treasures that God provides!

God will LET YOU HUNGER!!! only to satisfy you with something OTHER THAN what you long for but is sufficient...

The crazy thing is that eventually the Israelites learned this…slightly

John 6:25–36 ESV

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 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. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.

So they had the idea. That although Jesus was doing something great that they needed something greater to be done.

Jesus had just fed many people…yet they weren’t satisfied. They said “hey, feeding a lot of people is cool but Moses did that for a whole nation…you need to step your game up”

Jesus complied and said “bet…I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE AND WHOEVER COME TO ME WILL NEVER…HUNGER…AGAIN”

Here’s what’s both glorious and convicting…I’M STILL HUNGRY!!! I’M STILL WALKING OUT INTO THE DESERT LOOKING FOR LEFTOVERS FROM YESTERDAY’S MANNA!!!

ALL THE WHILE GOD HAS INVITED US TO REST, A TRUE…SABBATH REST IN JESUS, AND HUNGER NO MORE!!!!

THERE IS PROVISION FOR US PROTESTORS…IN JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH…THE TRUE BREAD OF LIFE AND MANNA FROM HEAVEN!!!