Sermon Tone Analysis

Leader Guide ESV, Unit 5, Session 1, © 2018 LifeWay Christian Resources

Permission granted to reproduce and distribute within the license agreement with purchaser.

Edited by Rev. Lex DeLong, M.A., Feb. 2022.

A Test in the Wilderness

Summary and Goal

God had delivered His people out of slavery in Egypt through His powerful works.

Sadly, the people forgot what they had seen, they lost sight of God’s power, and they doubted and grumbled when they became hungry in the wilderness.

We are not much different from the people of Israel: We too are prone to forget the promises of God; we are prone to wander from the Lord, even when He has proven Himself to be good and faithful.

God is faithful despite our faithlessness and demonstrates that faithfulness to us as we go through trials and tribulations.

How do we typically decide what things to trust God to provide (i.e.

worthy to pray for, or what is too insignificant for Him or too big for us)?

Session Outline

1. God always provides for His people in times of their need (Ex.

16:2-4).

++2.

God always provides for His people despite their disobedience (Ex.

16:13-20).

++3.

God sometimes provides for His people in unexpected ways (Ex.

17:3-6; 1 Cor.

10:1-4).

Session in a Sentence

God is always gracious to provide for His people in times of need, even when they disobey, often in unexpected ways.

Christ Connection

Moses struck the rock instead of the people, and water flowed for the people’s salvation.

Jesus is the Rock who was struck for our salvation, the Rock whose living water satisfies us forever.

Missional Application

Because we have experienced God’s grace through the striking of His Son, we receive God’s faithful provision for our daily needs with gratitude as we testify of His kindness to others so that they too may come to trust in Him.

DDG (p.

75) .

The exodus story thus far:

· God showed His power in miracle after miracle in the plagues and delivered His people out of Egypt.

· God delivered His people through the Red Sea and caused Pharaoh’s army to be swallowed up by the same sea.

· Safe and secure in the presence of the Lord on the other side of the sea, the Israelites expressed their worship through singing.

· The Israelites followed God’s leadership through Moses for three days in the wilderness and could not find water, and they began grumbling.

When their throats became dry, their memories became short.

It is easy to read the story of the exodus and be critical and frustrated with the behavior of the Israelites, but we need to realize how important water is.

for the whole tour of Israel, we hear over and over again, “no water, no life.”

For Israel, this was a real life and death situation.

That does not meant that they shouldn’t trust the Lord; they had already seen God provide in life and death situations, but to think that this should have been easy for them is a misnomer.

I wonder how much we are like them.

We have seen God work in our lives, and we have praised His name in response, but then something didn’t go as planned and our worship gave way to grumbling.

Summarize: The people of Israel forgot what they had seen, they lost sight of God’s power, and they doubted and grumbled in the wilderness.

We are not much different from them.

However, the Lord does not take His people into the wilderness because He is cruel or because He has forsaken us—He does so to sanctify us, to make us rely less on ourselves and more on Him.

The wilderness, is a blessing from God, not a curse.

Point 1: God provides for His people in their time of need (Ex.

16:2-4).

Read: Exodus 16:2-4 (DDG p. 76).

2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “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.”

4 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.

DDG (p.

76) The Israelites grumbled out of fear.

After God had proven Himself many times over, even providing water for them in the wilderness (Ex.

15:22-27), the Israelites again grumbled in fear instead of resting in faith.

Their fear caused them to complain and to distrust God.

They started believing it would have been better to die in Egypt as slaves than to follow God in the wilderness.

DDG (p.

76) God responded to the Israelites in love.

This same God continues today to show love and grace to His people.

Yet once more we see God’s faithfulness, love, and grace on display for His fearful and distrusting people.

God’s patience truly runs deep.

God responded to their grumbling not in wrath but in love, raining down bread from heaven to feed them.

While the refrain of the Israelites was to doubt God, question Him, and walk in disobedience,

God’s refrain is to extend His grace, mercy, and forgiveness again and again and again.

· This is who God is, and He hasn’t changed.

God is just as faithful, even when His people today are just as faithless.

We wander and run from God.

We doubt Him.

We complain and question His character.

We put our hope in other things—even the absurd—instead of turning to God, trusting Him, worshiping Him, and hoping in Him.

And yet, God continues to love us and extend liberal amounts of grace and mercy to us.

Just because God loves us doesn’t mean He won’t put us through trials and tribulations.

In fact, because God loves us, He allows us to be tested and even to suffer at times.

The problem is that we don’t understand trials.

We see trials as God’s way of figuring us out, of seeing what we can handle and how deep our spiritual maturity runs, as if He needed to collect information on us.

That is why we balk at the pain we endure.

But trials are not for God to know our faith; they are so we might come to know our faith.

Through trials and suffering, God strengthens us.

He deepens our roots so we might stand more boldly for Him despite the storms that howl around us.

That’s why we consider it all joy when we face various trials, because we know that God is at work in and through them for our good

Fill in the blanks: DDG (p.

76).

God Is Gracious: God’s nature is to delight in giving unmerited favor to those who are undeserving (Eph.

2:8-9).

His grace toward sinners is found most clearly in the salvation He has provided through Christ.

Because of sin, humanity is undeserving of salvation—all of us have turned our backs on God, and as a result, we deserve death (Rom.

6:23).

However, instead of leaving people in their sins, God has demonstrated His graciousness by providing atonement and forgiveness for our sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus

What are some ways we can remind ourselves of God’s love when adversity makes it feels as if God’s love has waned or ceased?

(we can read Scripture to be reminded that God is always the same and His love never changes; we can look back at our own lives and see how God has loved us and provided for all of our needs; we can seek the counsel of brothers and sisters in Christ who will encourage with the truth of God’s Word that He is faithful, gracious, and unchanging)

Point 2: God provides for His people despite their disobedience (Ex.

16:13-20).

In their hunger and fear, the people doubted and grumbled, yet God was gracious and promised to provide bread from heaven for them.

But God’s provision came with a caveat: The people were to gather only what they needed for each day.

On the sixth day, they would find they had twice as much as the other days so they would not need to gather on the Sabbath.

This would be God’s way of testing His people (Ex.

16:4-5).

Read Exodus 16:13-20 (DDG p. 77).

13 In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp.

14 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.

15 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.

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, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’

” 17 And the people of Israel did so.

They gathered, some more, some less.

18 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.

19 And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.”

20 But they did not listen to Moses.