Where’s My Daily Bread?

Joshua 5:10-12

The day the manna stopped.

The danger of plenty.

For 40 years they had been getting miraculous bread gathered on the ground.

The end of the Sabbath training.

They get the blessing of the Promised Land. They will lose their daily dependence on God.

My Favorite Aunt

Dylan’s favorite aunt is my sister Heather.

I ask him why. It’s because “she is always super nice to me…

… and she makes Cash give me his toys!”

That is the key to his heart, you see. All people have their love languages, Dylan’s is Gifts. Give the boy a gift and he is your friend for life.

Now that isn’t a bad thing, many people love to receive gifts. It doesn’t inherently mean they are greedy or superficial. In Dylan’s case… okay maybe he is super greedy, but he is seven.

Thanksgiving and Greed

Day of giving Thanks, appreciating everything God has given.

Immediately followed by the Day of Greed. Black Friday.

Isn’t it ironic?

Can we stick with Thanksgiving a little longer? Even as the season changes towards Christmas and we start thinking of new gifts… isn’t the attitude of Thanksgiving the more appropriate one to bring with us?

The Blessings of God

Over the last 40 years the people of Egypt have seen some massive culture shifts, changes in their whole way of life.

Origin of Passover

Delivers the people from Egypt. Passover story.

What did he deliver them to?

He delivers them to the wilderness. And the people freak out. They want their old blessings back. They want the pots of meat they had in Egypt. They are freaking out that they will have no water. God gives them water from a stone. They are freaking out that they will have no food…

And God literally rains down bread from heaven. Every morning, they gather two liters of manna per person. What was it?

Exodus said it tasted like little cakes made with honey. Possibly it was crystalized honeydew scale insect… but the name means “What is it.” They didn’t know. It was food which, even if it was from an understandable source, the scale and timing of it was divinely miraculous. Every morning God provided their daily bread.

God taught them daily dependence on him. If they gathered too much it spoiled. God taught them Sabbath observance, providing double on Friday.

So God delivered them from Egypt in the Passover. But what has he delivered them to? The wilderness…

… but in that wilderness he shows them that he will care for them. He gives them a miraculous gift of provision in the wilderness. A gift.

Daily bread from heaven.

The generation who were raised in Egypt longed for the days before manna. But now we have an entire generation raised on the stuff. Their way of life is wrapped around daily bread from heaven: manna. But they have been looking forward to a day.

God delivered them out of Egypt…. But the manna was only ever a temporary blessing. They had been promised a “Promised Land”, where they would live off the land, enjoy the fruit of the land.

In fact, over and over again, they are told it is a “land of milk and honey.” We think of that as just a euphemism for a profitable land, but that is not the way it was used then, it has become that. It was quite literal.

The land of milk refers to its suitability for livestock, especially the highlands where most of Israel lives for most of its history. The honey is not bees but honey made from dates: palm trees, date palms, which still grow all over Israel today.

The End of Manna

10 While the people of Israel were encamped at Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening on the plains of Jericho. 11 And the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. 12 And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.

Three times we read that they “ate the fruit of the land”.

Three times we hear that the manna ceased.

And it is no accident that it is on the fourteenth day of the month. The day of Passover. Passover in the land of Promise.

From blessing to blessing to blessing. But each blessing is working towards something. And every blessing is a shadow of one to come.

Manna is so literally daily bread from heaven… but it is a shadow of what is to come. The fruit of the land is the fulfillment of the promise of generations, this is a huge shift in the entire makeup of the people. Every day they were gathering manna and cooking it, primarily surviving off of it.

But the fruit of the land is just a shadow too. God forever wants to “give us this day our daily bread…” but he wants to give us better and better and better gifts and blessings.

This happens on Passover, but that too is a shadow of things to come. God saves the people from slavery and death in Egypt, but it is a shadow of God saving us from eternal slavery and death. The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

He saves us from slavery and death… but we talk about that a lot. What has he saved us to?

God gives us blessings, our daily bread. But he is the Great Gift Giver and he knows perfectly what gifts to give us when.

To teach us that He loves us… and to teach us that we need Him. To teach us that he will provide each day, and to teach us that we can participate in his blessings.

All of those blessing lead to one thing. God wants to give us Himself.

He delivers his people that they might be His people and He would be their God.

Your School of Blessing

Every blessing God has given you leads to the same end. He wants to give you Himself. He wants all of you so that He can bless all of you.

You are already enrolled in his school of blessings, and he speaks your love language. That may be frustrating. We may look at the blessings of others and wish we had theirs. We may long for the blessings we used to have. Longing for the days of Egypt. Or longing for the days of manna.

We may long for the blessings that are to come. For the fruit of the Promised Land.

But God has you in exactly the right place. He has saved you from slavery and death, and you are headed for eternity and glory.

So we thank God for the blessings he has given us… and we look carefully for what we are learning from his blessings. What is He teaching you about who He is and who you are?

What is He teaching you about who He is and who you are?

The Spiritual Discipline of Thanksgiving

We had our day of Thanksgiving, but it isn’t a one-day thing. We know that. It is a spiritual discipline. It is looking at our life and seeing God’s blessing one after the other.

Can we be thankful for the work that he has given us…. And thankful when it ends? Thankful for each season as it comes. Anticipating the blessing God has for us in the next no matter how it looks?

Thankful for the Passover, the shadow of His deliverance. Thankful for the cross, the fulfillment of the Passover. Thankful for the Resurrection, the glory to come.

Thankful for the manna, God’s daily provision. Thankful for the fruit of the Promised Land, God’s daily provision that we get to be a part of. Seeing God’s blessing in all things… as a purposeful choice to look for the blessing, to look for the Gift and the Giver behind the Gift.

We read this Psalm last week, but it bears repeating. The message picks up what we normally hear as “Enter his gates with Thanksgiving” and, as I so often love about the Message translation, gives me a new way to think about it. Thanksgiving as the password into God’s presence.

Of course Jesus is the gate, the door, the only way into relationship with God… but day by day, we can practice the experience of His presence, the joy of His blessings, and the password is “Thank you.”

Psalm 100

1-2 On your feet now—applaud God!

Bring a gift of laughter,

sing yourselves into his presence.

3 Know this: God is God, and God, God.

He made us; we didn’t make him.

We’re his people, his well-tended sheep.

4 Enter with the password: “Thank you!”

Make yourselves at home, talking praise.

Thank him. Worship him.

5 For God is sheer beauty,

all-generous in love,

loyal always and ever.

May your heart discover all the reasons to Bless the Lord.