All right.
Hey, welcome back, everybody.
Thanks for being with us as we close out the week.
A reminder, no Bible studies next week also as we have everyone have a chance to be with families,
and we hope and celebrate Thanksgiving.
However you do that,
we hope it goes well.
We continue today through the 16th chapter,
and we’re about, not quite halfway through,
in the 13th verse.
Remember that where we left off yesterday,
if you didn’t have a chance to
be with us, the Israelites had just been promised by God through Moses and Aaron that they were
going to have food.
They were complaining about no food,
and God said He would respond.
So this is the part of the story in which God provides that food.
So verse 13,
“In the evening quails came up,
and they covered the camp,
and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp,
and when the layer of dew lifted,
there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky
substance as fine as frost on the ground.
When the Israelites saw it,
they said to one another, ‘What is it?’
For they didn’t know what it was.
Moses said to them,
‘It is the bread that the
Lord has given you to eat.
This is what the Lord commands.
Gather as much as you need,
each of you, an omer to a person according to the number of persons,
all providing for those in their own tents.’
The Israelites did so,
some gathering more or less,
but when they measured with the omer,
those who gathered much had nothing over,
and those who gathered little had no shortage.
They gathered as much as each of them needed.
And Moses said, ‘Let no one leave any of it over until the morning.’
But they didn’t listen to Moses,
and some left part of it until morning,
and it bred worms and became foul,
and Moses was angry with them.” We stop there, Michael.
So this is a pretty familiar story, I think, in
church.
If you’ve been in church,
you probably know this story.
I think particularly the bread part of the story are what is called manna.
Interestingly enough,
the word manna in Hebrew literally translates to ‘what is it?’ So this question,
‘What is it?’ when they don’t know what to call it,
they literally end up calling it
by that name.
What is it?
And it provides for them bread.
The quail provide for them meat.
I think the most interesting part of the food story is this business about no matter how much
you gathered, you had enough,
and you had to gather each day.
We referenced that yesterday,
Michael, with the idea that God is testing the people with daily faithfulness,
that they have to trust God each and every day.
Also, I think it is a compelling idea that regardless of what they
had, they couldn’t hoard it to themselves,
they couldn’t keep it overnight,
they didn’t have to store it up,
but none of them went without.
There was no lack,
but neither was their surplus,
and you had to learn to trust that as you gathered it.
The story goes out of its way,
Clint, here to make mention of the fact that the response to this is not universal,
and I think that’s an interesting twist in the story.
A lot of the time in Exodus,
the voice of the people of
Israel has been pretty unanimous.
It’s been all complaining,
or they’ve come to Moses and they’ve
said, “Why did you go to Pharaoh?
Why did you make things more difficult?” Here,
Clint, make note of the fact
that it says some did not listen to Moses.
And I think that’s really, really interesting,
that here we have some in the community who make a different choice, who don’t
find the ability to trust God.
And I think that as we reflect on that,
that’s also the case in our own lives,
those moments which is hard to trust for the daily bread.
You actually mentioned this yesterday,
I think it’s worth mentioning today.
This idea is built into our own prayer,
the Lord’s Prayer, if you’re a Christian,
asking for our daily bread,
a constant reminder of God’s faithfulness and
provision for this day.
And I also want to just point out in a story that may be familiar,
the very not familiar nature of this story.
If you’re really willing to listen to this story,
there’s this thing that falls to the ground.
There’s quail that just come to the camp.
I mean, these are things that don’t happen in our everyday experience.
The idea that bread could come out of
stuff that just lands on the ground that supernaturally appears,
it’s miraculous.
Another person might call it fantasyical,
but in the scriptural story,
accounting God’s faithfulness to the people, this is a miracle of what God did for the people.
And there would be no other way
to account for it than for God’s own divine action,
much like you look at the plagues as they showed
that this was indeed God’s unique fingerprint.
God was at work.
This is God’s action in the world.
Here again,
this miracle is clearly showing us,
at least in the narrative of this text,
is showing us that God is faithful.
He is providing for the people and that there is no
other way to understand or to read this other than it being God’s gift for these people.
Yeah, there’s a lot of wonderful symbolism in this story.
I won’t read the rest of it,
but let me tell you what happens.
On the sixth day,
they’re told to gather twice as much so that
they do not have to go out and gather on the Sabbath.
Some people go out and do that anyway.
God then says an interesting thing to Moses.
“How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and
instructions?” Probably speaking to the broader context and not to Moses himself,
though there are times that God seems to hold Moses accountable for the actions of the people that may be in play here.
And then we get,
at the end of this chapter,
Michael, we get sort of some editorial.
“The House of Israel called it manna.” I’m in verse 31 here.
“It was like coriander seed,
it was white, and the taste of it like wafers of honey.
Moses said, ‘This is what the Lord has commanded,
let an omer of it be kept through generations.’” So they take a jar,
I mean, in verse 33 here,
take a jar and put an omer of manna in it and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout the generations.
“As the Lord commanded Moses,
so Aaron placed it before the covenant for safekeeping.
The Israelites ate manna for 40 years until they came to a habitable land.
They ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.” So we’ve seen this a couple of times too.
The author goes out of their way to tell us some editorial information,
and here it’s that this bread, this daily bread, manna is going to sustain them for their entire wilderness journey.
Again,
even knowing at the time of the writing, inserting this,
that it’s going to be 40 years,
because as a punishment for not being willing to enter the land,
they then get sentenced to kind
of wander, and they have manna with them the whole time,
and this author is already pre-shadowing
that, foreshadowing that, and that’s all part of the story.
I think of all the stuff,
Michael, in this Exodus maybe that we’ve seen so far,
there’s,
I think there is,
at least for me,
there is the neatest or the most interesting symbolism in the manna,
your daily what is it,
our daily bread,
trusting the portions,
equality of portions.
There’s a lot here that I think we
could find as handholds in a devotional sense.
I mean, obviously, this is told as a historical
story, but I think there’s a lot of devotional material in here.
Right, I agree, and I think a large part of that is because the faith is rich and full with
daily sustenance kind of language.
You see,
even in the New Testament, Jesus,
you might remember in one of the feedings of the 5,000,
I believe it’s John’s gospel where after the crowd eats it,
they want to make Jesus a king because who doesn’t want to make the person who gives out food king?
There is this sort of reshaping of the Passover narrative that happens with Jesus,
and yet it’s hard because of this history with Israel to not see over that meal Jesus providing the daily
sustenance for the disciples,
this thing that he calls them to do every time that they gathered
together.
So there’s some beauty,
I think, in a text like verse 31,
where it says, “The house of Israel called it manna,”
and it was like coriander seed white,
and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.
Remember, they’re going to the land filled with milk and honey,
and I think there’s something deeply meaningful that even as they go along the way,
God is providing delightful
and pleasant things for them.
In other words, this thing that God’s providing isn’t just tack,
it’s not gruel, it’s not the worst thing you can imagine.
It may not be the best thing you can imagine,
but it’s good, and it provides what they need,
and it is sufficient for them to be grateful.
And as we know,
they’re going to struggle with gratitude,
but we all do.
I think that’s part of
the lesson, I think, that hangs over a text like this,
is you and I may have exactly what we need this day,
and regardless of how satiated we are,
how well our hunger is handled,
how well our thirst has been fulfilled,
it is easy for us to be restless,
for us to not be willing to see the
nourishment and sustenance that we’ve been given,
and to whatever extent we live in the middle of that, Clint,
we are on the way and we never stop to see the way that we’re on.
I think that this
text actually does have a very devotional,
personal devotional kind of element to it that,
you know, maybe passing through the ten plagues is not as easy to relate to.
I think this in some
ways is much easier to relate to.
I would agree with that,
Michael.
I mean, the question that hangs
over this text is,
can God be trusted?
And can God be trusted daily?
Can God be trusted for enough?
Can God be trusted to provide?
I mean, these are the
questions woven through this narrative.
Just should explain this last bit here about putting some of it in a jar.
Later on, we will find out that there will be this thing called the Ark of the Covenant,
which is among the most sacred objects,
and it will house some of the artifacts of the story of Exodus.
The Ten Commandments will be in there,
Moses’ staff will be in there,
and this jar of manna.
So there is a kind of
shrine,
an altar of sorts,
to the symbols of this journey and the actual items from the
the release and freedom of the people that will continue to be important.
We’re told, you know, it goes in the temple.
So this idea of this manna that is preserved
as a sign and as a reminder to all of Israel for all time becomes important.
So that’s what this
business about, take a jar of it is.
That’s what’s happening there.
Yeah, so I’m looking here, verse 33.
I think it’s the emphasis here matters,
place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.
We’ve already seen this,
but we’re going to see this increase in intensity as we go through the book of Exodus.
It certainly lives on into the book of Joshua,
but there’s this real theme of remembering that happens here,
remembering the God who carried you through,
recognizing that as the journey gets more
difficult and as the people begin to get farther and farther away from the problems that God delivered them from,
the more and more that they struggle to remember the God who brought them out
and therefore the God who’s called them as their as his own,
therefore the God who’s revealed himself to Moses.
Memory plays an important part in the story because as you hear this language
about generations or teach your children,
there’s almost a implicit admission that that process is
tenuous and difficult and it doesn’t always go as we expect.
And anyone who’s parented knows
parenting is not just a science.
To pass a thing on requires work and diligence and also
doesn’t always go to plan.
So I think that there’s something to say about
not only are the people on the physical journey geographically moving,
they are also
moving as a people.
They’re growing into time and they’re going to be tested in those generations
as to do they remember this provision and God’s care or will they forget it?
And there are some
concrete moments to come where that becomes pretty poignant in the story.
Yeah, I think, you know,
again, this is a story that I think is well known.
It’s certainly well told.
It’s got a lot of depth in it.
So hope there is something in it that speaks to you.
Hope that as we embark on a week where we get to celebrate some of our own blessings,
where we’re particularly mindful of gratitude as a practice,
there would be something for each of us to remember,
to give thanks for,
and to let that gratefulness inform us,
not just on a holiday, but each day.
Our daily bread, our daily grace,
that’s a wonderful thing to aspire to.
Thanks for being with us today.
Once again, we’re off next week for the week.
If you haven’t got
a chance already, definitely check out the Westminster Confession Study that is happening.
Link in the description of the video.
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and we will see you all after next week.
Thanks, everybody.