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Exodus 16
16:1 They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. 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. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” 6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against the LORD. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” 8 And Moses said, “When the LORD gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the LORD has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the LORD.”
9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the LORD, for he has heard your grumbling.’” 10 And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud. 11 And the LORD said to Moses, 12 “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’”
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?”1 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,2 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. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. 21 Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.
22 On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, 23 he said to them, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” 24 So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. 25 Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. 26 Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.”
27 On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. 28 And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? 29 See! The LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
31 Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. 32 Moses said, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” 33 And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the LORD to be kept throughout your generations.” 34 As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. 35 The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. 36 (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)3
[1] 16:15
[2] 16:16
[3] 16:36
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
This is a reading from Exodus, verses 1 through 26, chapter 16. They set out from Elim and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai on the 15th day of the 2nd month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 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 to this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. 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.
Speaker 1:On the 6th day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily. So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, at evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And in the morning, you shall see the glory of the Lord because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we that you grumble against us? And Moses said, when the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against Him, what are we?
Speaker 1:Your grumbling is not against us, but against the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, come near before the Lord for He has heard your grumbling. And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness and behold the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord said to Moses, I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, at twilight you shall eat meat.
Speaker 1:And in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God. In the evening, quail came up and covered the camp. And in the morning, dew lay around the camp. 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.
Speaker 1: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. This is what the Lord has commanded. Gather of it each one of you as much as he can eat.
Speaker 1:You shall each take an omer according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent. And the people of Israel did so. They gathered some more, some less, 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, and Moses said to them, let no one leave any of it over till the morning. But they did not listen to Moses.
Speaker 1:Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning, they gathered it, each as much as he could eat. But when the sun grew hot, it melted. On the 6th day, they gather twice as much bread, 2 omers each.
Speaker 1:And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, this is what the Lord has commanded. Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil. And all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning. So they laid it aside till the morning as Moses commanded them and it did not stink and there were no worms in it.
Speaker 1:Moses said, eat it today for today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today, you will not find it in the field. 6 days, you shall gather it, but on the 7th day, which is the Sabbath, there will be none. The word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:If you would, pray with me. Our father in heaven, we give you thanks for this time. We could gather together and sing to you, pray to you, hear from you through your word. And we do ask that at this time, you would speak. Through the power of your spirit, you would make the words that we hear come alive in us and transform us.
Joel Brooks:I pray now in this moment that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and would be remembered no more. But Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Last week, for part of the service, I got to do something that I've never gotten to do in all the years that I've been a pastor.
Joel Brooks:I actually got to just walk around, wander around during the service, to try to get a feel for everything that goes on during the service time. And so, so I went downstairs for a while, and and let me tell you, there's a completely different world happening downstairs. It's, it's a lot louder. There's different noises. There's different smells.
Joel Brooks:It's kind of this organized chaos that's down there that is beautiful in its own sort of way. And, so I got to go there and, spend some time in the nursery, which I I actually had a whole lot of fun. Then I spent some time with the twos and threes, helping out the volunteers and the staff there, which do a fantastic job with the kids. One of the things that was really neat was you can look at all these little toddlers, which are just miniaturized versions of many of you here, and that was just so fun to see, and and you can tell a lot about the parents by looking at the children. Essentially, I was judging a lot of you, as I as I saw what your kids, were doing and how some of them were behaving terrible.
Joel Brooks:I was taking notes, and my children were in the other room praying for your children. But but but your children did a lot of them were, you know well, most of them were pretty good, but it was just fun to get a feel for that. And I would poke my head in different classrooms and and see the the teachers teaching the Bible lessons to all the children. And then I got to wander up and I looked all around past the 10 people in line for the bathrooms and, and went back to the welcome room and sat down. And actually, as I was just sitting there, my first thought was this.
Joel Brooks:This place is a dump. I mean, that was my initial, you know, take of this looking all around into like this dungeon below us, which was kind of dark and it was kind of damp and it kind of smelled a little bit and, and we've done a lot to try to fix it up. You know, it used to have water damage about this high throughout. And anyway, I just started looking around. I mean, look at the ceiling.
Joel Brooks:You know, sometimes I've had to move the pulpit here because water has poured down literally on my Bible in the midst of preaching. And I remember just thinking this, gosh, this place is just so depressing. This is what I was doing during the service as I was sitting there in the back room. Those were my thoughts. I remember at one point even thinking I've been to Indonesia to meet with pastors of the persecuted church and every one of their buildings was nicer than this.
Joel Brooks:In Indonesia and the persecuted church, every one of their buildings was nicer. And so I I I was having this little, not pity party, but just like, gosh, why do people come? And then I heard Jeff preaching. I finally tuned in and listened to the sermon a little bit, and I heard Jeff preaching about how God loves the church. Not just church with a capital c, but he loves church with a little c.
Joel Brooks:He loves the local church. He loves Redeemer Community Church far more than I do. And actually, I took a while there just to thank God for what he is doing in our midst. That all these people are coming here into this place and they are being transformed week by week. And I was just struck back there just how much that God does indeed love this church, loves this little church.
Joel Brooks:And so I just even wanna publicly now just say thanks to the Lord for what he is doing. It's been a few weeks since we were in Exodus. Last time we were in the book of Exodus, the people were singing. In Exodus 15, we looked at the first song of the Bible. The Lord had just saved the people.
Joel Brooks:He had just brought them through the Red Sea, not just the Israelites. In chapter 12, you read that it was a mixed multitude that went with them. There were slaves from other countries. There were probably some Egyptians that left with the Israelites as well. God was saving a whole group of people, forming them into a new nation as they left.
Joel Brooks:And now we come to chapter 16, And if you're reading through Exodus as a whole, you're going to notice that there's a major transition, a major shift once you get to chapter 16, because up to this point, the storyline has been this. God has been removing the people from Egypt, but now it flips, and God is going to be removing Egypt from the people. The people of God very well might be out of slavery, but in many ways, they are still being controlled by fear. In many ways, they are still slaves. So although they are physically out of Egypt, spiritually, they're still in bondage.
Joel Brooks:And so what God has to do in this time, he has to set up a way that he begins to take Egypt out of their hearts, and he does this by taking them to the wilderness. God does this dramatic act of salvation. He parts the Red Sea, but after that, he doesn't immediately take them to the promised land. The first place he takes them is through the wilderness where they will go through trials and they will go through hardships. And it's really important for us to understand this as Christians, because some of you, when he came to the faith, maybe it was through some dramatic act.
Joel Brooks:There was, there was some point that you passed over from death to life. And if you think after that happened, your life is supposed to be perfect. All pain is supposed to go away. All hardship's gone, all financial trouble's gone, then you are mistaken. It's often at that time after conversion that trials begin.
Joel Brooks:Take a take a look in the Bible sometime and ask yourself, is it the people who God has changed, are they the ones who go through trials, or is it the ones who that the Lord hasn't changed? Over and over again, what you find is the people whom God has called to himself, they're the ones that have the hardships. They're the ones who have the trials. But God isn't doing this because he's cruel. He is doing this in order to teach us to rely fully on him.
Joel Brooks:What he's doing is extracting Egypt from our hearts, and that's what we see here. Let's dig into chapter 16. Israel's just finished the first praise song ever in the Bible. It's a beautiful praise song of deliverance and of God's provision. You read lines like in verse 13, you have led in your steadfast love the people you have redeemed.
Joel Brooks:You have guided them by your strength. And then 3 verses later, they're grumbling. You kinda get the picture that the sound of the song is still reverberating in the air, and before it dies down, they are grumbling. They've forgotten everything that the Lord has done, and they begin complaining to Moses, and this is gonna be a theme that we see throughout. And their complaint here is that they don't have any food.
Joel Brooks:Once again, they're being irrational. They're being delusional. Look at verse 2. It says, The whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 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.
Joel Brooks:Now when? When did they ever have meat pots to the full? And it says, and we used to sit down by them. Like, you get this picture of them sitting down on the couch, relaxing, feet propped up, just eating meat. I mean, when did that ever happen to these people?
Joel Brooks:No, from the morning, from when they got up to when they went to bed, they were making bricks without straw. They were slaves. There was no time to relax. They didn't have this bountiful food, so they're being delusional, and they're not just being delusional. They're being irrational.
Joel Brooks:I mean, over and over again, we have seen God provide for them and provide for them, and yet now they think that God is going to starve them to death. I mean, can you see this? You know, they're walking through the Red Sea, and you kind of have people going, I don't know. It looks like a trap to me. You know, once God gets us through there, I think he's gonna starve us to death.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I think that's God's plan. But that's what some of these people were thinking. God did all these mighty acts. God saved us with his mighty hand, only to starve us. It's delusional.
Joel Brooks:It's irrational, but there's even more than this going on. These people are delusional for another reason, and this is one of those things that I miss for so many years when reading through this. And if you, if you understand this, it really changes the way that you view what's going on in this text. At first glance, when you when you're reading through this, you kind of sympathize with the Israelites, don't you? I mean, after all, they're on the verge of starvation.
Joel Brooks:I mean, what happens when you get hungry? When you get hungry, you get grumpy. Right? You know, that's what all the Snickers commercials are about. You know, you're not like yourself.
Joel Brooks:Have a Snickers. You know, you you you no longer are grumpy, And these people are on the verge of starvation, so of course they would grumble. Well, look at go back a few chapters, chapter 12 verse 38, and you're gonna read this. A mixed multitude also went up with them and very much livestock, both flocks and herds. So the Israelites, they left Egypt, not just with a lot of bread, which we know they did, but they left with a whole lot of livestock, both flocks and herds.
Joel Brooks:Essentially, they cleaned Egypt out when they went. They plundered Egypt. They took the wealth of Egypt with them, and this is a little over a month after they have left, and maybe they've run out of some of their bread, but they certainly have not gone through all of their sheep, all of their goats, all of their cattle, and we know this because later in chapter 17, all of the cattle and all the livestock are still there. So here, when they are grumbling about not having anything to eat, they're actually surrounded by food. They have herds of sheep, very much livestock, Yet listen to their complaint again.
Joel Brooks:You you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Perhaps a better way to hear this would be, you, baa, have brought us out to the wilderness, moo, moo. Secure this whole assembly with hunger, Those are my farm noises. Alright? They're literally surrounded by meat, which they are crying out for later.
Joel Brooks:They're delusional. They have all these provisions. The question is why didn't they use them? Well, in this day, people didn't have paper money. What their currency was was their livestock.
Joel Brooks:That's how you accumulated wealth. It's the currency of the day. And so what the Israelites are essentially saying here is that, okay, God, we don't wanna have to dip into our savings in order to follow you where you wanna take us. I mean, you're gonna take us to a land flowing with milk and honey, and that's that sounds all good, but don't expect us to use our own provisions to get there. So they are willing to follow the Lord as long as following him does not cost them a penny.
Joel Brooks:And so they grumble. They they might be freed from Egypt, but they are not freed from materialism. They are not freed from greed. They have brought these things with them. They know what they are thinking is, well, you know, if we start going through our cattle now, if we we start eating some of our sheep now, then what happens when we really go through those?
Joel Brooks:I mean, then we would actually have to rely on God, and and we're not ready to do that yet. So so let's just keep a little in our savings. Let's, let's keep a little in our surplus. So we have something for a rainy day because who knows if this salvation thing is really going to work out. Lauren and I, 7, 8 years ago when we were thinking about starting this church, And we had all these unknowns and we're thinking and questioning all these things like, if nobody comes, how are we going to pay the bills?
Joel Brooks:How are we going to do all this? He says, you know, you do have some savings. I've already provided. Will you use the things I've given you already and trust that that's been my provision? And it was a really good challenge for my wife and I.
Joel Brooks:I think we all here can relate to Israel's delusional thinking. Has there ever been a time when God has led you to do something, but you have thought, there is no way that I can make that work, given the resources that I have, given the resources that I have, given the resources that I have, yet you actually already have the resources. There's just part of you that says that is untouchable. God, you're gonna have to bring in additional things because what I already have is untouchable. If you want me to give more, then you're gonna have to give me more.
Joel Brooks:If you want me to be hospitable, then you're gonna have to give me a bigger house. And all along you ignore the resources God has already put before you. I think we have all had this delusion. Yet what I find amazing about this story is that God doesn't get angry. He doesn't get angry.
Joel Brooks:There's not one word of rebuke here. I mean, think of everything Israel has just said. Hey, God. I know you're trying to take care of us, but we liked it more when we were slaves. And we think you're evil because you're trying to take us out here and kill us.
Joel Brooks:And yet, although you gave us the plunder of Egypt, we don't want to spend any of that. You got to do something more for us. Despite all of that attitude, all of that grumbling, God does not rebuke them. Not a single harsh word. Instead of raining down judgment, what God does is rain down bread, And then he gives manna for them in the morning.
Joel Brooks:And he does it for them in such an amazing way. In the morning, they wake up and there's just this kind of flaky, sweet, edible stuff, manna, which just means, what is this? And it's all over the ground for them to eat. And all they have to do is each day, go out and gather it food, just all over the ground for them to gather and to eat. Now, God had a infinite number of ways that he could have provided for his people here.
Joel Brooks:An infinite number. For starters, he could have just taken them straight, the most direct route to the land flowing with milk and honey. Problem solved. Or he could have just sustained them. He could have just said, you don't need to eat.
Joel Brooks:I will just sustain That is no more weird than manna. Okay? That is not any more weird. He he could have done this any way, but instead he chooses to do it this way. And then just in case you haven't picked this up as we have been going through the book of Exodus, God doesn't just do miracles to do miracles.
Joel Brooks:There's a better way to bring people out of Egypt. There's a better way to show his power than doing a bunch of plagues and having the Passover and having the Red Sea, but these things are signs to us, and manna is a sign to us. That's why he did it this way. These miracles point us to God who he who he is and who he wants us to be as his people. And so we see this in God's miracle of manna.
Joel Brooks:What I wanna see is 4 things. We see here that God decides to to feed the Israelites this way for four reasons. 1, to teach them to seek him daily. 2, to seek for them to seek him in community. 3, for them to find their rest in him or to seek rest in him, And finally to seek his son, Jesus.
Joel Brooks:So let's look at each one of these seeking God daily. Up to this point, the Israelites have not had to do a thing. They've been completely passive in regards to their salvation. They've not done a thing. Now God tells them that they have to be this active participant in regards to their day to day sustenance.
Joel Brooks:They're gonna have to start working. And everything they do up to this, after this point is either gonna bring them closer to the Lord or farther away. They were either gonna walk over his grace or they could gather it in. But every day that option would be there for them. There was gonna be no neutral ground.
Joel Brooks:And this sign for Israel is a sign for us as well. God, he has saved us. We are now walking with him. And now he graciously gives us spiritual food. He gives it to us through word, through his word and through prayer.
Joel Brooks:And he says, seek this every day. The book of Lamentations says his mercies are new to us every morning. You can either gather it in or you could walk over it. But every day you are given the choice. Every day will either bring you closer to the Lord or farther away.
Joel Brooks:Now notice in this that they are only to gather one day's worth. If they were to try to store up 2 days worth, the next day, it would turn to worms. It would rot. This food was only good for one day, so nobody can stockpile this manna. Nobody can build barns and bigger barns in which they can store this.
Joel Brooks:They can't put it in their savings like they've done with their sheep and their goats and all their livestock. God's grace is not like this. He doesn't want his provisions to be like this. So every day they seek the Lord for fresh bread. Yesterday's manna will not do.
Joel Brooks:And it is the same for us. Every day, we are to seek the Lord. How many of you are still eating stale bread? Something that the Lord has taught you maybe yesterday or days ago or years ago, and that's the manna you were still trying to eat. You're starving.
Joel Brooks:His grace is new to you every morning, and we should seek him, and we should feast on him every day. That's what the Lord is teaching us here. We can either walk over his grace or we can gather. Well, second, we are to seek the Lord in community. Seek him in community.
Joel Brooks:God doesn't set up a system here where if you happen to be the best gatherer in the world, then you're going to get the most wealth. You're going to eat the most food at the expense of everybody else. No, if, if you happen to be a really good gatherer and somebody else isn't, you're gonna share it with them because what good does it do? You can't stockpile this stuff. And so he who gathers a lot didn't have too much.
Joel Brooks:He who gathered a little didn't have too little because the way God set it up encouraged them to share with one another. Even the manna itself had to be the way it had to be prepared, fostered this sense of community. The book of numbers, it tells us that you didn't just go out and pick up manna and eat it. That's not how it was done. Numbers tells us that the manna had to be ground down, had to be worked into dough, and then it could either be boiled or it could be baked into bread.
Joel Brooks:That's how it was prepared. And each person was not going to do that. It'd be incredibly inefficient. And so what you do is this is now a community process in which you're having gatherers, and then you're having grinders, and then you're having cookers and bakers. God is setting this up in such a way to build community into which everybody is dependent upon one another.
Joel Brooks:He's showing them what a redeemed community is supposed to look like, what our church is supposed to look like, and that we seek the Lord together if we want to be fed, that Christianity is not an individual process. Your feeding is not just between you and your podcast in the car, but this is a corporate thing in which we come together. And we hear God's word and through encouragement and through prayer and through listening to God's word, we are being fed through one another. So he's building a community. 3rd, we are to seek the Lord through rest.
Joel Brooks:Seek the Lord through rest. Alright. The Israelites are not even given the 10 commandments yet. Okay. They have not reached Mount Sinai, so they don't have the 10 commandments, but God already sets up the Sabbath that they need to observe the Sabbath.
Joel Brooks:They are to gather manna 6 days a week, but they are to rest on the 7th. And what God would do is on that 6th day, he would give them double the amount of manna, and then the manna would keep, and it would not rot on the 7th day. So they would be able to rest that 7th day and eat the previous day's manna. Now, the reason God sets up manna this way is because he wants his people to rest. I mean, to really rest and and and resting and trusting go hand in hand.
Joel Brooks:You cannot rest unless you trust, and you cannot trust unless you're willing to rest. They are wed together throughout scripture, trusting and resting. So by not working one day, what God is doing is he is forcing his people to realize, you know what? Your provision does not come from your hand. Through all your work, all your effort, realize it ultimately comes from me.
Joel Brooks:Will you trust me in that? Listen. There is always more work to do. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase, my plate is full, or my bandwidth is, you know, full. And it's something that we, we, we almost like to boast about how, how busy we are, pat ourselves on the back for how much we are working.
Joel Brooks:We're we're working actually too much. Pat ourselves on the back. That's disobedience. We we we have to learn how to rest. We have to, Not just because God commands us to, but because it is good for us.
Joel Brooks:It's good for us. It forces us to trust him. If you find it impossible to rest, is because ultimately you think that you are in charge of your own destiny, and ultimately that you think everything depends upon you and not upon God. And God sets up this Sabbath system. He says, don't work because it's not up to you.
Joel Brooks:It's up to me to provide. And every week, God's people are reminded of this. God sets up the Sabbath to remind us to rest in his sovereign care. Finally, manna, the point of manna is for us to seek Jesus. Manna points us to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:We've we've looked at how you can apply this text, But this doesn't really do us any good unless you realize to whom this text ultimately points. Because if you walk away from here thinking like I I need to try really hard, I need to just trust God more. I need to seek him every day. Those things are all really good. You should do those things, but you are gonna be motivated by guilt or you're gonna be motivated by fear.
Joel Brooks:And what you need to be is motivated by the gospel and by the love of Christ to whom this text points. The story points to Jesus a number of ways. And I I want us to just look at a couple of them. There's a lot more, but we'll look at just 2. Now one of them you find in the gospel of Matthew early on in the gospel in which Matthew, he makes a connection of when Jesus has to leave Egypt.
Joel Brooks:He quotes out of Egypt, I called my son. He's quoting an Old Testament text that's actually about Israel, but Matthew applies it to Jesus, saying, Jesus is the representative of Israel here. Out of Egypt, I called my son. And then we have Jesus, he is baptized. He goes through the waters and he is immediately led into the wilderness where he is tempted by hunger.
Joel Brooks:And we see Jesus acting as the true Israel, and the gospel of Matthew really sets that up so well. But here's the thing. Jesus had no savings on which to draw from. Jesus was truly hungry 40 days without food and without water. His test was so much more severe than the Israelites, yet he passed.
Joel Brooks:And the test was this. When when Satan said, Jesus, turn these stones into bread, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy, and he says, man shall not live by bread alone, but from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And the test is this. Are you gonna think that you survive because of something you eat, or are you gonna think you survive because of what God declares? And Jesus says, God might provide through food.
Joel Brooks:That's fine. But you know what? Man doesn't live by bread alone. Man lives because God says live. Because he lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Joel Brooks:2nd way this points to Jesus. 2nd way this points to Jesus is in the gospel of John in which Jesus is referring back to the Exodus here in chapter 6. And let me just read you a portion of this. Jesus says, truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.
Joel Brooks:Your father's 8 manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. Jesus says that he is the ultimate bread to which manna points.
Joel Brooks:Manna is the shadow. Jesus is the reality. Manna provided for these people for a day, but the people who ate that manna eventually died. Those who come to Jesus and they feast on him, they trust on him as the bread of life, as the one who could sustain them, the one who can nourish them, the one who could save them, they never die. He is the ultimate bread.
Joel Brooks:And I I love this, connecting this to our season to Advent. What we find in verse 7 of chapter 16. We read these words. Who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And in the morning, you shall see the glory of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Way back, I said we are studying Exodus because of the vocabulary it gives us. It's the building blocks of the Christian faith. It's where we come across for the first time words like redemption, words like salvation, words of like being freed from slavery. We gain our Christian vocabulary from Exodus. Well, here is the first time we find the phrase, the glory of the Lord, right here.
Joel Brooks:This is how the Lord introduces it to us. And it appears in the context of God providing for his children by raining down manna, bread from heaven. Now John 114 says this, and we read this every Christmas. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory.
Joel Brooks:Glory as the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. Here in Exodus, we find how we introduced to the glory of the Lord. Well, it's when bread comes down from heaven and meets our needs. You wanna see the glory of the Lord. Look at that.
Joel Brooks:And that is amazing because up to this point, think of all that they have seen. They've already had the the fire leaving them at night. They they've already had the cloud leading them by day, but the glory of the Lord, well, hasn't been there yet. Here God says, you will see the glory of the Lord in the morning when you see bread coming down from heaven. And then we read when Jesus comes, John's famous words, the word became flesh.
Joel Brooks:Jesus became flesh, dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. His glory. We see the glory of God when we look to Jesus as the one who ultimately meets our every need, when we seek him for nourishment. He is never more glorious. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, we thank you that you are the bread that came down from heaven. And you were not just the bread, but you were the bread that was broken. Broken for us. And Lord, we come to remember this now as we come to your table. As we partake in the bread and the wine, may our souls feast in you.
Joel Brooks:And we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.