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Ex.16:1-36

Sooner or later as a Christian you are likely to surprise yourself. Some sin in your life that you thought had been dealt with suddenly rears its ugly head again and catches you out.

Now talking about sin is not easy today as most people have little or no understanding of what the Bible means when it mentions sin. For most people in the UK the word would one of those words that has been so distorted by the world that when people today hear it they don't think of the Biblical understanding of the word at all.

Basically sin is anything that is contrary to God's will. Yes, that will include the big sins – adultery, racism, murder etc. – but it is covers far more than that. The essence of sin is self-centredness. Instead of placing God at the centre we place ourselves there and we assess everything by how we perceive it to serve our own interests. On an individual level it means that I live for myself, for my own glory and happiness, and I'll work for your happiness only if I think it will help me.

Most people still retain some sense of right or wrong however distorted this might be. Conscience  tells you something is sin when you get a feeling in your gut that something's wrong. Sadly an uninformed conscience will not flag up everything that is sin and sometimes will flag up as sin that which isn't!

Well what are you going to do when despite thinking that you would never fall again to some particular temptation, you do?  

At such times we can be very troubled and react inappropriately.

a.       The young Christian may become disillusioned thinking that Christianity just doesn't work.

b.      Another might interpret this to mean that he/she simply can't be a Christian because a Christian wouldn't behave that way.

c.       A third person could conclude that God won't want to have any more dealings with him/her and a second-best Christian life is the most one could hope for.

d.      Yet another will convince himself that he is unique – no-one else has ever done what he has done or fallen as he has fallen.

Of course there are Bible passages that address this matter very clearly, for example:

1Jn.1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

And careful meditation upon such a verse should deliver us from drawing wrong and overly hasty conclusions.

Sadly, we don't always thinking Biblically enough and rely too often upon impressions and feelings. It was not just our wills that were affected by the Fall it was our whole being and that includes our thought processes as well – our impressions are not infallible and need to be informed by God's truth. What appears so natural and obvious a conclusion to us may indeed be totally wrong!

In Exodus ch.16 we find the people of God falling again into sin. How easily they slipped into the sin of murmuring or complaining! We must seek to learn lessons from their sorry experiences that will help us in our own lives.

The Israelites have only been out of Egypt for about a month and already they are making it very clear that they are far from being ideal God-fearers!

A popular misconception of the Christian is that he thinks himself to be a cut above the rest. If you allow yourself to think like this then your falls will be harder to understand and harder to handle.

The believer is merely an ex-slave who has been freed by the intervention of another, the Lord Jesus. You don't become a Christian by attaining a certain level but rather by realising how desperately low you have fallen! Deliverance from slavery is just the beginning of the journey.

The Israelites have very quickly fallen into this sin of complaining. Last week we saw how a water shortage panicked them and they doubted the LORD's love for them and His ability to provide for them. The LORD had responded granting them not merely water but respite in Elim as well.

But now they have moved on from Elim and a different problem presents itself – food. And it would appear that the Israelites have learnt nothing from their previous experience so they complain again!

And things this time seem to be worse – the whole community unites against the leadership of Moses and Aaron and they grumble again!

It is almost incredible isn't it? The mighty acts of deliverance had taken place so recently. The provision of water could hardly have occurred more than a couple of weeks before at most and yet the people seem to have forgotten it all.

Listen to how they grumble:

Ex.16:3 "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."

Not only have forgotten what the LORD had done for them they have forgotten the troubles they had endured in Egypt. The way they now talk about Egypt you wonder why they had ever cried out to the LORD for help! Was life in Egypt really as good as they now try to make out? No, of course it wasn't.

Application. When things are tough in the Christian life we need to learn to think clearly and to remember clearly. Don't look back to the time when you weren't a Christian with envy – remember why it was you became a Christian. Remember the emptiness, the lack of satisfaction and the fear of meeting a holy God as an unforgiven sinner. Remember that at that time you were without God and without hope in the world. Don't believe Satan's lies that everything had been wonderful before coming to faith in Christ – it wasn't!  Remember too what God has done for you in bringing you to faith in Christ – remind yourself of how He provided a Saviour who died upon the cross for you and who has made wonderful promises to you. Remember what He has done in bringing you into a personal relationship with Himself. And argue with yourself! If He did all that for you will He abandon you now? Will He really give up on you now? No, of course He won't! Don't let your impressions determine your behaviour, nor your feelings, cling on to the truth however difficult you might find this to be!

 Although the murmuring and moaning was directed towards Moses and Aaron it was in reality the LORD who was the butt of the peoples' complaints.

Earlier in the Book of Exodus the Israelites when Moses and Aaron had gone to Pharaoh requesting the freedom to worship the LORD Pharaoh had responded by intensifying the hardship he had already imposed upon the Israelites.

But what a contrast we find now! No polite request has been brought to the LORD concerning the food to eat but only the moaning and complaining of a disgruntled faithless people. How will the LORD respond? Wouldn't He be justified to respond with harshness? But what do we find?

We find the LORD responds quickly and with great generosity and abundance:

Ex.16:4 "Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you,"

And that is just what He proceeds to do! The people are provided with two types of food to eat and they will be able to eat to their fill. They will have quail to eat and they will have manna to eat. The manna was going to provided for them throughout their wanderings in the desert and will only cease to be provided when they enter the Promised Land where they will be able to eat the fruit of that land (Jos.5:12).

The LORD responded in this way for a number of reasons:

He wanted His people to be in no doubt as to His identity and activity on their behalf:

Ex.16:6-7 "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"

Ex.16:12 "Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God."

Then writing a number of years later Moses could explain more of what it was that the LORD was doing. The LORD did not want His people to forget:

Deut. 8:16  He "fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end."

The LORD purposed to do good to His people and the way in which He chose to do so would also serve to keep the people humbly dependent upon Him and would provide a means of testing whether they were prepared to trust Him.

In order to meet the people's legitimate need of food the LORD chose to do something remarkable. He chose to send them manna – bread from heaven. The people would be supplied with sufficient to meet their needs but they would have to rely day by day on the LORD's provision. The provision was made also to underline the specialness of the Sabbath.

Each morning for five days of the week the people would have to get up early to go to collect what they would need to eat that day. If they didn't go early the heat of the sun would melt the manna and the household would lack food that day.

They couldn't harbour resources and keep some for the next day as it would breed maggots and be inedible. Thus laziness and fear were to be replaced by a day-by-day reliance upon the LORD to meet their needs.

But this was no natural phenomena because things changed come Friday. That morning the people were still to rise early but that day they were to collect enough food for two days – the LORD would have them rest on the Sabbath and so provided food that would last. There would be no manna to collect on the Sabbath.

The instructions were clear enough and pretty soon served to show that some of the people were not at all ready to place their trust wholeheartedly in the LORD.

Some of the people tried to keep manna overnight and others went out on the Sabbath to look for it. But the LORD would provide in His way and in His time. However reasonable the arguments might have looked for justifying following another course of action the outcome always showed that the LORD's way was the only way!

The LORD was not only providing food to meet the needs of His people He was also giving them the opportunity of learning to depend upon Him on a regular daily basis. How often in the Bible we are encouraged to live one day at a time:

ü  We are to pray for our daily bread Mt.6:11

ü  We are not to worry about tomorrow because each day has troubles enough Mt.6:34

ü  We are told the early church cared for the needy in its own ranks on a daily basis Acts 6:1

ü  We are told the Bereans searched the Scriptures daily Acts 17:11

And as we live like this we can remember how the LORD dealt with His people in the past:

ü  Sacrifices were offered to God daily and the priests worshiped God day by day 2Chron30:21

ü  His mercies are "new every morning" Lam.3:23

ü  He fed Elijah on a daily basis by sending his ravens with food during a drought 1Ki.17:6

It is impossible to read through this passage without thinking about the Sabbath. The word itself is used four times and so is the expression the seventh day which refers to exactly the same thing.

The people of Israel know about this seventh day, the Sabbath:

Ex.16:23 "Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD;"

The Sabbath was the LORD's day. He had created the world in six days but upon the seventh He rested from His labours and the Sabbath was His gift to mankind! The Sabbath was to be kept special because of the pattern of creation and not just because of the 10 Commandments – they have not in fact yet been given to the people through Moses.

The regular pattern the LORD gave to His people was designed to keep them humble and trusting in Him. The provision of the manna did this and the Sabbath break each week stopped them thinking that the provision was a purely naturalistic occurrence. The break for rest on the Sabbath also gave them great opportunity not only to have some physical refreshment but also to provide them with spiritual nourishment as they remembered His acts of creation.

The LORD did good to His people not only in providing for their bodily needs with the manna but He provided also for their spiritual needs in providing the Sabbath. Small wonder then that the Bible encourages us to "call the Sabbath a delight" Is.58:13.  

The Sabbath of the OT has become the Lord's Day of the NT and still is designed to serve the same purpose. How gracious of God to give us a day of rest for the body so that we might find nourishment for our souls! Strange indeed is the Christian who doesn't want to use the day as the Lord intended! How foolish we are when we reject His provision for us and small wonder that we get ourselves into a mess when we neglect the Lord's Day!

The Israelites ate this manna for forty years in the wilderness. It was bread that came down from heaven for them in great abundance able to meet and to satisfy the needs of all the people – but they had to receive it God's way.

Jesus took up this idea of heavenly bread bringing sustenance and applied it to Himself in Jn.6.

Listen to just what He said:

Jn.6:32-3 "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.”"

If the manna that came in the time of Moses was sufficient to feed the people of God and keep them alive in the wilderness how much more precious is this living bread for "Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." Jn.6:58.

The Israelites in the wilderness, in order to benefit from the manna, had to follow the LORD's guidelines closely. If we are to feed upon the living bread we too must do so in the Lord's own way. We must come in repentance and faith and we must come humbly to receive what we don't deserve but  which He freely offers!

Well we began by thinking about falling into sin and we have seen that sadly God's people have done this time and again. But God remains gracious and is not at all like the hard-taskmasters of this world!

We've seen that some of our falls into sin are due to forgetting what God has done for us and/or of forgetting how bad life was outside of Christ.

We've seen the LORD has goals and purposes in what He does. He doesn't pander to His people's wants but does act for His own glory and His people's good.

We've seen that the LORD wants to bring His people to know Him more deeply and to trust Him more sincerely.

We've seen that the Sabbath, that special day of one in seven, is for His glory and our well-being.

We've seen that we have a food that is better by far than the manna that disappeared under the heat of the sun or produced maggots if kept too long. The Lord Jesus Christ is the living bread that nourishes us with eternal life.

Rom.15:4-6 "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

To God be the Glory.