Bread From Heaven
Download MP3I invite you to turn to Exodus chapter 16 for a scripture reading.
Speaker 2:It's Exodus 16 verses 1 through 15. Again, Exodus 16 verses 1 through 15. Hear the word of the Lord. 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.
Speaker 2:And the people of Israel said to them, would that we had died by the hand of the lord in the land of Egypt. And we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full for you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Then the lord said to Moses, behold, I'm about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather as a day's portion every day that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not. 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.
Speaker 2: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? Your grumbling is not against us, but against the Lord.
Speaker 2: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 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've 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.
Speaker 2: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. 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 you has given you to eat.
Speaker 2:This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Thanks be to God. Pray with me. Lord, we thank you for your word, and the word through your spirit has the power to do amazing things. It could crack open the coldest and the hardest of hearts. It could completely change the direction of our lives.
Joel Brooks:It can bring us hope when previously there was none. And Lord, we expect that tonight. Thank you for your word, and I pray that I would not take away anything from that. Our desire is to hear from you and not from me. So, Lord, may my words fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. In the strong name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. When Lauren and I go on dates, and we we actually get a babysitter and, leave the kids, and we go someplace, we notice this happens every single time. We shovel food in our mouths so fast, you just could not believe it.
Joel Brooks:We're just shoveling shoveling, and we have to remind ourselves, wait wait wait, there are no kids. We don't have to hurry before Georgia starts crying, or before Natalie throws something, you know. Or or we we we don't have to we can we have to we can calm down. It's just us. And and and and we have to we find that we have to continually remind ourselves of how to act when we're without kids.
Joel Brooks:And, one time I came home and Lauren, she had a, a bag of groceries. There were no kids, just a bag of groceries, and she was doing this, while she was talking to me. And she was with a bag of groceries. And I was like, what are you doing? You know, and and and just she always did that.
Joel Brooks:And and she had to program herself. Oh, yeah. What's it like, you know, not having a child where I have to hold this child and not? And what you find is when you're always around certain people and you're always doing the exact same things and your life always looks this way, when you when you get away from that for a while, you find that you still think with that old mindset. And I'm not at all comparing having kids to being under slavery, you know, with pharaoh.
Joel Brooks:There are moments, but it's it's not that bad. But there is that there's an adjustment period. And and we've been studying the book of Exodus and the gospel through the life of Moses. And as and as the people left and we saw salvation happen in a moment a couple weeks ago, parting of the Red Sea, wall of water on the right, wall of water on the left. They go through saved in a moment, but now that they're through, God's got to take the Egypt out of them.
Joel Brooks:They brought it with them. They brought slavery with them, and He's gotta teach them how to think right. He's gotta teach them how to trust what their new life is supposed to be. A good way to think of this is kind of like an abused dog. And you know, if you bring an abused dog into your house, and you have set that dog free, it is no longer under an abusive owner.
Joel Brooks:But when you try to pet the dog, it cowers. When you try to play with the dog, it runs away. Now that dog has been freed. It has been freed yet, it brought the abuse with him. And so you've got to train this dog.
Joel Brooks:And one of the ways that you train the dog is you're overly kind. You give great food. You speak tenderly to you never are harsh, never a word of judgment. And you're gonna see God doing this to Israel. After he has called them through, he speaks tenderly to them.
Joel Brooks:Not a word of judgment. He gives them food. Hosea 2, it actually describes this time almost like a honeymoon. It says, I allured you out into the wilderness, and I spoke softly in your ear during this time. God's retraining us.
Joel Brooks:Let's look at how he does this. Let's look at how he does this. Israel's just been set free. And normally, when you think of salvation, if it was like me growing up, that means, hey, everything is great, everything's happy. You know, if you're an addict, no longer any addictions.
Joel Brooks:If you're in bad relationships, all of a sudden, they're restored. If you have disobedient kids, hey, they're angels now because you've been saved. That's not the case. And it's the same with Israel Israel. They have been saved, but it is not an easy road ahead of them.
Joel Brooks:Matter of fact, the first thing god does is he takes them out into the wilderness. Israel has just finished singing the first praise song in all of the Bible. It's this beautiful song about deliverance, salvation, the strength of the Lord. And, you can look at Exodus 15 verse 13. It says, you have led in your steadfast love the people you have redeemed.
Joel Brooks:You have guided them by your strength. And this song is just finished echoing around, and they're already grumbling. They're already sinning. 3 verses later, they're complaining against the Lord, his faithfulness, his strength. Don't know if you can relate to that.
Joel Brooks:The most of you, I don't know if you grew up with siblings, but going to church or coming back from church was the time you fought like no other. I mean, you just heard a great message. You just sung all these songs, but in the back, I mean, it was just it's absolutely terrible. Or you could be even singing in your car a praise song, somebody cuts you off. Wow.
Joel Brooks:That was forgotten very quickly. One of my friends, he he was a drummer in a worship, and the worship team at a church, and he got in it with the electric guitarist. If you've ever been involved in worship practices, this happens. And, they started exchanging little words over how this song, this praise song should be done. And finally, my friend who's an awesome guy, he got a sticks and he threw them down and said, let's take it outside.
Joel Brooks:The guitarist goes, you're right. Oh, we're on. Praise worship practice brings out the worst in people. We can relate to this. I I was reading, from the Children's Bible, the Caroline recently, and I was like, okay.
Joel Brooks:Now Abraham did and she asked a question. Are those sheep or are those goats? Well, that that's those are it doesn't really matter. Those are sheep. And and she kept interrupting, kept asking questions.
Joel Brooks:I wanted to be like, this is the word of the Lord. Okay? Listen, lose my patience. We turn on an instant. Don't be so harsh on these guys.
Joel Brooks:We are the same way. They're a mirror to us. You know, one of the things when I'm reading through Exodus 16 and I hear their grumbling, a question you gotta ask is, how is this, their grumbling, any different than what we looked at last week? Psalm 22. The psalmist saying, my God, my God, why have you left me?
Joel Brooks:I'm groaning all day long, and you don't come to my rescue. Rescued everybody else, not me, and just grumbling. What's what's the difference between what we looked at last week and what we looked here? Why is this so bad? And the difference is that here we have people grumbling to a third party.
Joel Brooks:They're grumbling to Moses. They're not grumbling to the lord. This is not a grumble out of faith. Psalm 22, things were bad, but they this the psalmist still had faith. My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?
Joel Brooks:And it's directed towards him. There's a relationship. It's not directed this way. That's gossip. That's murmuring.
Joel Brooks:That's grumbling. When we come into a a time of trial or distress, it is right for us to come to the Lord and ask, why are these things happening? This is how I feel. Because like at the end of Psalm 22, he begins changing you. But if you talk to other people about your problems, your heart never gets changed.
Joel Brooks:That's grumbling. That's why this is so bad. And now let's look at what they're complaining about. What what is it exactly that that they're grumbling about? They're saying that they don't have any food.
Joel Brooks:Moses, we don't have any food. Now this is just irrational, it's delusional, like we've looked at in past weeks. They're they're grumbling. Look at chapter 16 verse 2. Says, and the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
Joel Brooks:And the people of Israel said to them, wouldn't that we have died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by meat pots and ate bread to the full. What in the world are they talking about? They're delusional. That didn't happen. And if you look, god has over and over provided for them again and again.
Joel Brooks:What makes them think he's gonna stop? He parted the Red Sea to trap them on the other side? No. They're delusional. But but there's even more going on here.
Joel Brooks:More delusional than you initially think, and it's actually something I missed for years, reading this and studying this. And it was one of those things that when the Lord kinda open my eyes, I'm like, how was I ever so blind to this? And if you really get this, it will change your life. Absolutely change your life. When when you first read through this, you think there's they're they're on the verge starvation.
Joel Brooks:These are people wandering in the desert, you know, they're about to pass out, die any moment, and you kinda have sympathy for them for them. Go back 4 chapters to chapter 12 verse 38. This is them leaving, and it says a mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds, and they baked unleavened cakes of dough that they had brought out of Egypt, and and on and on. Basically, they they had a lot of provisions. They left Egypt loaded, absolutely loaded.
Joel Brooks:And now they're a month and a half into this, they might have run through the bread, but there is no way they have run through their livestock. One chapter after Exodus 16, you look at Exodus 17, and it says that they had a great multitude of livestock, and it says they had many cattle. They're not starving. They're not. A better question to ask is, what is really going on here that they don't want to eat their possessions?
Joel Brooks:They don't want to kill their own cattle. They don't want to kill their own sheep. They don't want to eat that. They just want God to give them something. What is really going on here?
Joel Brooks:When they say, you've brought us into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Delusional. Livestock and sheep, we, you know, they didn't have wallets that they whipped out and, you know, had their dollar bills, checkbooks or anything like that. What they had was sheep. What they had was cattle.
Joel Brooks:That's how you accumulated wealth. And what they're saying here is, okay, god. We're not gonna go through our savings on this journey. We're not gonna go through our savings. No.
Joel Brooks:No. No. That's that's that's for us. This is for us. This is for our wealth.
Joel Brooks:That's what we can lean on in a rainy day. You provide for us now. Well, yeah. We're we're gonna follow you to this wonderful land as long as it cost us nothing. We're not paying out of our own pocket for this kingdom.
Joel Brooks:And so you see right here that although they are free from Egypt, they are still a slave to their own greed. A slave to their own greed. And what they're thinking is, if we use our sheep and if we use our cattle now, then we'll go through them and then we really would have to trust in God. And they don't want to go down that road. So they asked that God would give them a surplus.
Joel Brooks:Now Lauren and I, right about the time we were really struggling with whether I should leave UCF and try to start this, we were studying through this passage. And man, if we just wrestle with this, because we had so many questions, and we realized that we were just like the Israelites. It's like, okay, god, but if I if I leave this income here, then how do I know you're gonna meet my needs here? How do I know you're gonna provide for me? And, you know, next month, am I gonna have a paycheck?
Joel Brooks:And stuff like that. And God was saying, look in the bank. You've got savings. I have provided for you. I have.
Joel Brooks:You have a car, you've got a house, you've got all Look how I have provided for you. And what I realized is I was so scared to go through my nest egg to to to work. I just wanted God to keep adding on to my surplus. So what god is doing is trying to make them have faith. Can can you relate to Israel's delusional thinking here?
Joel Brooks:Can you relate to that? Now has there ever been a time that God has led you to do something, called you to do something you've thought, there's no way I can make that work. There's no way. I don't have the resources, you know, I can't ever get the resources, and God says, you already have the resources if you just be willing to let go and use them. Trust me.
Joel Brooks:That we see that there's always some untouchable part of our savings, and we've all been there. Here's the amazing thing about this, I mean it is amazing, it says, These people grumbled, and it says that Moses and Aaron gathered them all before God and says, God has heard your grumbling. God doesn't get angry. That's amazing. There's not a word of rebuke.
Joel Brooks:God has heard your grumbling, but instead of raining down judgment, he rains down bread for these people. Overly kind and merciful. I mean, they went as so far as to accuse God, the only reason you parted the Red Sea and brought us out here was so you could slaughter us. We know you. You're wicked.
Joel Brooks:But he doesn't rebuke them. He sends them quill. He sends them manna, and he meets their needs. All they have do is go outside and gather their food. Now God gives them this food out in the middle of the desert.
Joel Brooks:And if you go through scripture, if you go back all the way to Genesis 1, one of the things you're gonna notice is God created a lot of things, but he did not create a wilderness. He didn't create a barren land. He created land, and he put Adam and even a garden. He created vegetation. Barrenness, wilderness came as a result of sin and the fall.
Joel Brooks:But here we have possibly 2,000,000 people being fed in the desert. And what God is showing is I am creating something out of nothing. I am sustaining you out of nothing. This is a new creation. And I don't know if you've seen that theme happen all through Exodus over and over and over.
Joel Brooks:When God is in the center of your life, there's life. There's sustenance. There's order. You remove God from your life, there's barrenness. Things fall apart.
Joel Brooks:There's plagues. So God here, he takes care of them. Now let's look at how he does this miracle. I don't know if you've ever wondered, one of the things I do when I'm studying a text, I just keep writing questions. And so I wrote, why manna?
Joel Brooks:That kind of got a little silly kind of. I was like, why not wake up, you look next to you, there is a plate, some bacon, well, it could be bacon, some eggs, you know, some biscuits with jelly, some grits, you know, pancakes. All you ever want. You just you eat you wake up cup of coffee right there. I mean, God he's God.
Joel Brooks:He can feed them what however he wants to feed them. That is not any more crazy than waking up and there's food blanketing the ground. Okay? They could wake up and there could be a plate next to them full of all of that. He decides not to do that.
Joel Brooks:He sends this manna, and he sets all these rules about how exactly you can gather it. And and he's doing this because it's not just food. If it was food, then maybe he could just make it go in your stomach, you know, or or do the plate. But this is a sign. He is feeding them this way because he wants you to look at something.
Joel Brooks:He is trying to make a point. This is a parable, a living parable if you will. A true one. And this is the sign. He's teaching them.
Joel Brooks:Well, one, absolutely that they have to depend on him. That where before when he saved them, they were absolutely passive in their salvation. I mean, he is forcing them through the Red Sea. He is I mean, they are passive, but when it comes to day to day obedience, when it comes to his growing relationship, they're gonna have to do stuff now. They're gonna have to go and gather.
Joel Brooks:Every morning, go and gather. Every morning, they're gonna have to trust, if they wanna grow closer to him. And notice how God delivered the food and He put it all on the ground outside of their tents. And so every morning when they got up, they had 2 choices, they will either trample on his grace or they would receive it. Every morning, they couldn't just ignore it.
Joel Brooks:They would either trample all over his mercy, trample over his food, or they could gather it and they could receive it, but that was their only two options. And he's teaching them that all of life, you're either receiving my grace or you are repelling my grace. All of life, you are either praising me or you are cursing me. You are mocking me. Those are your options.
Joel Brooks:This is the sign, and this is the sign for Israel is a sign for us as well. That although he has saved us in a moment, now we are walking with him. We've gotta be doing that. We gotta be spending time in his word, spending time in prayer. Like Lamentations tell us, his mercies are new every morning, just like the manna.
Joel Brooks:Something else is going on here. Now notice that they are to only gather one day's worth. You know, whatever they gathered, if they tried to hoard it, it wouldn't carry on to the next day. And what Jesus is or what the Lord is doing here is actually a subtle rebuke in a way. He's teaching them not to be greedy, which was the very reason they said, feed me before.
Joel Brooks:Said, you know what? If you're a really good gatherer, you're really intelligent, you know where most of the manna is, and you have all these great physical skills, and you can gather more than anybody, you will never get richer than your neighbor, ever, because it's grace. You can't carry it over, you can't stop pilot. This is meant to be shared, and the text actually says that, he who gathered little didn't lack, and he who gathered more didn't have too much. Meaning they shared, and even the very way that you would have to prepare manna.
Joel Brooks:In which in numbers it tells us that they would grind it, and and they would they would make it into a pulp, and they would bake it. That's a community event. No, people didn't just do that individually. How inefficient for everybody to get their own little manna, grind it up, you know, put it in a little oven. They didn't do that.
Joel Brooks:This is a community event. Everybody gathered together. They're working together. Nobody's hoarding. It's like I'm making a new community here.
Joel Brooks:That's what I'm making. Every morning you seek me, so I make you dependent upon one another, and you'll seek me together actually. That's why he fed them this way. So we we've looked at how you can apply this text, but it really doesn't do you any good, unless you realize ultimately to whom this story points. If I told you, you know, we all put our hands in the middle and said, 123 break.
Joel Brooks:Raleigh, go get them, you know, and we're all out there saying, we're gonna do our best. Get up 4:30 quiet time every morning, you know, feast on this manna every day, and we're gonna try really hard. You you're gonna get a week, maybe 2 weeks. Because you're be motivated by guilt, the law. You need to be motivated, our love for Christ, which is whom this text so clearly points.
Joel Brooks:This story brings us to Jesus in a bunch of ways. I I look at just 2. Just as Israel was taken through the Red Sea and then led by the presence of the Lord into the wilderness, the exact same thing happened to Jesus in Matthew 4. If you remember, Jesus was baptized. And it says, when he came up out of the waters, the Spirit of the Lord led him into the wilderness, where he was tempted.
Joel Brooks:And what was one of his temptings? Do you remember? Turn this into bread. See this rock here? Make it manna.
Joel Brooks:Come on. Do it. And he quotes from Deuteronomy 8, which was written to those Israelites in the desert. Says in and this is the the whole context when he says, man shall not live by bread alone. This is the passages quoting, and you shall remember the whole way that the lord your god has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
Joel Brooks:And he humbled you, and let you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know. That he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. And so Jesus, when he is led into the desert, he understands his temptation is just like the Israelites. Actually, it's worse because he had no provisions. He had fasted 40 days 40 nights, and he had no savings in which he could draw on, yet he didn't succumb to temptation.
Joel Brooks:And what he did when he quoted from Deuteronomy saying, I realize you're trying to trick me, devil, and saying that the reason that I can live is if I eat bread? No. I'm alive because my father says, live. Most people, they they misunderstand those words when Jesus says, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. They they think, man, we gotta be hungering for this.
Joel Brooks:This is what we live for, and that that's true, but that's not what Jesus is saying. He is saying this, you would have me think that I can live by any other ways. I live by this, not by what goes in my body. I live because my father says, live. The same voice that spoke the universe into existence can look at me and say, live.
Joel Brooks:He already has for 40 days without water and without food. Live, my son, and I will believe that. Not that I have to turn something into bread, or I have to to perform a magic trick and eat it, I trust the sovereignty of God in my life. Jesus also refers back to the Exodus in John chapter 6. Let me read these words to you.
Joel Brooks:Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate 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.
Joel Brooks:And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. And so Jesus, he looks back to the exodus, and he says, you know what? That all pointed to me. That was manna with a little m. I'm manna with a capital m.
Joel Brooks:It points to me. And although you have been grumbling, and although you have been complaining to God, instead of raining down judgment on you, God rained me down to give you mercy and to give you grace. And this is this is something I missed for so long, but look at chapter 16 verse 7. Says, in the morning, you shall see the glory of the Lord because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. Now, in the morning, you shall see the glory of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:This is the first time ever we have mentioned of the glory of the Lord in scripture, right here. And it says, in the morning, you're gonna wake up and see manna, and that's gonna be the glory of the Lord. It's been an unusual phrase to them, first time in scripture. And look at chapter or verse 11, same chapter. Says, and the Lord said to Moses, have heard the grumbling of your people.
Joel Brooks:Say to them at twilight, you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall, sorry, I'm I completely missed the verse. Chapter verse 10, sorry, one verse more. It says, and as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked towards the wilderness and behold the glory of the lord appeared in the cloud. So now they're actually seeing this glory of the lord, and it's not just that it's a cloud or or the pillar of fire because that's been with them all along. Now something is different.
Joel Brooks:Now when man is about to be rained down, the cloud is different. They look in and they actually see, wait, there is the glory of the lord. There's the glory of the lord. Who or what is this? Listen to these words from John 1, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, And we have seen his glory.
Joel Brooks:Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. All of this points to Jesus. All of this. When we see god's grace and it rains down on there and the sustenance that we need to live not just day by day, but when Jesus forever reminds us of this story. Jesus says, this is who it ultimately points, the glory of the Lord is revealed in that.
Joel Brooks:How much more in my face? You eat that, you die. But you come to me and you live forever. And it's Jesus who forms a true community. Jesus who truly gives us a spirit and unites us together.
Joel Brooks:And it's Jesus who ultimately reveals to us the glory of God. I don't know about you, but when I read this in the text, and I and you see this over and over, and I hope I'm seeing light bulbs come off as we're going through Exodus. Man, it just makes me wanna get on my knees and worship. It makes just the the the words we're learning salvation and glory and redemption becomes so real. My prayer for us is we would see Jesus as a greater manna.
Joel Brooks:One in which we pursue and we take in and we share. Pray with me. Lord, you are the bread of life and you have revealed to us the glory of your father, fully. We thank you for that. I ask as we continue to study your word in the book of Exodus that, you would draw us more deeply into worship, that would transform us, truly build a redeemed community here that is totally, utterly different than any other other institution or any other people around.
Joel Brooks:Make us a city on the hill for your glory, And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
