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Bread From Heaven and the Word of God

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Bread from Heaven and the Word of God

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Bread From Heaven and the Word of God

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This message examines the need to be hungering and feeding on the Word of God on a daily basis.

Transcript

[Scott Delamater] So here we are coming off of another Feast, it seemed to just fly by very quickly. It was a very fast seven days for I know many of us, we'd have this conversation about just how quickly it went. I think we didn't have a Sabbath in there breaking it up but here we are, we've come through another days of Unleavened Bread. And here we are at day seven of our count toward Pentecost, believe it or not. We're already one week in of the seven. Where to from here? Where do we go from here? Yesterday, it was really that big event where God brought Israel through the sea, He delivered them from Egypt, He delivered them from sin, and they celebrated. And we can read about that they had a big celebration. And then you can imagine, okay, well, now it's time to move on. Here we go.

And it's interesting when you go back and you look at the things that happened in that interim period, between that last day of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Pentecost. And when you go evaluate all those interesting things that happened, there's a whole series of them. We won't go through all of them today but I want to look at one in particular because these things are lessons for us. And we read that over in 1 Corinthians 10 if you'll turn over there. 1 Corinthians 10:1, and this is one of my favorite setup scriptures really because Paul here is telling us that all of these things that happened to them are very instructive. There are lessons that we can try out of those things and we do, and we've heard about that for the last seven days now.

1 Corinthians 10:1, "Moreover, brethren, and I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud," there was a cloud, recall, that was there guiding them and leading them. It says they were “under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” So, that event, that would have happened then yesterday, is a type of baptism. It's something that points towards baptism. There's something instructive there, so they're baptized in the cloud and in the sea. And verse 3 it says they “all ate the same spiritual food, and all drink the same spiritual drink. For they drink of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ." Says they ate spiritual food and drink spiritual drink.

When we read about them coming out, we read about some things where they ate some physical food and they drink some physical water, but here, Paul is pointing out that this is spiritual food and spiritual drink. There are spiritual things that they were consuming, that they were taking in, or supposed to be taking in there as well. So sort of make a mental note of that, we're talking about spiritual food and drink here. And so where then did they go? They've been baptized in the sea and now they move on. And where are they going from there? Where do we see them headed? Let's go look, Exodus 15.

Because all of us are also likewise on a journey, many of us have been baptized and many of you know that following your baptism, it's not always the easiest time. Sometimes, you know, you think, "Oh, I'm going to get baptized and then things are going to be great." And you find out that you get baptized and things get really challenging. And “Wait, this isn't how it's supposed to be. It was supposed to just, oh… now, I'm in it and it's good.” But you realize that you're just starting down that road. In Exodus 15:20, we see that after Moses sings a new song, Miriam sings a new song and there's a lot of celebration. And it's an amazing thing but then they do have to move on. And in verse 22, we see that they move on. “So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; and they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days into the wilderness and found no water.”

They're three days in without finding water. God allows them to thirst, He allows them to need water. He didn't provide it there on day one or two, or, you know, they're on day three. When you're getting back to the limits of human ability to go without water, He's allowing them to thirst. Verse 23, "Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah.” Which means bitter. Can you imagine the excitement? You're three days out and you don't have any water, and then you see, "Oh, look, up there. It's not just a mirage, there's water here."

And you get to that water and then you can't drink it because it's just awful, right? The commentator speculate that it was probably a very alkaline water. The water there in that area tends to be a little more on that side of things and so they couldn't drink it. It was just so bitter and awful for you that it wasn't something you'd want to drink, kind of like turning on our taps, right? Our tap water here is… But can you imagine being so thirsty and then seeing this water and going, "Wow. God has provided water." And then finding out no, He actually, He didn't provide water. “Is He just toying with us here? Is He taunting us? What's He doing? Why is He allowing this? Why is He allowing us to thirst and why is He throwing this in our face that we can't have this good water?”

Well, He explains why He's doing this. He explains why He allows this sort of emotional roller coaster perhaps. Verse 24, "And the people complained against Moses, saying, ‘What are we going to drink?’” “We can't even drink the water here." And verse 25, "So Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. And when he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and ordinance them, and there He tested them,” it's interesting that there's no mention here of God's displeasure with them. It doesn't say the people complained and God was very angry with them for not trusting Him. After all, He’d just brought them through the sea. It doesn't know… we're not… we don't know that God wasn't upset but there's no mention of that.

There's no mention that He's upset with them. He just says, "Moses, go put the water in… put this three in here and make the waters good." And He's testing them. When we are first called and we first enter into the faith, we’re first baptized, and there we are, we've come through. God knows that we're not spiritually mature at that point and He knows He's going to need to test and He's going to need to teach. And so here He says He tested them and He's teaching them. Verse 26, "And He said, 'If you diligently heed the voice of your Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.'"

He used this opportunity to teach them a lesson about obedience. He's not using this as an opportunity to say, "You wretched people, why didn't you believe Me?" He brought them and He shows them. He demonstrates that look, He's able to heal, He's able to make things well for them if they'll obey Him. He's teaching them lessons about obedience. He's testing their obedience. And we see this through this theme and this pattern over and over, that He rescues, right? When He calls us, He's going to lead us down a road that's going to include testing. And it's not going to be a super fun road. This wild ride and we get to the end and that was great. He's calling us into a life that requires obedience and He's going to test us in order to help us develop that obedience.

Let's continue in chapter 16, in verse 1. It says, "They journeyed from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed from the land of Egypt." So here they are full month out, right, the 15th day of the first month would have been the first day of Unleavened Bread. And here they are full month out, so all their boxes of matzos have run out at this point. And, you know, they're probably running low in food and provisions at this point as we find out. This is a month in. They're getting closer toward Pentecost. Verse 2, "Then the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the children of Israel, they said, 'Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.'"

They're lit bit unhappy here. And interestingly, the Lord says to Moses, "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you." This isn't necessarily the answer that any of us would expect or would think of, right? If it says, "Well, I bet here's what God's going to do. He's going to invent this bread that's going to just sort of come down and sort of materialize, and then it will melt in the day and that's how God's going to fix this problem, right?

He tends to fix the problems and teach us things along the way. And that's what He's going to do here. "The Lord said to Moses, 'Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day,'" and notice He says, "that I can test them… so that I may test them whether they will walk in My law or not." Again, He's bringing them out and He allowed the to hunger so that He could feed them, right? If we've got our own food, we're feeding ourselves. We don't quite need to look to Him and rely on Him perhaps in the way that He wants us to. And so He allowed them to hunger so that He could be the one that provided for them. And so that He could teach them, and so that He could test their obedience.

That's what He's after, that's what He wanted, that's what He wanted to see, He’s there teaching them. Let's go over to Deuteronomy 8. There's a very interesting thread here that we can continue down. Deuteronomy 8, sort of the next step in that thread, so here they've come out and they've learned this testing. By the time we get to Deuteronomy 8, we're 40 years later, this is a different generation. That generation had died off. Deuteronomy is given, at the very end of their wanderings, and Moses is teaching them and reminding them it's a re-giving and retelling. And so here he is teaching the young generation that had now grown up and they're maybe in their 50's and 60's, and their children, and he's teaching them.

And he goes back and he sites what we just read there in Exodus 16, he goes back to that example and reminds them of this example because he wants them to remember something. He wants them to remember the lessons that God is trying to teach. Deuteronomy 8:1, "Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe,” every commandment, “that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord your God swore to your fathers." He's saying He wants them to obey because He wants them to thrive. He wants them to live, to succeed. He's not just getting us out there and testing us to see if we'll do what He wants, because He just wants a bunch of people that are going to go do what He wants.

He gives His commandments because they let us live and thrive. And He wants to see them go in and live and multiply, and possess the land. Verse 2, "And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to test you, and to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not." He brought them through and gave them instructions, and then gave them opportunities to demonstrate that they would follow those instructions. He gave them opportunities to demonstrate their obedience because He was looking for obedience. And verse 3, sort of the culmination of this, "So He humbled you, and allowed you to hunger, and feed you… He fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone," not just the physical things that He was providing, right?

Those are the object lesson, “but that man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” He says “He allowed you to hunger.” Moses tells them, it's interesting, that “God let you hunger.” He lets us hunger, right? Not because He's taunting us. He lets us go into those states of lack, where we have need. We need something, right? Not so that we can go out and figure it out ourselves and provide for ourselves, but so that He can feed us. "He fed you," he reminds them. He feeds us. He brings us out. He lets us hunger so that He can feed us.

Not so that we can be fed and be full, right? Not so that we just have the physical food and the good stuff, but it's an object lesson that He may make you know, He says, to teach you this principle, to teach you this big idea that man doesn't live just by the physical things, right? It's not just in pagan society, right, you would go and you would obey, and do whatever the gods wanted you to do to try to appease the gods so that they would give you a good crop and you would eat well. That's not what He's wanting them to do. He doesn't want them to just obey so that they can get the good food, and obey so that they can have water. That's not the obedience He was after with them. That's not the obedience He's after with us.

It's not just about getting a good physical crop. That's actually a very pagan idea. He's there teaching that this isn't just about the physical, He's feeding of the spiritual food and drink. It's spiritual food. Remember, this is what Paul reminded us in 1 Corinthians. “Man doesn't live by bread alone,” by the physical things. He lives by the spiritual things. Now that phrase is very well known to most people that are familiar with the Bible, right, even people that aren't. I remember a hot dog commercial for Hebrew National I think it was that talked about man doesn't live by bread alone and then they talk about hot dogs. It's a phrase that rolls off the tongue easily, right? “Man doesn't live by bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

But consider the magnitude of that statement. You think about the magnitude of that. It means that God's Word declares everything that's required to sustain life, physical and spiritual. His Word tells us everything that we need in order to have a rich physical and spiritual life, and that's what He wants. He wants obedience to that Word, not because He's got a stem on us and He's going to make us do what He wants us to do, right? But because He gave us those things so that we could thrive and live. And we could have a rich and abundant spiritual life primarily. Sometimes that also translates into a rich and abundant physical life. His promises to Israel were primarily physical promises. "Follow My word, follow my laws and you will have this rich, abundant life."

But He offers us something even more. He offers us a rich and abundant eternal, spiritual life. And that's why He's testing us and looking for that obedience, right? It's not about that food. It's not about the food. It's about God as the provider of everything that we need in life. Sort of a side note, this is really, this is why we say a prayer at a meal. When we're going to say a prayer for a meal it's really not about the food. I mean, it's about the food but that's our opportunity to pause and recognize that in the same way that this food sustains physical life and God provides that, and it's our opportunity to pause and thank Him for sustaining us in everything, in all that He does.

It's interesting that we don't, there's not some other event throughout the day that we tend to all just sort of pause and say, "Okay, well let's say a prayer. We're about to put on our clothes. Let's pause and say a prayer." "I'm about to walk into my house, right, that God has provided for me. I'm going to say a prayer." We don't tend to do that but when we have a meal, and there's a meal sitting in front of us, the thing that sustains us physically, that's when we pause and we stop, and we reflect, and we say, "Okay. All of these things these came from God. God provides all the good things that we have in our life.” It's a really good time to stop and thank Him for that because He's the provider. He feeds us with everything that we need.

Jesus Christ understood this. Let's turn over to Matthew 3, continuing this thread, continuing this same thought, Matthew 3:16, "And when He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’" And then the next three and a half years were just amazing, right? I mean they're amazing for us as instruction but I can imagine that those were the best three-and-a-half years of His life.

And you'll notice the very next thing that happens after He's baptized is that the Spirit leads Him into the wilderness, and so just as Israel. It goes through the baptism of the Red Sea and then they are led by God into the wilderness by the cloud. Here, Jesus Christ is baptized, setting us an example and then God's Spirit leads Him into the wilderness to be tested, to be tempted to see whether or not he would obey. And here we are in verse 2, "When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry." So He goes out into the wilderness and He willingly subjects Himself to need, willingly hungers, but here He's fasting because He recognizes the principle here. He understands what God wants and what God is teaching.

And in verse 3, "Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, 'If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.'" Now, this doesn't seem like… it seems like a fairly harmless request in some way, right? “If You're the Son of God, if you have power, do this thing.” It's a small sort of private miracle. Nobody else would really know whether or not He did this. It was just, you know, and seemingly harmless, right? Just make some bread, you'll have bread to eat, you're good to go. Just use your power, use the power that you have that you were given, right? But that's not what… that's not how He saw it. Verse 4, "But He answered and He said to him, 'It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”'"

He's going back to Deuteronomy 8, which is pointing back to Exodus 16, where God is teaching the lessons about obedience. He knew it wasn't about the food, it wasn't about being fed and being full. To Him, even this thing that was seemingly small, right, it was sort of trivial thing, just make some bread. This convenient private miracle wasn't in line with His Father's will. It wasn't in line with God's Word with what was set out for Him that He was supposed to do. It wasn't in line with every word of what God had commanded and He wouldn't do it. He was fully obedient to God's Word, fully obedient, even in the little things, even in the small things. He wouldn't do it.

He set us an example then, right? He shows what God had wanted, what God intended for Israel to learn in those 40 years as they were wandering, their full and complete obedience. It points us back to that. Let's go over to John 6. John 6:4, so God had used this manna that He rained down from heaven to teach Israel, to teach them. And they learned and they extracted some lessons out of it. But Jesus Christ here is going to make a pretty amazing claim. We read this at Passover that Jesus Christ is the true Manna. He's the true bread from heaven. He goes back to that example that we read and He says, "Here's what this was symbolizing. Here's what this was teaching you about.”

And we're going to see, He does this very, very powerfully and profoundly. John 6:4, "Now the Passover, A feast of the Jews, was near. And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, and He said to Phillip, 'Where should we buy bread, that these may eat?' But He said this to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do." So here it is, it's getting toward Passover season and he has this opportunity to have this great miracle occur. And he goes on and he feeds 5,000 people with some fishes and loaves. And it's a great miracle, it's an amazing miracle but that's not where we're going to focus today. After He does that, He disappears, goes across the sea with His disciples, and all of these people come searching for Him and finding Him because they realize the magnitude, the miracle that He did and they think it's amazing. So they come and they find Him.

And in verse 26, “Jesus answered them and He said, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.’" Because for them, it was all about the food. He was their meal ticket and you could, “If you go and you obey what this Guy says and follow His instructions or whatever, He's going to feed you and you'll be covered, and then you'll have a good life.” It's, sort of, it's almost that pagan thought of, "Well, let's go appease the gods and we'll have good things for ourselves and things will be good. Life will be good." He says that's not what He did that for. "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him."

He says, "You have to look for more than a handout. You have to look for the spiritual food. You have to be filled with that." Verse 30, "Therefore they said to Him, 'What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Because our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”'" Again, going back to that example. And He's going to use that example now and sort of turn it on them and say “Yes, but they didn't understand the lesson and you don't either.” We need to understand the lesson. Verse 32, "Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give 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."

Here, now, He's talking about Himself and He turns it. And they probably didn't pick up on that initially, but as they come to realize what He's saying to them, that He's talking about Himself, that He's not just talking about the manna but now He's talking about Himself. They go, "Wait a second, I don't know if I like what this Guy is saying." Because really it's a pretty audacious claim. There are people who want to say Jesus was just a good Teacher and a good Man, taught some good things. But Jesus Christ made some really audacious claims that if He wasn't God, you know, this is not the kind of thing that any human could rightly say, without being just some sort of lunatic. But He was God and He tells them He's the bread that God sent from heaven that will give them eternal life.

Verse 48, because He's telling them, "Look, manna was just a type that points to Me." Verse 48, "I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.” And not just physically dead, they were spiritually dead. They didn't understand the lessons. They didn't understand what God was teaching. They'll have another opportunity to learn those things. They are dead in every sense. “This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.” Spiritual life and death are what He has in view here because He talks about them dying and talks about raising them up at the last day. He's not talking about physical life. He has spiritual life and spiritual death in mind.

He says that He's going to raise them up. We read these things at Passover. We say, "Okay, well, we need to take of these symbols," right? "I'm the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." And so we learn about the Passover symbols that He instituted, we see that those represent Him, right? But it's not some mystical thing. It's not just, well, we show up at the Passover once a year, we take this bread and this wine, and somehow that does this magic and we're going to be a part of God's Kingdom. These aren't mystical symbols.

There are people that understand them in that way, that interpret them in that way. But we have to go beyond that, we have to go beyond just seeing these as things that we show up and we take once a year and somehow we're covered or we're good. There's more that He's teaching here. They're the object lesson. Just like manna. Manna was the object lesson, right? It wasn't the thing that saved them. Obedience to God, that was the thing He was teaching. The symbols here are the object lesson. We take that bread, we drink of that wine, those things are the object lesson for us. And then there is spiritual food that we have to be consuming, real spiritual food that we have to be taking in when we understand what those symbols are, what those symbols picture.

Are we fed and nourished by God's Word? Is that what feeds us? Is that what nourishes us? Is that our food? Is it our food to do the will of the Father? It was Jesus Christ’s food because “I have bread that you don't know about.” And His food was to do the will of His Father that sent Him. Is that our food? Is that what drives us? Is that what fuels us? Because that's what He's after. God wants full obedience. He wants full obedience to His Word. Lets drop down to verse 57, "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me." And He's not just talking about feeding on Him once a year at Passover. We have to do that. We understand that. That is a symbol that we absolutely need to take.

But if that's the only time that we're feeding on Jesus Christ, it's not enough. It's not going to be enough. Are we feeding on Him continually, daily? Or do we feed on other things? There are a lot of things in this world that we can feed on and it's easy to get sucked in to. And we can really get ourselves wrapped up in the politics of this world and feed on those things, right? “And that's the food that fuels me as to really get into the political scene here and try to understand it and make it right and have the right point of view on these things.” We can feed on those if we choose to. We can feed on other junk food, Facebook maybe, right? I'm not saying Facebook is wrong but it is easy.

These sites are designed, right, for us to get in and consume them, right? They're designed to keep us engaged, to keep us involved. Articles are written and blogs are written and there are all sorts of stuff that we can feed on that can be our food or that fuels us, that we meditate on. It's easy to let those things settle in our mind and be the things that we meditate on, that we feed on. That's not what He's after, that's not what He wants. He says, "He who feeds on me will have life." We need to be feeding on Him. Verse 61, a lot of people have a lot of problems with this teaching. They didn't like this idea that we had to feed on Jesus Christ. "When Jesus knew in Himself and that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, 'Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?’” “What if you see Me go back where I'm going?” “It is the Spirit which gives life; the flesh profits nothing."

So, again, He's pointing them to the spiritual food. "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” God's Word is life. He's saying the Word is spirit and it is life to you. This is the thing that you've got to feed on, His Word. We've got to be feeding on His Word and that's what will make us alive, that is our nourishment. That's the thing that leads to spiritual life. He Himself is the Word. John 1, we read about that, that Jesus Christ is the Word. That He's called the Word. He is the embodiment of His teachings, of His words.

So He teaches, He says His words are life, and then He embodies His teachings. He is the Word. When we consume that, when we feed on the Word, when we talk about feeding on Jesus Christ, feeding on the Word, they're all part of the same thing, right? We're feeding on His teachings so that we can learn obedience so that we can have eternal life, a rich, abundant, spiritual life. I noticed it's interesting because He's asking them, "Are you offended? Are you going to go away?" And in verse 67, “Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you also want to go away?’ But Simon Peter answered Him,” and notice what he says to Him, he says, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” “You have the thing that we need to be feeding on. You have the thing that nourishes us. Where else are we going to get that?"

And here he recognized the food, the spiritual food, the spiritual manna that was Jesus Christ and His teachings. So it's interesting, we sort of recap here. God allowed Israel to hunger, right, so that He could feed them. He sent bread from heaven to them which they were feeding on. They were to feed on daily, He gave them instructions about that. And with that food, with what He provided, came testing, testing of their obedience. In order to teach them just how central His Word was to their spiritual life and to their ability to thrive. Not just that they have manna and be able to eat but He's teaching them the centrality of His Word in their lives, of His commands. And Moses said, "You have to live by every word." God allows us to hunger spiritually.

Sometimes He allows us to hunger so that He can feed us. Jesus says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." And so that should be our hunger and thirst. We should be hungering for that because He wants to feed us. He says, "They'll be filled." We'll be filled, we'll be fed. Jesus Christ, the Word, right? The Word became Jesus Christ, the true bread from heaven and we're to feed on that. As we do that, just as Israel fed on the manna and it came with testing, as we do that it comes with testing to see if we'll continue to feed on that. We continue to feed on His Word and obey every word as we can, as we understand. He's trying to teach us the centrality of His Word in our lives, the obedience to His Word, to His commandments.

So I have two practical encouragements I want to get through here. Two practical encouragements that we can sort of take away from some of these things. First one, let's go back to Exodus 16. Exodus 16:19. The first encouragement is to gather it daily. Gather daily what you need. Exodus 16:19, “Moses said, ‘Let no one leave any of it till morning.’ Notwithstanding they did not heed Moses. But some of them left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them.” So they thought, "Well, this manna looks pretty good. Let's just kind of stockpile it and we'll have a little bit for, you know, throughout the week." But that wasn't how God designed it, “it bred worms and it stank.”

“And Moses was angry with them. So they gathered it every morning, every man according to his need. And when the sun became hot, it melted.” It's interesting that you couldn't hoard it, right? If you could hoard it, then you wouldn't have to go gather it daily. You could go out there and you could gather a whole bunch of it, put it in a big old pot, right, and just sort of feed on it every morning. That's not how God designed it. He made it so that they had to go work for it. It had to go out daily and work for it. Couldn't stockpile it, right? We need to be gathering His Word daily. If we're only gathering one day of the week and trying to stockpile all that, that's not going to cut it, that's not going to work for us. We need to be going out and gathering it daily.

It's interesting here that they gathered it early. They gathered it in the morning so that they could use it throughout the day. They could go and then consume it over the course of the day. They gathered it early. Remember, for us if we're going to be obedient to every word of God, we want to there in mind so that as we go throughout our day we can subject ourselves to it so that we can have an abundant life. But we need to be taking it in and the model here seems to be morning is a good time to do that. They go soak it in and so that it can be there in mind after we've slept and we've sort of have that brain reset, hopefully, if we get a good night sleep. We're able to take that in, minds are clear. We're able to take that food that we've eaten and then use it throughout the day. We're able to learn obedience in that way.

We want to have it in mind, it's a good thing to have it in the morning. It's interesting, too, that as the day wore on it melted away. If you didn't get up and go get it, and the day wore on, you missed your opportunity. You're going to have to go find some other source that day, right? And we can do that too, where we get up and we have a spiritual need, right? If we have God's Spirit in this, we have a spiritual need to be fed with this. So we're going to need that and if we don't feed it, we're going to go find some other thing and feed it, right? And it's usually not the good stuff, it's the junk food.

It's the stuff that is really easy to access in the pantry that my wife gives me grief about when I go and find that first. We need to gather it daily. It's good to gather it early. Matthew 6:11, same idea, same principle. Matthew 6:11, "Give us this day our daily bread." This is a prayer, give us this day for this coming day our daily bread. Jesus Christ encouraged daily bread, right, like manna. I don't know if He had manna in view here but He encourages that daily bread. One of them to be out daily asking God to provide for them. And Luke, he says, "Give us day by day our daily bread." It's not something we stockpile, it's something that we ask God to provide for us daily.

And this may not exclude the physical. I don't think He's excluding the physical need here, right, but do you think His focus is on the physical needs? Let's drop down to verse 31. Matthew 6:31, "Therefore do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’" As the Israelites did, they worried, they complained, "What are we going to eat?" "For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” He has these spiritual things in view here. So when He tells us "Go, seek our daily bread, feed on that daily bread," I don't know that He's saying excluding the physical bread, right, but His focus throughout the rest of Matthew is on the spiritual things, seeking the spiritual things, praying for the spiritual things.

Asking God to give us what we need out of His Word for that day, to use that day, to learn that day, to be able to grow in that day, to have to those things in mind and to be able to take them and learn. The goal here, remember, is obedience that we can have these things and that we can obey them. Let's go real quick to 2 John, 2 John 1:6, an interesting thought in this regard. 2 John 1:6, "This is love, that we walk according to His commandments." So God is love, I want to be love, you probably want to be love, right? That's what we want to be, that's where we're growing into. And He says, "This is love, is to walk according to His commandments." So when we're praying for God to feed us with that daily bread, we're saying, "I want to obey this, I want to grow in this, right? Show me your commandments, open my eyes to see them, open my eyes to understand your Word so that I can grow in it because that's love, that's what love is." That's what John says here. We have to feed on Jesus Christ, on His Word. We have to feed on Him daily, we got to feed on Him early. The Passover bread, the manna, those things are the object lessons that teach us our need to continually rely on Him.

Second encouragement, let's go back to Exodus 16. Second encouragement is to share it liberally, share it liberally. First was gather it daily and then secondarily share it liberally. Exodus 16:16, "This is the thing which the Lord has commanded: ‘Let every man gather it according to each one's need, one omer for each person, according to the number of persons; let every man take for those who are in His tent.’ Then the children of Israel did so and gathered, some more, some less.” And we read this and we go, "Oh, no, those Israelites, some are taking too much." That's not the sense here though, the sense isn’t that these people were in rebellion against God, right? Because “when they measure it by omers, he who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack. Every man had gathered according to each one's need.” So we get the sense here, they're not in rebellion.

It's not some of them were going out and trying to hoard a bunch of it and some of them are just lazy over there, picking up a little bit and just take out a little. We get to sense that they gathered according to their ability and then they shared among themselves. They distribute it so that they all had, right? Maybe they had a household went out and gathered a whole bunch for his tent, right, for all that were in his tent. Maybe somebody came along and helped him and they gathered a lot. And maybe they were just two in this tent over here and so they gathered a little. But they made sure that they all had what they needed. They all had the bread that they needed.

Let's go over to 2 Corinthians 8 because Paul quotes this scripture in this context of sharing liberally. He's talking about physical goods but there's a principle here, 2 Corinthians 8:14. 2 Corinthians 8:14, "But by an equality,” He wants equality “that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance may also supply your lack—  there may be equality. As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.’" Paul sort of telling us here that what happened back there was about ensuring equality, it was about ensuring that everybody had what they needed.

Where am I going with this? Share it liberally, right? Some of us have time, a lot more time than others to study, to be in God's Word, to really have our heads in it. Some have more distractions in their lives during the day, some of us have jobs and other things that require focus eight, nine hours a day where we don't have the time, the ability to have our heads on our work… or in the Word and to be focused on it. Some people could use a little bit of encouragement. They could use to hear that other people are thinking about these things, right? A little bit of that positive peer pressure to say, "Here's what I've been studying. Have you thought about this?" Sort of spark a little bit of that interest in them.

We need to be sharing God's Word, we need to be sharing what we study, talk about it. If you're studying something interesting, let's hear about it, talk about it, especially here on the Sabbath. To be able to say what you're learning, what God is feeding you with others so that then others can be spurred on and go, "Oh, that's really interesting. That's a really interesting topic. I haven't thought about it that way. And now I can't wait to go get home and dig in, and figure out what does it say there, right? I wonder what that is." Hopefully, you had those conversations here at church throughout the week with other people, where somebody will share of God's Word with you, you go, "Oh, this is really great." And that fire is lit again. We need to be sharing liberally.

Let's go to Colossians 3:16. As we wind down here, every young person's favorite words. Colossians 3:16, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another" this question about where the punctuation in this verse goes. It might read, in your Bible, “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns” it might not quite be the sense.

A lot of the commentators don't feel that that's exactly the sense of it. That the teaching here, the instruction is “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, be feeding on that Word. Be filled with it. Let it dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, encouraging one another.” Sharing the things that God is feeding you with with another. Sharing and encouraging in those things, right? And even if it is that we're somehow teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. We don't tend to walk around and sing to each other. But even if that were the sense here, psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs are generally God's Word, the psalms are God's Word, right?

The hymns that we know, that we have implanted in our minds, that we've been singing for so long, that you could rattle off any number of psalms that's been dwelling in you richly, maybe for decades. These are the words that He says, "Encourage one another with these, teach one another with these, share this bread. Share it liberally." Jesus Christ said, "The words that I speak to you are spirit." Again, that's one of those big audacious statements. The words that he spoke were spirit. Are the words that we speak to each other spirit? That's a pretty big claim. But if they're His words they must be, right? We can speak spiritual words, we can speak life to one another and that's the kind of words that we need to be speaking of one another, sharing with one another, especially here when we're together.

So let's feed daily on Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God. He is the true bread from heaven, with that manna was supposed to teach us about. Let's share with others, share with those who are hungry. Share with those who need it. In that way, maybe we will all be nourished, we can grow up into the stature of our fully obedient older Brother, Jesus Christ.

Comments

  • Sue
    This was truly a very inspiring sermon. In fifty years, I don’t recall ever hearing a sermon that ties the manna to the unleavened bread of Passover. Excellent. Thanks Scott Delamater!
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