It is the Lord Who Heals and Provides - Pastor Tom Loghry
Through Israel's grumbling in the wilderness in Exodus 15–16, we see how our complaints in hardship reveal a failure to trust God — and that His provision of manna and water ultimately points to Christ, the true bread of life who alone satisfies our deepest need.
Transcript:
Let us pray as we come before God's Word. Dear Father, as we hear the testimony of your provision for the people of Israel here in Exodus 15 and 16, we pray that you would impress upon us your goodness, your love for us, that you are truly trustworthy, and that, Father, through this testimony, that you would turn our hearts to trust completely in you. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. You may be seated
Are you given to grumbling? Perhaps some of us more than others, but I think that we all have to admit to occasions of grumbling. In one sense, it's perfectly understandable- when things don't seem to be going to plan, when things are difficult and don't seem how they ought to be, it's completely natural that we would be dissatisfied. The Bible is full of, of examples of people expressing their dissatisfaction to the Lord. And some of these examples are, are positive, we find them in the Psalms, and some of them are negative, as we'll see here in Exodus 15 and 16. I wanna invite you to think deeply about what happens here in this passage. If we wouldn't say that dissatisfaction in and of itself is wrong, what is wrong with Israel here? And what might we learn about ourselves in this episode as we think about our own tendencies when we face hardship?
The people of Israel are free, liberated from Egyptian slavery and delivered from Pharaoh's army by their miraculous passage through the Red Sea, or otherwise known as the Reed Sea. We can imagine the people are riding on the highest of highs. Everything is swell, until they enter the desert. And then their spirits come hurtling down. And so we're going to pick up this morning at, in Exodus 15:22-27. And we've read some of those verses this morning. I'll read some of those same verses again in taking in this entire passage.
"Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went to the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah.) So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, 'What are we to drink?' Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink. There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test.
He said, 'If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you.' Then they came to Elim, where there were 12 springs and 70 palm trees, and they camped there near the water."
So just to kinda orient yourself as to where it's supposed that the Israelites find themselves in their journey here. This is a map that's drawn up by Dr. James Hoffmeier. So he suggests that they cross the Reed Sea somewhere up around here, and then they're traveling down here, moving their way down towards Mount Sinai.
And it's suggested that one of these locations might be Marah. No one knows for, with any exact certainty these locations. It's not like they had structures there that would've been left as a monument that they could've discovered. We're just talking about natural features, so it's tough to know with certainty 'cause sometimes those features disappear over time.
Now, as you can probably just tell here from the satellite photo, it looks like a pretty arid, dry terrain. And we've got kinda this old picture here from the desert of Shur. I'm not sure the exact location within the desert. But you can see, looks like a place where you could get thirsty pretty quickly.
Now the people are three days removed from the Reed Sea. They're moving along, making their way, and as they're getting along, they're saying, "We don't have enough water, and we need water." And, and they start grumbling. Now, the thing that's striking about this is you would think that after everything that they've been through, they might be confident that, "Well, we'll just ask the Lord, and he'll provide."
They'd just been delivered in a miraculous way through the Reed Sea, and yet we see here that they have a very, very short memory. And they, and so they're grumbling, and it comes to this head when they, as they get to Marah, and they say, "Oh, here's some water." And they go to drink it, and it's bitter.
And and so it says in verse 24, "They grumbled against Moses." Now, as we'll see here, and as we could tell here, they're not really, in truth, grumbling against Moses. They're grumbling against God. They're failing to trust in God. They're not just asking a fair question of here, here, of, you know, "Where are we going to get water?"
They're taking a step too far in their attitudes towards God. Now, as we think about our own situation today and the hardships that we go through, we can see that in ourselves that if we're not trusting in God, then we can be given over to just a state of grumbling. I mean, how much grumbling do we have going on in American society?
Quite a bit. Quite a bit of grumbling. And if we're not grumbling against God, then we find someone else that we assign blame, who we are in fact probably making God. And so, a lot of people grumble against the government 'cause they expect government to fill the, the place of God in their life and meet their every need, and so there's this great discontentment.
And so we see that there's, there's nothing really new here. Now, but there's something that's strikingly different here in the case of Moses because in our own day where, you know, when the people grumble, sometimes, you know, politicians like to say, "Well, I'll save everybody," and they kinda step forward and Moses doesn't say that. He's like, "I don't have any answers here. I need to turn to the Lord." He's not self-reliant, and so he turns to the Lord, and the Lord shows him something, a very curious sort of thing. He, he directs him to this piece of wood, could be called a log or a tree, this piece of wood, and Moses takes that piece of wood and he tosses it in the water, this bitter water that no one could drink. And when he did that, the bitterness was taken away from the water so that the people could take it and drink.
Now In verses 26 and 27, we have some explanation that's given by the Lord, through Moses, that this should remind the people that He cares for them, that as long as they walk in His ways, He's not gonna bring on any of the curses against them that were brought upon the Egyptians. That it is He, the Lord, who heals them. He heals them in just the same way that He, He basically just healed this water. Now, what the Lord is really doing here is he's calling them to holiness, he's calling them to righteousness, and he's making clear that he's the one who brings about their salvation, as, as we see here with this water, with this tree.
Now, it's interesting because as we go later on, further on in the, in the Old Testament when we get to the prophets, go to the prophet Isaiah chapter 12, verses one through three, this is a parallel that Dr. Michael Heiser picked up on. We see there that the Song of Moses is taken up, basically, and then verse three adds an interesting note here. It says, "In that day you will say: 'I will praise you, Lord. Although you were angry with me, your anger, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength, my defense; he has become my salvation.'" You'll remember that from the Song of Moses, that, when we went over that last week. And then verse three, "With, with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation." So obviously the water that we're talking about here is a literal water. They, they needed water. God gave it to them, but it's also a picture here. It's a picture of the salvation that God offers to his people, of his care for them.
In Psalm 103 verse two it says, "Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases." It's the Lord. It's the Lord who cares for us. It's the Lord who delivers. And in this image of a tree being cast into the water, it brings to mind the image of Christ on the cross for our salvation.
We think about the words of the Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 2 verse, verse 24, where he says, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." And of course, he's quoting there from Isaiah 53. It's Jesus who brings about the healing that we need.
And of course, we find Jesus also in John 4, verses 13 through 14, in his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, offering in himself living water to those that would come to him. Says, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again," talking about the well that he was by, "but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." So we have a, a foreshadowing here. A, the sort of foreshadowing that you couldn't see until you get to Jesus, and then you look back and you say, "Oh, I see it. I see how all these things are really serving as signposts pointing us to Jesus."
And so it raises a question for us, as, as we're going through hardship. Do we just give ourselves over to grumbling? Or do we turn to Christ? Do we seek Christ? Do we trust that we will be satisfied in Christ?
That doesn't mean that in the, in the immediate things are gonna be easy, 'cause it's not. But we're looking towards real and complete salvation in Christ. Yes, he begins transforming us today. Yes, he blesses us in ways that we don't deserve today, and there's more to come, though. And so we can trust him as we go through the desert.
And the question that it raises for us as a church is to, is for us to ask ourselves, what are we offering to people? Are we offering Christ to them, the only one who can offer healing? Are we offering them other things? Are we offering them entertainment, are we offering them just merely social activities? All those things will come up short. If we, however much we toss in the water, it's gonna remain bitter. Life is gonna remain bitter to people unless we are giving them Christ, unless they are taking Christ.
That's what we need to be doing as a church above all else. We try to do many things, but at the center of it all is we're offering Christ to people. Now we see in verse 27 that after this, they've been at Marah, this water's been transformed, and it says that they came to Elim, where they were, there were 12 springs and 70 palm trees, and they camped there near the water.
Now, isn't that interesting? Not much long after that, they're brought to a place that does have water, that does have all the things that they need. And remember, the people are being guided by the Lord, by the pillar of cloud. So it's the, God who is leading them along, and what do you know? He provides for them.
Why didn't they trust Him? And there's, again, Dr. Michael Heiser suggests that there's something about this location and just providentially how God provided that there's 12 springs there, 70 palm trees. It's sort of an edenic sort of image. And of course, the 12 springs, that seems to harken to the 12 tribes of Israel.
So there's a lot here that's saying that as you trust in the Lord, as you come before His presence, He takes care of us. He is our salvation. Now, continuing into chapter 16, we find that the Israelites, despite everything that God's been giving them, they begin grumbling again in their travels. The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."
Then the Lord said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day.
In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day, they are to prepare what they bring in, and what it, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days." So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, "In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we that you should grumble against us?"
Moses also said, "You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord." Then Moses told Aaron, "Say to the entire Israelite community, 'Come before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.'"
Now, just one thing to understand. The desert of Sin isn't referring to the moral, moral quality of, you know, rebelling against the Lord. That's just a location name, so we're not, nothing metaphorical here going on necessarily. Although, we do see the people. They're, they're acting in a simple way.
They're grumbling against the Lord, they're grumbling against Aaron and Moses, and as they clarify, you're really grumbling against the Lord. And it just seems, as we're reading here, they just seem so ungrateful. It seems very kind of melodramatic when, again, God has shown again and again that He can be relied upon.
He, they can trust in Him. And so the Lord, the Lord, and He says to Moses, "I'm gonna give them bread from heaven, and I'm gonna test them, test them to see if they're going to follow my instructions." Now, it's not that the Lord doesn't know whether or not they will follow His instructions. The Lord knows all things.
He knows past, present, future. He, He knows it all. But when we see the Lord testing people in scripture, the best way I can think of, I, I can describe it to you is it's like testing the integrity of a, of a metal, where it's reveal, you're revealing faults in that metal as you put it under, under heat. And the, and, and it's really not a revelation to the Lord.
It's a revelation to us of our brokenness. They think that they're all right. They think they got it all figured out. But what God's gonna prove to them again and again is that they're really failing to trust him in the way that they ought to, and it's showing something to us about our own selves and their own fallenness, that we have a share in that.
So the Lord says that he's going to give them this bread from heaven. On the sixth day, they're to gather twice as much because he's going to command them to rest on the seventh day, to take the Sabbath. And that they're gonna see all this. They're gonna see God's care for them, his glory, both in the evening and in the morning, because in the morning, in the evening rather, what he's going to be giving them is meat.
So they're gonna have every, He's giving them water. He's going to give them meat. He's going to give them bread. He's taking care of all their needs And again, they're trying to make it out like they're grumbling against Aaron and Moses, but Aaron and Moses are like, "Why would you grumble against, we're here depending upon the Lord just as much as you all. You're really grumbling against God. Go to the Lord. See what He will do for you." And so in verses 10 through 18, we see how the Lord fulfills His word to the Israelites.
While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud. The Lord said to Moses, "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, 'At twilight you will eat meat, in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.'" That evening, quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning, there was a layer of dew around the camp.
When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, "It is the bread the Lord has given to y- you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent." The Israelites did as they were told. Some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.
So I had already mentioned to you that the Lord was leading them in, in this pillar of cloud, and, um, we see here in verse 10 reference to this cloud, that the glory of the Lord was appearing in the cloud. And this is the actual presence of God in their midst. And God addresses Moses on the grumbling of the Israelites, saying, once again, as we've already said, that He's going to provide meat and bread to them.
And the promise of meat was fulfilled because by way of quail coming in and covering the ground. Now, who could have arranged that but God? that those quail would land right in the camp of Israel rather than any other place in the desert. It's a sign of God's providence and care. Now, this is certainly miraculous, but I just wanna say as an aside here, we have to give credit, all credit to God for the things that we have, 'cause they are provided to us by Him.
He is the one who orchestrates it all. He is the one who has created all this world and brought it into being. And so while it involves us as human beings, we ultimately cannot take the credit. It is God who ordains everything for our supply. Now, we also see going on into verses 14 through 18, the bread that's given.
Said it covered the ground with the morning dew like frost, thin flakes like frost, and the people said, "What is it?" And so it gets called manna because that's literally in Hebrew what that means is what is it? Very creative name. Just, do you wanna have some more of what is it? Yeah. They, they just... They couldn't describe it in any other way, so they went, so they ran with that.
And Moses explains, he says, "This is, this is the bread that the Lord has, has given to you." Now-
We see here, again, an instance of foreshadowing, some anticipation of, of Christ. We see clearly that if the people's needs are gonna be met, it's going to c- come from the Lord, bread from heaven. And all the more as we think about our destiny, our future as human beings, our survival, we can have no hope apart from the Lord. We can have no hope of salvation apart from the work of God. And God has given us salvation through the sending of His Son so that we might receive Him as bread ffrom heaven. Now, Jesus talks about this explicitly in John 6:25-59. I'm not gonna read all the verses, but I've selected a few here just to pick out His testimony in relation to manna.
In John 6, this is after Jesus has fed the 5,000. People are following Him. They're very eager. They're saying, "Jesus, we, we want some more bread. Feed us more." And Jesus says, you know, that's a pretty superficial kind of interest on your part. We'll note here that, you know, Moses has, has said from what the Lord has told him that the, the manna spoils. The manna spoils. But there is a bread that does not spoil, that gives unto eternal life. And so in verses 27 through 29, Jesus says, "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval." Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the work God requires?" Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."
So whether it's manna, whether it's any other kind of food, it all ultimately spoils, but Jesus is beginning to point to himself, that people should be looking to himself as the true bread.
In verses 32 through 35, Jesus indicates that he is this true bread of heaven come down. It says, "Jesus said to them, 'Very truly I tell you, it's not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.'
'Sir,' they said, 'always give us this bread.' Then Jesus declared, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.'" Now, after he says this, something very interesting happens, because the people start grumbling at him saying this. It takes you right back to the Israelites in the desert, and Jesus tells them, "Stop grumbling. What are you grumbling about?" Because it's the truth. Jesus is this bread of life, which if we receive, unlike the regular, unlike manna, which the people ate that and they died, when we receive Christ, we receive life everlasting. In verses 47 through 51, he says, "Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
Now, after this, the people are still incredulous. Even the disciples, they don't even know what to do with what Jesus is saying, because it seems so radical. It's the truth. It's the truth that Jesus gives us true life, everlasting life. And so he's the true bread because that's what, that's why we eat food.
We eat food to live. But the only one who can make us live for all eternity is Jesus Christ. And so stepping aside from this, again, another foreshadowing of Christ, we find some in- particular instruction here regarding their collection of this manna. They're not to collect more than they need. They're supposed to just collect an omer for each person, and an omer is about a half gallon.
So they're collecting about a half gallon per person for their households. And the reason is, and as we'll see here, is it's 'cause it's the Lord who's providing just enough for their needs. They don't need to take more than they need because God's going to, to be taking care of them. Now as they do this, and as they take measurements afterwards, lo and behold, what they find is everyone has exactly what they need.
The person who gathered much didn't have too much. The one that had gathered a little did not have too little. And the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 8:14-15 actually makes reference to this episode as he's taking up a collection for the church in Jerusalem. He says, "At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little." Now, that's something important for us to think about as a church in terms of generosity. I know it's something that our leadership has, has talked about in terms of the resources that God has given to us.
We don't need to hoard those things. We wanna be in a position where we can give those things towards the benefit of others, especially those in our congregation who are in need. Because we're not trusting in what we've stored up, we're trusting in the Lord who provides. So as we look at this whole situation here, things seem to be shaping up pretty great.
The people got quail, they have bread. But there are m- more instructions, and these instructions end up revealing the condition of the people's hearts. Finishing out in verses 19 through 36. "Then Moses said to them, 'No one is to keep any of it until morning.' However, some of them paid no attention to Moses. They kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them. Each morning, everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much, two omers for each person, and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses.
He said to them, 'This is what the Lord commanded. Tomorrow is to be a day of Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left, and keep it until morning.' So they saved it until morning as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 'Eat it today,' Moses said, 'because today is a Sabbath to the Lord. You will not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.' Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. Then the Lord said to Moses, 'How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions?
Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath. That is why on the sixth day, he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day. No one is to go out.' So the people rested on the seventh day. The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. Moses said, 'This is what the Lord has commanded. Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt.' So Moses said to Aaron, 'Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the Lord to keep the, to be kept for the generations to come.' As the Lord commanded Moses, Aaron put the manna with the tablets of the covenant law so that it might be preserved. The Israelites ate manna 40 years until they came to a land that was settled. They ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan. An omer is one-tenth an ephah."
So the first instruction that we have here in verse 19 is the people are not to keep the manna until the morning. Now you might wonder, well, why is that? Why is that? It's because God's putting them in a position to trust Him daily, that they don't need to store up, that he's going to meet their needs every single day. Now, some of the people don't do that, though. They're like, "Okay, I'm gonna keep a little extra. I wanna make sure I have enough. Those people over there, they're kind of fast gathering. I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna keep a little bit extra for my family." Well, the results are pretty gross because it all turned to maggots and began to stink. And Moses is frustrated. He's like, "Why can't you just listen to the Lord's instructions? He's proven himself faithful again and again." And so the instructions that they're to do, though, it shows kind of the miraculous element here, which is that apart from just that the fact that this bread is just appearing, is that there's a difference though on the seventh day.
It doesn't appear on the seventh day, and they are to gather twice as much and bake and boil in preparation. Everything's going to be okay. Nothing's going to spoil. Now, I think this kinda shows us that as far as, as we're thinking about manna, I don't know if they could have just ate it off the ground and it would've tasted great.
But it seemed like it was some kind of raw material that they could have used to make other things, make a bread. So we see in Numbers 11, verses 7 through 9, it says, "The manna was like coriander seed and looked like resin. The people went around gathering it and then ground it in a hand mill or crushed it in a mortar. They cooked it in a pot or made it into loaves. And it tasted like something made with olive oil." And then it just says that the manna appeared when the dew settled on the camp at night. So The Lord's saying, "I'm gonna give you enough for each day. On the sixth day, I'm gonna give you twice as much so that on the seventh day you can set that aside as a Sabbath day."
It's a day that's dedicated unto the Lord, but for the people, it's a day of rest. Guess what? You don't have to go out and work. You don't have to go out and gather. I've, I've taken care of your needs. And yet we see in verses 27 through 30 that the people still go out on the seventh day. They're still not trusting the Lord.
And the Lord says to Moses, "How," speaking to the people, "How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? Why can't you just rest and trust in me?" Now, as we look at ourselves today, can we say that we're any better than them? We live in such a restless society, where we feel like we have to always hustle, always gotta be working.
Americans are known for being workaholics, and part of that comes from not having a trust in the Lord. Not saying that you should be lazy. Of course not. We all have to put in a good day's work. Work is a good thing. The difficulty of work is a, a curse, but work is a good thing. But we also are supposed to take rests, and we can rest because we recognize that it's not really me who provides for myself and my family.
Yes, God calls me to to be involved in that. But at the end of the day, it's not me who provides. It is the Lord who provides. And we see this lesson being taught here just in utter black and white. It's in, and it, it couldn't be more clear. And that, that's what God is calling them to do. He's calling them to trust in Him.
Now, what's really interesting too, though, that we, we see in verses 32 through 36, that there is some manna that's supposed to be kept for generations. So whereas the manna that's collected for each family each day, they have to use it up, otherwise it's gonna spoil and go bad the next day, this manna's not gonna spoil. This manna is to be kept in a jar so that from one generation to, to the next, the people can show their children, "This is how the Lord provided for our ancestors in the wilderness."
And we can see why they need a reminder because of how forgetful they are. They forget again and again of how the Lord has provided for them, and this is a provision that God ends up providing for them for 40 years. Incredible provision. Now we think about ourselves. What, what sort of reminders do we have?
Now maybe you set up reminders in your own life of things that God has done for you. But think about what we do every week. We remember what God has done for us in the Lord's supper, how he has given us the bread of life in Jesus Christ. And it's good that we remember that every week, 'cause we remember that he's the one that we ultimately need, upon whom our salvation and our hope completely rests.
So I invite you to think deeply about what transpires here. What is wrong with Israel here? Repeatedly, we see that the people do not trust in the Lord. They are ungrateful. They forget what he has done and lose faith in the face of hardship. They grumble, not just against Moses and Aaron. They grumble against the Lord. They grumble against the one whom they once praised, singing, "The Lord is my strength and my defense. He has become my salvation." In His mercy, we see that God nonetheless remains faithful, proving again and again that He is, in fact, their salvation, that He is the Lord who heals them. The tree and the water, the provision of quail, and specifically manna, bread from heaven, this all points us ultimately to Christ, God's ultimate provision of salvation, far outstripping manna. Because all, all the manna in the world couldn't fend off death. But Christ has conquered death and offers life to all who receive him as the bread of life
That's what we learn about the Israelites. What do we learn about ourselves in this episode? As we think about our own tendencies as we face hardship, perhaps we see ourselves in Israel. Perhaps the people serve as a bit of a mirror for us, reflecting that their grumbling is not so different than our own. We hit the desert, we hit hardship, and we begin to lose heart. We forget. We forget God's faithful provision all along the way in countless small ways And we forget about Christ.
Now again, I'm not at all saying that we should be satisfied with a, a situation that is genuinely dissatisfying. Paul says in Philippians 4 that he was able to be content in all circumstances, but it's something that he learned, and it was because it was Christ who gave him strength. It didn't mean that he was happy about lacking things, going through pain and suffering.
We can have that kind of contentment, but I think we can trust that even Paul would acknowledge when things aren't as we would hope them to be. Yes, we can have joy in suffering, that we, we have that joy in joining in the suffering of Christ, but we want that suffering to ultimately go away.
So how can we be content? We can have that kind of contentment by following in the example of Paul, by looking to Christ. We don't see Paul grumbling, and we certainly don't see Christ himself grumbling. In the Garden of Gethsemane, as he's preparing to go to the cross, we see Christ pray, "Not my will, but yours be done."
That's a prayer of faith. That's a prayer of trust. Imagine if that was the prayer of Israel. What if it was our prayer that we would trust in God's provision and time? That we would take our daily bread, not worrying about tomorrow, not gathering a surplus of manna that will turn to maggots, but rather resting in what God has given and has promised to give us in Christ. Israel thought that they needed the water. They thought that they needed the meat. They thought they needed the manna. But let me tell you, they really only had one need They needed the Lord. They needed the Lord who would supply and meet every other need. Brothers and sisters, we too have one need. We need the Lord more than anything else that you might think you need. More than anything else, you need the Lord. So let us receive the bread of Christ and let us understand and thus truly pray, "Oh Lord, give us this bread always."
Let us pray.
Father, this is a, a passage which humbles us. Because even as much as we might offer right criticism of the people. We can't point a finger at them without pointing a finger at ourselves, because, Father, we confess that we are too often like them. We forget your provision. We forget your care for us. We forget the reality of our salvation in Christ, the surety of our hope in Him.
And so Father, we pray that you would deliver us from grumbling. That rather than being a people of grumble, that you would make us a people of faith, who in our time of need go to you in prayer, trusting that you will care for us because you've proven yourself faithful again and again and again.
And Father, instead of doing, give us the rest that you desire us to take, that we would rest in what you have given rather than looking to ourselves to be our own saviors or grumbling after others to be our saviors. Let's, let us rest in you. Let us rest in Christ, the one who is our one and only true savior. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God together. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)