Exodus: Here I Am, Send Someone Else
Part 10
“Manna: The Food That Didn’t Satisfy”
Exodus 16: 1-36
If you have your Bible with you I am going to read from the book of Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament and Chapter 16. If you have been with us on previous weeks, we have been looking into these early chapters of the book of Exodus.
I want to read to you an important section of this chapter, which follows immediately on the part we looked at last week, where the Israelites came to a place called Marah, where the water was bitter. And then God took them through to a place called Elim.
And then Chapter 16 and Verse 1 says,
“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.”
That is six weeks after they had left Egypt. That dating is significant, as I will point out later.
“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 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.’”
Verse 11:
“The LORD said to Moses, ‘I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and 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 you to eat. This is what the LORD has commanded: “Each one is to gather as much as he needs. 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, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed.
“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.”
Keep your Bible open; I am going to refer back to some of those verses. And we are looking at this story of the Israelites and their journey out of Egypt, not because we are merely interested with a little bit of Old Testament history, but because this journey is retold many times in the Scriptures as a parallel of Christian experience.
Their deliverance from Egypt is a picture of deliverance from sin. The Passover, which was the final straw, which broke the back of Pharaoh, is a foreshadowing of Christ, our Passover, who was sacrificed for us, as Paul describes it.
And the purpose was to take them into the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, that, in the book of Hebrews, represents the fullness of life that God intends Christian people to enjoy.
And we come to an event here where God miraculously provides the people with manna. It was a wafer-like thing in appearance. It was to feed them sufficiently to keep them alive. And there are some very important truths that come out of this provision of manna.
They were six weeks into the journey when God began to provide them with manna, because it describes it in Verse 2 as being on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had left Egypt. And they have started to grumble there in Verse 2.
In fact if you go through this chapter, you will find that seven times in Chapter 16 the people grumble and are grumbling. And there was good reason for this.
The journey from Egypt to Canaan should have been completed by now, because Deuteronomy Chapter 1 and Verse 2 tells us there that it is an eleven-day journey from Horeb (which is where God spoke to Moses at the burning bush) – an eleven-day journey from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.
Now Kadesh Barnea was the town in southern Canaan, or right on the border where, when they did eventually get there after two years, God said, “Now enter the land,” although they didn’t, because they were scared of the inhabitants of the land.
And so had they gone the direct route at the fastest pace that was possible to them, it is described as an eleven-day journey. It’s not actually that far. It’s less than 500 kilometres. It is less than the distance between Toronto and Montreal. And it was a journey, which took them forty years altogether.
And I have worked out, if my arithmetic is correct, that they averaged about 36 metres a day – 250 metres a week. Something has gone wrong.
And my purpose this morning is not to talk about those main issues that have gone wrong – we find them repeated, though we find them crystallized especially in Numbers Chapters 13 and 14 - if you read those two chapters sometime – when they sent spies into Canaan who came back (most of them) with their tails between their legs saying, “It is totally impossible that we can go into this land because they are bigger than we are, they live in 45 cities, they are trained in warfare; we are not. There are many more of them, we felt like grasshoppers in comparison to them.”
And they brought all this grumbling, mumbling, complaining – at least ten of the twelve spies did. Two of them – Joshua and Caleb said, “Yes, but God is going to give us the land.” But they were outvoted and the people turned south.
So the reason why they didn’t go into Canaan is because of fear and lack of trust – something has gone wrong.
But the point I do want to talk to you about this morning is that here in Chapter 16, after they were designed to have been in the land time-wise, God feeds them with something called manna.
And there are two aspects I want to talk about this morning. There is something right about this provision of manna, and secondly, there is something wrong about this provision of manna.
What is right about this provision of manna is that God provides them every morning with a fresh supply of bread that will sustain them during the day.
We just read that they were to go out every morning, five days a week, and they were to get enough on those five days to last them only for the day, because there would be a fresh supply the next day.
On the sixth day they were to gather enough to last them for two days because on the seventh day there would be no provision of manna.
And in the New Testament when Jesus engaged the Jews in conversation on one occasion in John Chapter 6, they said to Jesus, “Moses gave us food in the wilderness,” and Jesus corrected them. He said,
“ ‘I tell you the truth” (this is John 6:32) “it was not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you” (present tense now) – “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.’
“ ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘from now on give us this bread.’”
“Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life.’”
And so Jesus, in John 6, tells the Jews that this provision of bread, this provision of manna every morning is in some way - and a very important way - a picture of Himself.
And I think the beautiful picture about this is the picture of the freshness, of the supply everyday. You see you and I are not invited to live on stale relationships with Jesus Christ; we are intended to live on the basis of a fresh daily supply of life and strength and nourishment. As the book of Lamentations says – Lamentations 3:22:
“Because of the LORD’S great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning.”
But there were some Israelites in this group who didn’t like the idea of going out every day for six days. And so on the first day they decided to take enough home for tomorrow and they took some of the manna and they tucked it away in the back of their tents. And the next morning everybody got up to go out and get the fresh supply of manna; they stayed in bed and then went to dig up yesterday’s manna to eat it for breakfast. And it says it was full of maggots and it stank.
You know there are some Christians who have a Christian life that stinks. It’s full of maggots. Do you know why? You are trying to live tomorrow or today on yesterday’s supply.
You know if you come to church on Sunday hoping this will somehow recharge your battery and pump you up enough to last for the next six days, your spiritual life will stink by Tuesday, if not by Monday; it won’t work.
His mercies are new every morning. And in this sense it is a very beautiful picture of the fact that God gives us today what we need today; He gives us tomorrow what we need tomorrow. He doesn’t give us today what we need tomorrow.
I remember being in Glasgow in Scotland on one occasion when a man came to talk to me. I had been speaking at a week of meetings there. A man came to me and told me how that he had been a Christian, walked closely with God, had known God blessing his life in all kinds of ways, and then he had gone away from God.
And some years later his cousin, who was a very – by all accounts – a very wonderful Christian, had been killed in a road accident.
And this man had come to his cousin’s funeral and as one after another testified about his cousin’s life and about the godliness of his life, he said, “Sitting there I knew that I had gone away from God; I needed to come back and at the end of that funeral I gave my life back to Christ.”
And he said, “That has now been several months and during these last several months, I have asked God to give me back what I had twenty years ago when I knew His presence in a very real way and a very deep way. And I say, “God, give me back what I had twenty years ago” and God isn’t giving it me back. Why?”
And I said to him, “I don’t think God is interested in giving you back what you had twenty years ago. You can ask God to give you back what you had twenty years ago till the cows come home and He won’t be interested. Why don’t you instead say, ‘Lord Jesus, thank You so much what happened twenty years ago but today is a new day and today Your mercies are new every morning.’ Why don’t you say to Him, ‘Lord Jesus, thank You for what You have for me today. Thank You for the freshness of Your presence in my life today. Thank You for the blessing You have for me today.’ And tomorrow pray the same thing and the next day pray the same thing. And discover His mercies are fresh and new everyday.”
Because it is easy to try to recreate what God did in the past - God isn’t interested in that. And so it is a very beautiful picture in that sense of Christ being fresh and new every morning.
And that is what is right about this provision of manna, but what I really want to talk about this morning is what is wrong with this provision of manna. Because if this is a picture of Christ, as it is because Jesus said it is, it is a picture of a Christ who does not satisfy.
You see, the manna did not satisfy the people. In Numbers Chapter 11, after having lived on manna for some time, let me read you what it says. Numbers Chapter 11 and Verse 4 – it says,
“The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost – also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”
“The manna was like coriander seed and looked like resin. The people went around gathering it, and then ground it in a handmill or crushed it in a mortar. They cooked it in a pot or made it into cakes. It tasted like something made with olive oil.”
In other words, these people are getting sick and tired of the manna. It’s manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna for supper, manna on Monday, manna on Tuesday, manna on Wednesday, manna on Thursday. “Man alive,” they said, “we’re sick of it!”
They tried to prepare it in all kinds of different ways. They ground it in a handmill one day, they crushed it in a mortar another day, they cooked it in a pot another day; they made it into cakes another day. They probably had it fresh one day, boiled one day, fried one day, roast one day, toasted one day, they probably made manna burgers one day, put ketchup on it one day, put chocolate sauce another day, put custard on it one day.
I mean it’s the kid’s birthday – “can I have a birthday cake?”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to have?”
“We’re going to have a manna cake.”
“Oh man. What are we going to have for the first course?”
“We’ll have some manna soup if you like.”
“What next?”
“Well then we’ll have some real manna.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll have some manna pudding, and then we’ll have some manna cake at the end. Do you want something to drink afterwards? We’ll give you a milky manna.”
Is this a very attractive picture of Christ? I mean it is a picture of Christ, but a Christ who does not satisfy. I’ll tell you this: there will be some of you here this morning and you are a Christian, and you know you are a Christian, but you have a Christ that is not satisfying to you.
Do you know how you know? You are looking everywhere else all the time. Something isn’t right; there’s something wrong with this manna.
But it is teaching us a very important truth, as these things all do. All of Scripture is given to instruct us in the things of God. So it is not just a history lesson here. There are some things here that teach us important truths about God. And I want to suggest to you what is contained here.
I think we get a clue in the description of manna. In Chapter 16 and Verse 13 (we read earlier), it says that,
“That evening quail came and covered the camp”
That’s another matter but
“…in the morning” (listen to this) “that 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.”
Now listen to this description: there was a layer of dew on the ground. When it was given in the morning it was liquid, like dew, wet. And then it dried, and when it dried, it looked like frost – white like frost. But it was liquid when it was first given – keep that in mind; that’s a clue; we’ll come back to that in a moment.
Another clue, Chapter 16 Verse 31 says there,
“The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.”
Now here’s some important detail: it was wet and it was white and it tasted of honey. We have to be careful here but let me cautiously think this through with you. If you saw something on the floor that was wet, it was liquid and it was white, what would you think it was? Especially if it was on your kitchen floor and especially next to the fridge, and it was white and wet, you would probably say, “Somebody has spilt the…the milk.
It’s appearance – although it doesn’t use the word milk, the description is the appearance of it was like milk. And it tasted of honey.
Where were they supposed to be going? A land – God said to Moses in Exodus Chapter 3 Verse 8 – a land flowing with milk and honey. A journey designed to have been accomplished in eleven days, said Deuteronomy.
Now when He starts to provide them with manna, it is six weeks into the journey. They have had plenty of time to catch up – of course eleven days is probably an uninterrupted, no breakdown, nothing going wrong – that sounds pretty speedy. But He has given them six weeks.
And now He feeds them with something, which is, says Jesus, and therefore we must take this seriously, a picture of Himself that looks like milk and tastes like honey but frustrates them and causes them to grumble.
There is another description of manna in Numbers Chapter 11 and Verse 8. Let me read part of that to you. It says there that the manna (Numbers 11:8)
“…tasted like something made with olive oil.”
So it tasted of honey, but it tasted as though one of the key ingredients in it is olive oil.
Now those of you who know your Bibles reasonably well (and forgive me that there will be a lot of you for whom this is a new book and you won’t have picked this up yet), but those of you who know their Bibles fairly well will know there are many symbols that reoccur all through Scripture that are consistent in what they point to.
And if I were to ask you what is oil a symbol of, a lot of you would know. What is oil a symbol of in Scripture? The Holy Spirit, again and again. The anointing of oil is an outward symbol of the anointing of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life.
For instance, when Samuel anointed Saul [David] as king over Israel, it says he “took the horn of oil (this is a reference in 1 Samuel 16) anointed him in the presence of his brothers” and the Spirit of God came on him in power, because oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
Now the manna then – all we know about the manna is it was wet and it was white. When it dried it looked like frost. So it was as white as frost. When it was wet I suggest it looked like milk. It says explicitly it tasted like honey, and it says explicitly it was made with oil – at least it tasted as though it was made with oil.
And I suggest to you that there in the manna are all the ingredients of God’s full provision for His people. The milk and honey representing God’s purpose – the land of Canaan to which He is taking them, the oil representing God’s provision, the Holy Spirit who would be the means of enabling them to enter and enjoy the land of Canaan.
But although the manna contained the essential ingredients, it did not satisfy them. It just kept them alive.
When I was in farming, when you decided what to feed the livestock you first of all had what we called a maintenance ration, which would be just enough to keep the cattle or the sheep alive. And then you would add to the maintenance ration whatever you wanted to produce. If you wanted to produce milk, you added the kind of ingredient that would enable the cow to maximize its milk production.
But you began with the maintenance ration and if the cow stopped giving milk and you know, they run out of doing that after a while of course and then they get them to calve again and then they start to produce milk. But you just reduce them to their maintenance diet if they have a calf enough to keep the calf growing healthily as well.
What God is feeding them with here is the maintenance ration; just enough to keep them alive, but it didn’t satisfy them.
And you know this is the true experience of a lot of Christians. If we were to sit down and talk very honestly, we might say to each other, “Are you are Christian?”
You might say, “Yes.”
“Have you come to the cross of Jesus Christ and confessed your sin and been forgiven of your sin?”
You might say, “Yes.”
“Have you received the gift of eternal life by the presence of Jesus Christ – in Him is life – and you have received Him and therefore you have life?”
You’d say, “Yes.”
If I were to then ask you, “Are you satisfied with Jesus?” you might have to say, “No, and this is why I am pursuing so many other things in the hope that this will make life full for me or this will give life meaning to me and this will help we sleep at night with a sense of satisfaction.”
What is happening? When Paul wrote to the Ephesians in the New Testament, he explained to them certain things that happen when a person becomes a Christian. One of the things he says in Ephesians Chapter 1 and Verse 13 – and I read from the middle of that verse – middle of Verse 13 and Verse 14. He says,
“Having believed, you were marked in Christ with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.”
Now he says, when you become a Christian, one of the things that happens is this: that God seals you with the Holy Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell you and you are sealed – that is, you are locked up, we might say, with the Holy Spirit within your life now. And He is a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance. Your guarantee of your inheritance has nothing to do with how well you behave; it has everything to do with the fact that the Spirit of God lives in you and you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
Well Paul doesn’t say, “Okay, have you got that? Great. That’s it.”
No, because if you follow through what Paul goes on to say to the Ephesians about the Holy Spirit, a couple of verses later he says, “I am praying that God will give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that you know Christ better.”
In other words, you have been sealed, but don’t sit back now. You need to get to know Christ better and the ministry of the Holy Spirit is revealing Him to you that you get to know Him better.
He says in Chapter 3, “I pray that He will strengthen you with power through His Spirit – you will not just know the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life; you will know the power of the Holy Spirit in your life.
He warns them in Chapter 4, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit with whom you were sealed. You have been sealed but you can grieve Him – that is, you can resist Him, you can disobey Him.
And then in Chapter 5 he gives them this command, in Chapter 5 and Verse 18:
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit.”
So Paul says to those folks there, “If you are a Christian - it doesn’t matter who you are - you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit. That is part of what makes you a Christian, the presence and sealing of the Holy Spirit in your life. But” he says, “there is more to your relationship with the Holy Spirit than that. I want you to go on experiencing His revelation of Christ to you, I want you to go on experiencing His power at work within you, I want you to make sure you don’t do things that grieve Him, and here is the big one: I want you to live in the fullness – it’s a present continuous tense, that sentence really. Be being filled, ongoing, being filled with the Holy Spirit.”
And I want to suggest to you this: that the manna is a picture of being sealed by the Holy Spirit. God is going to keep them alive, sealed, but not being filled.
In the book of Nehemiah and Chapter 9, it speaks there of the fact that during the years in the wilderness, God sustained them in the desert – that’s the verse he uses. Nehemiah 9:21:
“For forty years you sustained them in the desert.”
Now sustained is kind of “you kept them alive.” But actually in the book of Deuteronomy Chapter 8 and Verse 2 [10] Moses talks about what happens when they do enter Canaan. And he says that, “when you do get into Canaan and you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord for the good land He has given you.”
In other words, there are two things that can happen to you in your Christian life. You can be sustained. How did God sustain them? He gave them manna everyday, something which tasted the real thing, looked like the real thing.
He sustained them but it was not the real thing. The real thing was the place where they intended to be satisfied, in Canaan, “where I am going to satisfy you.”
And that’s why it is stated a number of times through the journey that the Israelites were on for those forty years, that the purpose in coming out was not simply to come out but to come on and come in to the land of Canaan.
That is what God said to Moses at the beginning, that His plan was to bring them up out of that land and into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. God reprimands them in Leviticus 25:38,
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt”
Why?
“…to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.”
In Deuteronomy 6:23 Moses says there,
“But God brought us out from here to bring us in and give us the land that he promised …to our forefathers.”
In other words there is a repeated statement to the Israelites in these wilderness years that God brought you out, not to get you out, not just to get the slave drivers off your back, not just to give you the freedom of being liberated from slavery.
That in itself is a wonderful thing, but God brought you out in order to bring you in to the land of Canaan, where you will not only enjoy all the fullness of provision and be satisfied, but you will be restored to the purpose for which God called Abraham in the first place, which is you will become a blessing to the world.
Now, you know, the reason why this is recorded for us - the book of Hebrews, if you look at it, Chapter 3 and 4 says, “These things are recorded for us to keep us from failing to enter through unbelief as they did.” Because God’s purpose for you and for me is not just to bring us out of our sin, wonderful as that is of course, but to bring us into that fullness of life with Christ where He reigns in our lives, His Holy Spirit fills our lives and we are equipped then not just to be satisfied but to be a blessing to the world.
But it’s very, very possible – very possible and very easy to be satisfied with the fact that, phew, I’m off the hook. If Christ were to come today or if I were to die tonight I could give God the right answers as to why He should let me into His heaven. Phew! I’m satisfied.
That is not the Christian life. It’s part of it; you come out to come in. And what happens if you don’t come in? Will He let you go? No. He will sustain you but He will not satisfy you.
You see, unless we are prepared to go all the way with God we will never be satisfied with Christ. And that is what the manna seems to me to be teaching. Unless you are prepared to go all the way with God you will never be satisfied with Christ.
You are a Christian; yes. You are an Israelite; yes. You are out of Egypt; yes. But what are you doing in the wilderness? Grumbling, mumbling, moaning, complaining because you are so dissatisfied. You cannot go back because you are sealed, sealed by the Holy Spirit.
As the Red Sea closed behind the Israelites when they came out of Egypt and Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10 speaks about that as being baptized into Moses. It’s a very interesting and beautiful picture of baptism. It’s a picture of leaving your old master dead and buried behind you. Baptism is a picture of that – dying to all that; I’m out.
But the purpose is, now I have come out, I can either go on and in and enjoy the fullness and be satisfied and be a blessing to the world. Or I can stay in the wilderness and He will sustain me but He will not satisfy me.
You are sealed with the Spirit but you can grieve the Holy Spirit, you can quench the Holy Spirit, but everyday there will be the taste of honey on your lips and the taste of oil in your heart. There will be a divine frustration, a divinely engineered frustration; a frustration given you by God in your soul because this is not what He saved you for.
Let me illustrate this from two ways, two angles, because sometimes this manna in the heart (in the book of Revelation speaks of the hidden manna) - in the heart, will either give you an appetite for God and it’ll bring you back to Him and His fullness or it will give you a hatred for Him.
I have quoted a number of times Alan Redpath, who was a great influence in my own life. And he has been in heaven for some time now, but Alan Redpath often gave his testimony – I heard it many times – how that he was converted in his early twenties, came to know Christ. And soon afterwards he went away from God, went back into his old life, began to do all the things he had done before he was converted. But as he said when he gave his story, there was one big difference – “I used to enjoy all those things I used to do but now doing the same things, living same way as I lived before, I didn’t enjoy it anymore. I would go home and I would toss and turn in my bed at night.”
It was the witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart. Having been born again, the Holy Spirit had sealed him, the Presence was there; and in his heart there was the taste of honey, there was the taste of oil. And it drove him to begin to seek for God and he came back to Christ. And God greatly used him for many years.
In contrast to that, I have a brother who came to know Christ, very committed to Jesus Christ. He worked for a while with Operation Mobilization, which is an evangelistic movement reaching out all across the world. I know a man who today is in the ministry in Great Britain as a pastor, who was a school friend of my brother, and it was my brother who led him to Christ.
But then he went back to university after having spent that time with Operation Mobilization. And amongst other things, he studied some psychology and some philosophy and he began to reinterpret his Christian experience in psychological and philosophical terms.
And he turned his back on God, went right away from God. For a number of years now he has been living in Australia where he teaches in the linguistics department of one of the universities there.
And some time ago he was writing a doctoral thesis on the theme of religious dogmatism.
And I go to Australia from time to time and I usually try and spend a day or two with him. And I was talking to him when he was beginning work on this thesis, asking him what the objective was. And it was to explain away why people become religiously enthusiastic and dogmatic and to explain it in psychological terms.
And I said, “Why are you spending so many hours and probably years in study and research and investigation in order to be negative, to destroy something, to pull it down? Why don’t you spend your time in doing something positive? It would be a lot more satisfying surely.
He said, “I have asked that question myself. It’s a good question.” He said, “I’m not sure. Maybe (and these were his words) maybe I am trying to exorcise my past, to get rid of this ingrained stuff that I had in my growing years.”
But that isn’t the reason at all. The reason is because there was a day when he was born again of the Holy Spirit; he gave evidence of the fruit of that and the Spirit of God sealed him that day. And what he has done now for many years is quench the Holy Spirit, and grieve the Holy Spirit and lock the Holy Spirit up into a little corner of his life. But I tell you this: every morning my brother wakes up, the Holy Spirit in him says, “Good Morning. I’m here.” And he hates it, he hates it, and he will never be satisfied until he comes into Canaan. And my prayer is that one day he will.
But I lived in the wilderness for a number of years after I first became a Christian. I believed it; I believed the gospel, I believed in Jesus, I was grateful for my forgiveness, I was grateful for the assurance of going to heaven when I died. And I wondered why it was so frustrating. Why do all the things that I find in my New Testament not seem to really work?
“I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” (This isn’t very abundant.)
“Any man who is in Christ; he is a new creation.” (I don’t feel like a new creation.)
“Old things are passed away” (you bet they haven’t) “everything has become new.” (That’s a wonderful exaggeration.)
And I concluded maybe the Christian life was like a carrot that they used to dangle in front of a donkey’s nose on a sort of fishing pole and the donkey would see the carrot, “I like carrots and I’ll keep moving to get the carrot.” And as you moved you kept pulling the cart and so that’s how you got the donkey to go and he never actually got the carrot. Maybe at the end of the journey you would give it to him.
But maybe the Christian life is designed to keep me going because it is never going to work.
Then I came to discover that Jesus Christ didn’t just give Himself for me; He gave Himself to me. And He lived in me and He would be the source of my life and my strength.
You see, when they failed to go into Canaan in the book of Numbers and the ten of the twelve spies said, “You know that there are seven nations that live there and some of them are wild. There is a group there called Hittites. I mean, they sound pretty dangerous don’t you think? Hittites. Why are they called Hittites? Probably pretty good at hitting. There are the Amorites – couldn’t care about anybody else but Amorite”…okay let’s move on.
There not only were seven nations; they lived in fortified cities. That is, well defended. They were trained in warfare. They were numerically many more than the Israelites. There were giants amongst them - descendants of somebody called Anak. There were big people in there, so much so that they said, “We felt like grasshoppers in comparison to them. We cannot do this.”
That was their report back to Moses after forty days of exploration. That was ten of the twelve. The other two, Joshua and Caleb, said, “Everything you have said is right but there is one thing you haven’t said. If the Lord is pleased with us, He will give us this land. This is not our business; this is His business. Let’s go into Canaan because God told us to in dependence upon Him knowing that He is the One who is going to give us the land.”
And they were outvoted and the Israelites stayed back in the wilderness for another 38 years – this was two years into their journey – 40 years during which the entire generation of people over twenty who left Egypt died and were buried – 600,000 funerals of men in the wilderness years; every one of them died except Joshua and Caleb.
And when Joshua eventually led them in, they were just as strong and just as powerful and lived in the same fortified cities.
But you remember the first fortified city is Jericho. “Do what He says. Walk around it.” And God brought the walls down; God gave them victory. All the way through the book of Joshua you find God gave them the land. God gave them 28 times in the book of Joshua, it says, “God gave them, God gave them, God gave them.”
What happens when somebody gives you something? You reach out an empty hand.
The Christian life is not trying to live for God as best we can. Of course there is discipline in the Christian life, but that discipline is not to get godliness into your life; it’s that the life of God in us can live through an obedient person and body.
And the manna was a symbol of the fact that God will never let you go. He made a covenant. He will not break it. There must have been days when Moses would go to bed at night and think, “Oh no, we have gone too far this time. The Israelites have rebelled yet again. They have disobeyed yet again. They have grumbled yet again. Surely God will leave us now.”
Yet if he got up at crack of dawn the next morning; went out as the sun broke on the eastern sky and scanned the horizon; sure enough, there was a fresh supply of manna.
Because, as 2 Timothy 2:13 says,
“If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”
And if manna is a symbol of the fact that God will sustain us, He will never let us go, it is also a symbol of the fact He will never satisfy you outside of His will. He will never satisfy us outside of going all the way with Jesus.
There is only one solution to manna, and I finish with this: you find the solution in Joshua Chapter 5 and Verse 10. Let me read it to you. The Israelites now are in Canaan at a place called Gilgal. It says,
“On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover.
“The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain.”
They are now enjoying this full provision of the land. Look at the next verse, verse 12:
“The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan.”
That’s Joshua Chapter 5: 10-12.
There is only one solution to the tediousness of the manna, and that is not finding new recipes for it. You know I talk to people sometimes and basically what they are saying is, “You know, my Christian life is so frustrating. Do you have any new recipes you could give me?”
I have talked with youth leaders who say, “How do we keep our young people? Do you know any good bands we could use; do you know any good movies we could show them? Do you know any new recipes for the boring manna?”
That won’t satisfy them. Only one thing will satisfy them: take them into Canaan. Take them into the fullness of life that God has for us where we live everyday in submission to Jesus Christ as our Lord.
We make it our business to get to know Him better through His Word and through the enabling and revelation of the Holy Spirit through the Word.
We surrender ourselves to the fullness of the Holy Spirit, not as an event but as a day by day by day relationship with Him and we find that no matter what you are facing, no matter what situation you are in, no matter what hardships you face, there will be a deep, deep satisfaction.
You will say with David, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
And what is the result? There is nothing I want; I am satisfied. Canaan was intended to satisfy them. And out of there they would bless the world.
There is no alternative but to go all the way with God. And I want to challenge you as I close this morning: are you living, not a life that is perfect – there is no such thing – but a life where your basic attitude is, “Lord Jesus Christ, I surrender all that I am to You and ask You by the Holy Spirit to fill me with Yourself.”
And you get on with life and you discover that God not only satisfies you, but you find He makes you a blessing to the world. That’s the outworking of it, as it was for the people of Israel.
And we are going to sing a closing prayer this morning. It is a hymn that many of you will know and some of you may not know. It’s in Old English but it is a beautiful prayer. It says,
Breathe on me breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what Thou dost love,
And do what Thou wouldst do.
Breathe on me breath of God,
Until I am wholly Thine,
Until this earthly part of me,
Glows with Your fire divine.
We are going to stay seated and we are going to sing it as a prayer and I ask you to pray this as we sing it, that God will breath afresh in your life.
Part 10
“Manna: The Food That Didn’t Satisfy”
Exodus 16: 1-36
If you have your Bible with you I am going to read from the book of Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament and Chapter 16. If you have been with us on previous weeks, we have been looking into these early chapters of the book of Exodus.
I want to read to you an important section of this chapter, which follows immediately on the part we looked at last week, where the Israelites came to a place called Marah, where the water was bitter. And then God took them through to a place called Elim.
And then Chapter 16 and Verse 1 says,
“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.”
That is six weeks after they had left Egypt. That dating is significant, as I will point out later.
“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 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.’”
Verse 11:
“The LORD said to Moses, ‘I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and 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 you to eat. This is what the LORD has commanded: “Each one is to gather as much as he needs. 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, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed.
“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.”
Keep your Bible open; I am going to refer back to some of those verses. And we are looking at this story of the Israelites and their journey out of Egypt, not because we are merely interested with a little bit of Old Testament history, but because this journey is retold many times in the Scriptures as a parallel of Christian experience.
Their deliverance from Egypt is a picture of deliverance from sin. The Passover, which was the final straw, which broke the back of Pharaoh, is a foreshadowing of Christ, our Passover, who was sacrificed for us, as Paul describes it.
And the purpose was to take them into the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, that, in the book of Hebrews, represents the fullness of life that God intends Christian people to enjoy.
And we come to an event here where God miraculously provides the people with manna. It was a wafer-like thing in appearance. It was to feed them sufficiently to keep them alive. And there are some very important truths that come out of this provision of manna.
They were six weeks into the journey when God began to provide them with manna, because it describes it in Verse 2 as being on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had left Egypt. And they have started to grumble there in Verse 2.
In fact if you go through this chapter, you will find that seven times in Chapter 16 the people grumble and are grumbling. And there was good reason for this.
The journey from Egypt to Canaan should have been completed by now, because Deuteronomy Chapter 1 and Verse 2 tells us there that it is an eleven-day journey from Horeb (which is where God spoke to Moses at the burning bush) – an eleven-day journey from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.
Now Kadesh Barnea was the town in southern Canaan, or right on the border where, when they did eventually get there after two years, God said, “Now enter the land,” although they didn’t, because they were scared of the inhabitants of the land.
And so had they gone the direct route at the fastest pace that was possible to them, it is described as an eleven-day journey. It’s not actually that far. It’s less than 500 kilometres. It is less than the distance between Toronto and Montreal. And it was a journey, which took them forty years altogether.
And I have worked out, if my arithmetic is correct, that they averaged about 36 metres a day – 250 metres a week. Something has gone wrong.
And my purpose this morning is not to talk about those main issues that have gone wrong – we find them repeated, though we find them crystallized especially in Numbers Chapters 13 and 14 - if you read those two chapters sometime – when they sent spies into Canaan who came back (most of them) with their tails between their legs saying, “It is totally impossible that we can go into this land because they are bigger than we are, they live in 45 cities, they are trained in warfare; we are not. There are many more of them, we felt like grasshoppers in comparison to them.”
And they brought all this grumbling, mumbling, complaining – at least ten of the twelve spies did. Two of them – Joshua and Caleb said, “Yes, but God is going to give us the land.” But they were outvoted and the people turned south.
So the reason why they didn’t go into Canaan is because of fear and lack of trust – something has gone wrong.
But the point I do want to talk to you about this morning is that here in Chapter 16, after they were designed to have been in the land time-wise, God feeds them with something called manna.
And there are two aspects I want to talk about this morning. There is something right about this provision of manna, and secondly, there is something wrong about this provision of manna.
What is right about this provision of manna is that God provides them every morning with a fresh supply of bread that will sustain them during the day.
We just read that they were to go out every morning, five days a week, and they were to get enough on those five days to last them only for the day, because there would be a fresh supply the next day.
On the sixth day they were to gather enough to last them for two days because on the seventh day there would be no provision of manna.
And in the New Testament when Jesus engaged the Jews in conversation on one occasion in John Chapter 6, they said to Jesus, “Moses gave us food in the wilderness,” and Jesus corrected them. He said,
“ ‘I tell you the truth” (this is John 6:32) “it was not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you” (present tense now) – “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.’
“ ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘from now on give us this bread.’”
“Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life.’”
And so Jesus, in John 6, tells the Jews that this provision of bread, this provision of manna every morning is in some way - and a very important way - a picture of Himself.
And I think the beautiful picture about this is the picture of the freshness, of the supply everyday. You see you and I are not invited to live on stale relationships with Jesus Christ; we are intended to live on the basis of a fresh daily supply of life and strength and nourishment. As the book of Lamentations says – Lamentations 3:22:
“Because of the LORD’S great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning.”
But there were some Israelites in this group who didn’t like the idea of going out every day for six days. And so on the first day they decided to take enough home for tomorrow and they took some of the manna and they tucked it away in the back of their tents. And the next morning everybody got up to go out and get the fresh supply of manna; they stayed in bed and then went to dig up yesterday’s manna to eat it for breakfast. And it says it was full of maggots and it stank.
You know there are some Christians who have a Christian life that stinks. It’s full of maggots. Do you know why? You are trying to live tomorrow or today on yesterday’s supply.
You know if you come to church on Sunday hoping this will somehow recharge your battery and pump you up enough to last for the next six days, your spiritual life will stink by Tuesday, if not by Monday; it won’t work.
His mercies are new every morning. And in this sense it is a very beautiful picture of the fact that God gives us today what we need today; He gives us tomorrow what we need tomorrow. He doesn’t give us today what we need tomorrow.
I remember being in Glasgow in Scotland on one occasion when a man came to talk to me. I had been speaking at a week of meetings there. A man came to me and told me how that he had been a Christian, walked closely with God, had known God blessing his life in all kinds of ways, and then he had gone away from God.
And some years later his cousin, who was a very – by all accounts – a very wonderful Christian, had been killed in a road accident.
And this man had come to his cousin’s funeral and as one after another testified about his cousin’s life and about the godliness of his life, he said, “Sitting there I knew that I had gone away from God; I needed to come back and at the end of that funeral I gave my life back to Christ.”
And he said, “That has now been several months and during these last several months, I have asked God to give me back what I had twenty years ago when I knew His presence in a very real way and a very deep way. And I say, “God, give me back what I had twenty years ago” and God isn’t giving it me back. Why?”
And I said to him, “I don’t think God is interested in giving you back what you had twenty years ago. You can ask God to give you back what you had twenty years ago till the cows come home and He won’t be interested. Why don’t you instead say, ‘Lord Jesus, thank You so much what happened twenty years ago but today is a new day and today Your mercies are new every morning.’ Why don’t you say to Him, ‘Lord Jesus, thank You for what You have for me today. Thank You for the freshness of Your presence in my life today. Thank You for the blessing You have for me today.’ And tomorrow pray the same thing and the next day pray the same thing. And discover His mercies are fresh and new everyday.”
Because it is easy to try to recreate what God did in the past - God isn’t interested in that. And so it is a very beautiful picture in that sense of Christ being fresh and new every morning.
And that is what is right about this provision of manna, but what I really want to talk about this morning is what is wrong with this provision of manna. Because if this is a picture of Christ, as it is because Jesus said it is, it is a picture of a Christ who does not satisfy.
You see, the manna did not satisfy the people. In Numbers Chapter 11, after having lived on manna for some time, let me read you what it says. Numbers Chapter 11 and Verse 4 – it says,
“The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost – also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”
“The manna was like coriander seed and looked like resin. The people went around gathering it, and then ground it in a handmill or crushed it in a mortar. They cooked it in a pot or made it into cakes. It tasted like something made with olive oil.”
In other words, these people are getting sick and tired of the manna. It’s manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna for supper, manna on Monday, manna on Tuesday, manna on Wednesday, manna on Thursday. “Man alive,” they said, “we’re sick of it!”
They tried to prepare it in all kinds of different ways. They ground it in a handmill one day, they crushed it in a mortar another day, they cooked it in a pot another day; they made it into cakes another day. They probably had it fresh one day, boiled one day, fried one day, roast one day, toasted one day, they probably made manna burgers one day, put ketchup on it one day, put chocolate sauce another day, put custard on it one day.
I mean it’s the kid’s birthday – “can I have a birthday cake?”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to have?”
“We’re going to have a manna cake.”
“Oh man. What are we going to have for the first course?”
“We’ll have some manna soup if you like.”
“What next?”
“Well then we’ll have some real manna.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll have some manna pudding, and then we’ll have some manna cake at the end. Do you want something to drink afterwards? We’ll give you a milky manna.”
Is this a very attractive picture of Christ? I mean it is a picture of Christ, but a Christ who does not satisfy. I’ll tell you this: there will be some of you here this morning and you are a Christian, and you know you are a Christian, but you have a Christ that is not satisfying to you.
Do you know how you know? You are looking everywhere else all the time. Something isn’t right; there’s something wrong with this manna.
But it is teaching us a very important truth, as these things all do. All of Scripture is given to instruct us in the things of God. So it is not just a history lesson here. There are some things here that teach us important truths about God. And I want to suggest to you what is contained here.
I think we get a clue in the description of manna. In Chapter 16 and Verse 13 (we read earlier), it says that,
“That evening quail came and covered the camp”
That’s another matter but
“…in the morning” (listen to this) “that 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.”
Now listen to this description: there was a layer of dew on the ground. When it was given in the morning it was liquid, like dew, wet. And then it dried, and when it dried, it looked like frost – white like frost. But it was liquid when it was first given – keep that in mind; that’s a clue; we’ll come back to that in a moment.
Another clue, Chapter 16 Verse 31 says there,
“The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.”
Now here’s some important detail: it was wet and it was white and it tasted of honey. We have to be careful here but let me cautiously think this through with you. If you saw something on the floor that was wet, it was liquid and it was white, what would you think it was? Especially if it was on your kitchen floor and especially next to the fridge, and it was white and wet, you would probably say, “Somebody has spilt the…the milk.
It’s appearance – although it doesn’t use the word milk, the description is the appearance of it was like milk. And it tasted of honey.
Where were they supposed to be going? A land – God said to Moses in Exodus Chapter 3 Verse 8 – a land flowing with milk and honey. A journey designed to have been accomplished in eleven days, said Deuteronomy.
Now when He starts to provide them with manna, it is six weeks into the journey. They have had plenty of time to catch up – of course eleven days is probably an uninterrupted, no breakdown, nothing going wrong – that sounds pretty speedy. But He has given them six weeks.
And now He feeds them with something, which is, says Jesus, and therefore we must take this seriously, a picture of Himself that looks like milk and tastes like honey but frustrates them and causes them to grumble.
There is another description of manna in Numbers Chapter 11 and Verse 8. Let me read part of that to you. It says there that the manna (Numbers 11:8)
“…tasted like something made with olive oil.”
So it tasted of honey, but it tasted as though one of the key ingredients in it is olive oil.
Now those of you who know your Bibles reasonably well (and forgive me that there will be a lot of you for whom this is a new book and you won’t have picked this up yet), but those of you who know their Bibles fairly well will know there are many symbols that reoccur all through Scripture that are consistent in what they point to.
And if I were to ask you what is oil a symbol of, a lot of you would know. What is oil a symbol of in Scripture? The Holy Spirit, again and again. The anointing of oil is an outward symbol of the anointing of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life.
For instance, when Samuel anointed Saul [David] as king over Israel, it says he “took the horn of oil (this is a reference in 1 Samuel 16) anointed him in the presence of his brothers” and the Spirit of God came on him in power, because oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
Now the manna then – all we know about the manna is it was wet and it was white. When it dried it looked like frost. So it was as white as frost. When it was wet I suggest it looked like milk. It says explicitly it tasted like honey, and it says explicitly it was made with oil – at least it tasted as though it was made with oil.
And I suggest to you that there in the manna are all the ingredients of God’s full provision for His people. The milk and honey representing God’s purpose – the land of Canaan to which He is taking them, the oil representing God’s provision, the Holy Spirit who would be the means of enabling them to enter and enjoy the land of Canaan.
But although the manna contained the essential ingredients, it did not satisfy them. It just kept them alive.
When I was in farming, when you decided what to feed the livestock you first of all had what we called a maintenance ration, which would be just enough to keep the cattle or the sheep alive. And then you would add to the maintenance ration whatever you wanted to produce. If you wanted to produce milk, you added the kind of ingredient that would enable the cow to maximize its milk production.
But you began with the maintenance ration and if the cow stopped giving milk and you know, they run out of doing that after a while of course and then they get them to calve again and then they start to produce milk. But you just reduce them to their maintenance diet if they have a calf enough to keep the calf growing healthily as well.
What God is feeding them with here is the maintenance ration; just enough to keep them alive, but it didn’t satisfy them.
And you know this is the true experience of a lot of Christians. If we were to sit down and talk very honestly, we might say to each other, “Are you are Christian?”
You might say, “Yes.”
“Have you come to the cross of Jesus Christ and confessed your sin and been forgiven of your sin?”
You might say, “Yes.”
“Have you received the gift of eternal life by the presence of Jesus Christ – in Him is life – and you have received Him and therefore you have life?”
You’d say, “Yes.”
If I were to then ask you, “Are you satisfied with Jesus?” you might have to say, “No, and this is why I am pursuing so many other things in the hope that this will make life full for me or this will give life meaning to me and this will help we sleep at night with a sense of satisfaction.”
What is happening? When Paul wrote to the Ephesians in the New Testament, he explained to them certain things that happen when a person becomes a Christian. One of the things he says in Ephesians Chapter 1 and Verse 13 – and I read from the middle of that verse – middle of Verse 13 and Verse 14. He says,
“Having believed, you were marked in Christ with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.”
Now he says, when you become a Christian, one of the things that happens is this: that God seals you with the Holy Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell you and you are sealed – that is, you are locked up, we might say, with the Holy Spirit within your life now. And He is a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance. Your guarantee of your inheritance has nothing to do with how well you behave; it has everything to do with the fact that the Spirit of God lives in you and you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
Well Paul doesn’t say, “Okay, have you got that? Great. That’s it.”
No, because if you follow through what Paul goes on to say to the Ephesians about the Holy Spirit, a couple of verses later he says, “I am praying that God will give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that you know Christ better.”
In other words, you have been sealed, but don’t sit back now. You need to get to know Christ better and the ministry of the Holy Spirit is revealing Him to you that you get to know Him better.
He says in Chapter 3, “I pray that He will strengthen you with power through His Spirit – you will not just know the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life; you will know the power of the Holy Spirit in your life.
He warns them in Chapter 4, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit with whom you were sealed. You have been sealed but you can grieve Him – that is, you can resist Him, you can disobey Him.
And then in Chapter 5 he gives them this command, in Chapter 5 and Verse 18:
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit.”
So Paul says to those folks there, “If you are a Christian - it doesn’t matter who you are - you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit. That is part of what makes you a Christian, the presence and sealing of the Holy Spirit in your life. But” he says, “there is more to your relationship with the Holy Spirit than that. I want you to go on experiencing His revelation of Christ to you, I want you to go on experiencing His power at work within you, I want you to make sure you don’t do things that grieve Him, and here is the big one: I want you to live in the fullness – it’s a present continuous tense, that sentence really. Be being filled, ongoing, being filled with the Holy Spirit.”
And I want to suggest to you this: that the manna is a picture of being sealed by the Holy Spirit. God is going to keep them alive, sealed, but not being filled.
In the book of Nehemiah and Chapter 9, it speaks there of the fact that during the years in the wilderness, God sustained them in the desert – that’s the verse he uses. Nehemiah 9:21:
“For forty years you sustained them in the desert.”
Now sustained is kind of “you kept them alive.” But actually in the book of Deuteronomy Chapter 8 and Verse 2 [10] Moses talks about what happens when they do enter Canaan. And he says that, “when you do get into Canaan and you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord for the good land He has given you.”
In other words, there are two things that can happen to you in your Christian life. You can be sustained. How did God sustain them? He gave them manna everyday, something which tasted the real thing, looked like the real thing.
He sustained them but it was not the real thing. The real thing was the place where they intended to be satisfied, in Canaan, “where I am going to satisfy you.”
And that’s why it is stated a number of times through the journey that the Israelites were on for those forty years, that the purpose in coming out was not simply to come out but to come on and come in to the land of Canaan.
That is what God said to Moses at the beginning, that His plan was to bring them up out of that land and into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. God reprimands them in Leviticus 25:38,
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt”
Why?
“…to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.”
In Deuteronomy 6:23 Moses says there,
“But God brought us out from here to bring us in and give us the land that he promised …to our forefathers.”
In other words there is a repeated statement to the Israelites in these wilderness years that God brought you out, not to get you out, not just to get the slave drivers off your back, not just to give you the freedom of being liberated from slavery.
That in itself is a wonderful thing, but God brought you out in order to bring you in to the land of Canaan, where you will not only enjoy all the fullness of provision and be satisfied, but you will be restored to the purpose for which God called Abraham in the first place, which is you will become a blessing to the world.
Now, you know, the reason why this is recorded for us - the book of Hebrews, if you look at it, Chapter 3 and 4 says, “These things are recorded for us to keep us from failing to enter through unbelief as they did.” Because God’s purpose for you and for me is not just to bring us out of our sin, wonderful as that is of course, but to bring us into that fullness of life with Christ where He reigns in our lives, His Holy Spirit fills our lives and we are equipped then not just to be satisfied but to be a blessing to the world.
But it’s very, very possible – very possible and very easy to be satisfied with the fact that, phew, I’m off the hook. If Christ were to come today or if I were to die tonight I could give God the right answers as to why He should let me into His heaven. Phew! I’m satisfied.
That is not the Christian life. It’s part of it; you come out to come in. And what happens if you don’t come in? Will He let you go? No. He will sustain you but He will not satisfy you.
You see, unless we are prepared to go all the way with God we will never be satisfied with Christ. And that is what the manna seems to me to be teaching. Unless you are prepared to go all the way with God you will never be satisfied with Christ.
You are a Christian; yes. You are an Israelite; yes. You are out of Egypt; yes. But what are you doing in the wilderness? Grumbling, mumbling, moaning, complaining because you are so dissatisfied. You cannot go back because you are sealed, sealed by the Holy Spirit.
As the Red Sea closed behind the Israelites when they came out of Egypt and Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10 speaks about that as being baptized into Moses. It’s a very interesting and beautiful picture of baptism. It’s a picture of leaving your old master dead and buried behind you. Baptism is a picture of that – dying to all that; I’m out.
But the purpose is, now I have come out, I can either go on and in and enjoy the fullness and be satisfied and be a blessing to the world. Or I can stay in the wilderness and He will sustain me but He will not satisfy me.
You are sealed with the Spirit but you can grieve the Holy Spirit, you can quench the Holy Spirit, but everyday there will be the taste of honey on your lips and the taste of oil in your heart. There will be a divine frustration, a divinely engineered frustration; a frustration given you by God in your soul because this is not what He saved you for.
Let me illustrate this from two ways, two angles, because sometimes this manna in the heart (in the book of Revelation speaks of the hidden manna) - in the heart, will either give you an appetite for God and it’ll bring you back to Him and His fullness or it will give you a hatred for Him.
I have quoted a number of times Alan Redpath, who was a great influence in my own life. And he has been in heaven for some time now, but Alan Redpath often gave his testimony – I heard it many times – how that he was converted in his early twenties, came to know Christ. And soon afterwards he went away from God, went back into his old life, began to do all the things he had done before he was converted. But as he said when he gave his story, there was one big difference – “I used to enjoy all those things I used to do but now doing the same things, living same way as I lived before, I didn’t enjoy it anymore. I would go home and I would toss and turn in my bed at night.”
It was the witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart. Having been born again, the Holy Spirit had sealed him, the Presence was there; and in his heart there was the taste of honey, there was the taste of oil. And it drove him to begin to seek for God and he came back to Christ. And God greatly used him for many years.
In contrast to that, I have a brother who came to know Christ, very committed to Jesus Christ. He worked for a while with Operation Mobilization, which is an evangelistic movement reaching out all across the world. I know a man who today is in the ministry in Great Britain as a pastor, who was a school friend of my brother, and it was my brother who led him to Christ.
But then he went back to university after having spent that time with Operation Mobilization. And amongst other things, he studied some psychology and some philosophy and he began to reinterpret his Christian experience in psychological and philosophical terms.
And he turned his back on God, went right away from God. For a number of years now he has been living in Australia where he teaches in the linguistics department of one of the universities there.
And some time ago he was writing a doctoral thesis on the theme of religious dogmatism.
And I go to Australia from time to time and I usually try and spend a day or two with him. And I was talking to him when he was beginning work on this thesis, asking him what the objective was. And it was to explain away why people become religiously enthusiastic and dogmatic and to explain it in psychological terms.
And I said, “Why are you spending so many hours and probably years in study and research and investigation in order to be negative, to destroy something, to pull it down? Why don’t you spend your time in doing something positive? It would be a lot more satisfying surely.
He said, “I have asked that question myself. It’s a good question.” He said, “I’m not sure. Maybe (and these were his words) maybe I am trying to exorcise my past, to get rid of this ingrained stuff that I had in my growing years.”
But that isn’t the reason at all. The reason is because there was a day when he was born again of the Holy Spirit; he gave evidence of the fruit of that and the Spirit of God sealed him that day. And what he has done now for many years is quench the Holy Spirit, and grieve the Holy Spirit and lock the Holy Spirit up into a little corner of his life. But I tell you this: every morning my brother wakes up, the Holy Spirit in him says, “Good Morning. I’m here.” And he hates it, he hates it, and he will never be satisfied until he comes into Canaan. And my prayer is that one day he will.
But I lived in the wilderness for a number of years after I first became a Christian. I believed it; I believed the gospel, I believed in Jesus, I was grateful for my forgiveness, I was grateful for the assurance of going to heaven when I died. And I wondered why it was so frustrating. Why do all the things that I find in my New Testament not seem to really work?
“I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” (This isn’t very abundant.)
“Any man who is in Christ; he is a new creation.” (I don’t feel like a new creation.)
“Old things are passed away” (you bet they haven’t) “everything has become new.” (That’s a wonderful exaggeration.)
And I concluded maybe the Christian life was like a carrot that they used to dangle in front of a donkey’s nose on a sort of fishing pole and the donkey would see the carrot, “I like carrots and I’ll keep moving to get the carrot.” And as you moved you kept pulling the cart and so that’s how you got the donkey to go and he never actually got the carrot. Maybe at the end of the journey you would give it to him.
But maybe the Christian life is designed to keep me going because it is never going to work.
Then I came to discover that Jesus Christ didn’t just give Himself for me; He gave Himself to me. And He lived in me and He would be the source of my life and my strength.
You see, when they failed to go into Canaan in the book of Numbers and the ten of the twelve spies said, “You know that there are seven nations that live there and some of them are wild. There is a group there called Hittites. I mean, they sound pretty dangerous don’t you think? Hittites. Why are they called Hittites? Probably pretty good at hitting. There are the Amorites – couldn’t care about anybody else but Amorite”…okay let’s move on.
There not only were seven nations; they lived in fortified cities. That is, well defended. They were trained in warfare. They were numerically many more than the Israelites. There were giants amongst them - descendants of somebody called Anak. There were big people in there, so much so that they said, “We felt like grasshoppers in comparison to them. We cannot do this.”
That was their report back to Moses after forty days of exploration. That was ten of the twelve. The other two, Joshua and Caleb, said, “Everything you have said is right but there is one thing you haven’t said. If the Lord is pleased with us, He will give us this land. This is not our business; this is His business. Let’s go into Canaan because God told us to in dependence upon Him knowing that He is the One who is going to give us the land.”
And they were outvoted and the Israelites stayed back in the wilderness for another 38 years – this was two years into their journey – 40 years during which the entire generation of people over twenty who left Egypt died and were buried – 600,000 funerals of men in the wilderness years; every one of them died except Joshua and Caleb.
And when Joshua eventually led them in, they were just as strong and just as powerful and lived in the same fortified cities.
But you remember the first fortified city is Jericho. “Do what He says. Walk around it.” And God brought the walls down; God gave them victory. All the way through the book of Joshua you find God gave them the land. God gave them 28 times in the book of Joshua, it says, “God gave them, God gave them, God gave them.”
What happens when somebody gives you something? You reach out an empty hand.
The Christian life is not trying to live for God as best we can. Of course there is discipline in the Christian life, but that discipline is not to get godliness into your life; it’s that the life of God in us can live through an obedient person and body.
And the manna was a symbol of the fact that God will never let you go. He made a covenant. He will not break it. There must have been days when Moses would go to bed at night and think, “Oh no, we have gone too far this time. The Israelites have rebelled yet again. They have disobeyed yet again. They have grumbled yet again. Surely God will leave us now.”
Yet if he got up at crack of dawn the next morning; went out as the sun broke on the eastern sky and scanned the horizon; sure enough, there was a fresh supply of manna.
Because, as 2 Timothy 2:13 says,
“If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”
And if manna is a symbol of the fact that God will sustain us, He will never let us go, it is also a symbol of the fact He will never satisfy you outside of His will. He will never satisfy us outside of going all the way with Jesus.
There is only one solution to manna, and I finish with this: you find the solution in Joshua Chapter 5 and Verse 10. Let me read it to you. The Israelites now are in Canaan at a place called Gilgal. It says,
“On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover.
“The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain.”
They are now enjoying this full provision of the land. Look at the next verse, verse 12:
“The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan.”
That’s Joshua Chapter 5: 10-12.
There is only one solution to the tediousness of the manna, and that is not finding new recipes for it. You know I talk to people sometimes and basically what they are saying is, “You know, my Christian life is so frustrating. Do you have any new recipes you could give me?”
I have talked with youth leaders who say, “How do we keep our young people? Do you know any good bands we could use; do you know any good movies we could show them? Do you know any new recipes for the boring manna?”
That won’t satisfy them. Only one thing will satisfy them: take them into Canaan. Take them into the fullness of life that God has for us where we live everyday in submission to Jesus Christ as our Lord.
We make it our business to get to know Him better through His Word and through the enabling and revelation of the Holy Spirit through the Word.
We surrender ourselves to the fullness of the Holy Spirit, not as an event but as a day by day by day relationship with Him and we find that no matter what you are facing, no matter what situation you are in, no matter what hardships you face, there will be a deep, deep satisfaction.
You will say with David, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
And what is the result? There is nothing I want; I am satisfied. Canaan was intended to satisfy them. And out of there they would bless the world.
There is no alternative but to go all the way with God. And I want to challenge you as I close this morning: are you living, not a life that is perfect – there is no such thing – but a life where your basic attitude is, “Lord Jesus Christ, I surrender all that I am to You and ask You by the Holy Spirit to fill me with Yourself.”
And you get on with life and you discover that God not only satisfies you, but you find He makes you a blessing to the world. That’s the outworking of it, as it was for the people of Israel.
And we are going to sing a closing prayer this morning. It is a hymn that many of you will know and some of you may not know. It’s in Old English but it is a beautiful prayer. It says,
Breathe on me breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what Thou dost love,
And do what Thou wouldst do.
Breathe on me breath of God,
Until I am wholly Thine,
Until this earthly part of me,
Glows with Your fire divine.
We are going to stay seated and we are going to sing it as a prayer and I ask you to pray this as we sing it, that God will breath afresh in your life.