Blessings In The Desert - Exodus 16 & 17
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
Sermon Transcript
Well, we are jumping back into our impossible moments today, and I'm really excited to be sharing a little bit about a little grownup Moses. We've been through a couple of different, well, actually I say a couple, we've only talked about Moses once here and we kicked off the series, but we've talked about David and Goliath, we've talked about Noah's faith, we've talked about Elijah versus the prophet of Bela, we've talked about baby Moses, we kicked off our series, Pastor Andre, and today we're gonna jump into a little grownup daddy Moses. And so it's gonna be awesome. If you want, you can flip over to Exodus 16 is where we're gonna start this morning. But this idea of this series of impossible moments is really as we have it here, believing in God through life's challenges, really believing in God and pressing in when we face these impossible moments. And we're jumping around all over the Old Testament looking at different stories of when God showed up in impossible moments, when backs were up against the wall, when all hopes seem to be lost, when there was no chance that there was gonna be any escape, victory, resolution, anything. And at that moment, God shows up. And that in that space, God showed up. And in this, I hope, and in our prayer, Pastor Andrei and myself is that when you face impossible moments in your life, that you can look back and remember these stories. These aren't fairytales, these are true stories. And remember that God showed up in ways. And wherever you're facing, whatever you're walking through, big, small, medium, middle, hard, easy, surprise, known, coming, hardship, that God's got your back. That God wants to show up in your life, to show up in the impossible moment. And today we're gonna go a little bit different route. We're still gonna be talking about impossible moment, but the question for us, I want us to think about is what is our heart? What is our posture? What is our response when we face this impossible moment?
We're gonna be talking about God's chosen people, the Israelites in Exodus today. And they didn't always have the right response. They didn't always respond the way that they probably should have when they faced impossible moments. And they faced a whole slew of them. From the crazy, unexpected, to God doing some unbelievable things, even before their eyes, that we would hear the story and think, "You're a crazy person." That you would even say that that happened. God showed up. And so we're gonna drop in on the Israelites at this moment. And they had just come out from this place of being in slavery in Egypt for generations. They had been used by Pharaoh and the Egyptians to build stuff, to serve them, to grow crops, to do everything that basically nobody in Egypt wanted to do. The Israelites got handed the job and said, go do this. And so we find the Israelites here just being able, having been rescued from Egypt with impossible moments alone, with all the plagues and the craziness that happened. God, at one point, Moses tells them, "Hey, you're gonna have this meal and you're gonna sacrifice his lamb and then you're gonna take the blood and put it over your door." And they're like, "What's going on?" And then if the covering wasn't there with the blood, the firstborn male died in the family, it was just chaos in these moments. And then you come to this point where Pharaoh finally says, "Fine, I'm tired of all this garbage you've been putting me and my country through. Moses, Aaron, just take these people and get out of here." And so they pack up, "Hey, we're free." And they take off. And then God takes them through this crazy route. And then all of a sudden, they're sitting by the edge of this giant sea called the Red Sea. And all of a sudden Pharaoh has a change of heart. And he sends all of his armies with chariots and technology of weaponry that nobody would have at that day and age except for them. And they think we're gonna be slaughtered out here by the edge of the sea. And God facing impossible moments, splits the Red Sea. And they don't just trudge through muck and mire through the Red Sea, they walk on dry ground. Then they get to the other side. God closes the ocean, the Israel army is wiped out. And they get to the other side and they're doing okay for a couple, a while. And then all of a sudden they're having to find water. And they finally find this thing of water, but it's undrinkable. It would kill them all. God does a miracle. God tells Moses, "Hey, take this log that's beside the water, throw it in the water and it's gonna be made clean and you can drink it." And Moses is like, "Are you kidding me? This is crazy." People don't believe him. So Moses does, it throws a log in there, water's clean, they're set. And so when we come to this point in Exodus 16, they have already seen impossible odds and God show up in their lives. And so we would think they got it down. These Israeli people, they got it figured out. They know exactly what's gonna happen. They face even the hardest thing. They're like, "Nope, I know my God. "I know my Yahweh, he's got my back. "He's got this under control. "He's gonna do something crazy. "It's gonna be awesome and we're gonna be saved." But they don't. They don't respond that way.
And so we come to this point in chapter 16, and we see a back-to-back test of the faith of Israel. They had been traveling since their last spur of water that had been made clean for them. They'd probably been traveling for a little bit. And they find themselves in the midst of this faith struggle. And really as scripture would say, they find themselves in this place of functional atheism. They're trying to still figure out this God. They're still trying to figure out what this thing, because for generations, they've been led by the Egyptian religions that had thousands upon thousands of gods and the gods of the air and the gods of the sun and the gods of the earth and the gods of the water and all sorts of different gods. they came from this place of just polytheism. And so they're in this place going, "Okay, I know God saved us and he brought us out, but was that the God of water that split the Red Sea? Was it the God of the earth that made the water clean for us to drink?" Where they're wrestling with all of this stuff and they choose to respond in this moment out of a place of fear and anxiety. Pastor and Andre, we were talking about this a little bit this morning. And we read these scriptures and we see like, man, how could these people respond this way? They've seen God act and God move and God saved them time and time again, and yet they still respond in this way. And we talked and we go, I would think there would be more than just maybe Moses and Aaron that would say, we gotta trust God, we gotta trust God. But when we read scripture, we see the majority of them still choose this idea of fear and not trusting a sovereign God who's going to do what he said he's going to do.
The Israelite people choose to believe in this place of their lack of control. And these tests were actually a part of God's sovereign plan to teach them about his covenant and to learn for them to trust and follow him. And we get to this place in the story of Exodus 16 and 17, the Israelite people have been traveling for about a month. And they come to this place where they enter into the official wilderness, which is a geographical place that is vast, rugged, and harsh. Commentator, Philip Ryken talks about it this way. It says, "If being delivered out of slavery in Egypt was about Israel's salvation, then their time in the wilderness was about their sanctification. There's two pieces going on here. And this place and where God is trying to grow them and teach them and to change their hearts and who they are, not just rescue them. And this is where we jump into the story today. And this story itself is one of the most famously referred back to stories in the book of the Bible. Jesus talks about it, the early church talks about it, multiple references go back to this moment in this time when God does this miracle in the wilderness. And so as the Israelite people are traveling through the wilderness, you can imagine there's not much around. And we're not talking like a couple hundred people here. It actually says in Exodus 12, that there was a count of 600,000 men alone, not including women and children that left Egypt. So if we were to say one for one plus maybe a quarter or so for those who had kids that didn't have kids, we're probably talking roughly 1.2 million people trekking through the wilderness. So when you run out of food, it's a big deal. There ain't a Starbucks you can pull into and grab some egg bites. There's a McDonald's you can grab a happy meal for the kiddos. There's no subway where you can eat fresh. There's no place for you to just grab some food on your road trip through the wilderness. And so the Israelites are facing this place of life and death. This isn't just a, oh my God, a little rumbling in my tumbling. Like we are hungry, we have no food, and we feel like we are going to die times 1.2 million. So this is a serious thing that's happening. and the Israelite people find themselves in this place of the impossible moment, and what's their response? What's their response? You would think back, okay, you've been through this, you've been through this, you come out of Egypt, the Red Sea, you got in the water, you've been saved, you've been protected, all this stuff, what do you think? You think Israelites are like, you know what, God's got us, it's all good. No, they freak out. They freak out in this impossible moment. What should have been a supernatural moment for them to go, we trust God. He's got our back. They freak out. And this idea of they don't know yet, but they're just on the beginning moments of what's going to become this 40 year journey of learning and sanctification and testing that they are facing impossible odds.
So we jump in, Exodus 16 starting in verse one, it says this, "The whole Israelite community sent out from Elam and came to the desert of sin, which is funny when you think about this, which is between Elam and Sinai. On the 15th day of the second month, so two and a half months in, they came 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, you have brought us out into the desert to starve this entire assembly to death. How quickly people turn when they get hungry, right? I will admit, I've had to apologize on many occasions to my lovely wife when I've gotten hangry. I'm not a pleasant person when I get hangry, okay? So I'm gonna give a little grace to the Israelite people here, they're getting hungry. But we drop in and they just go at Moses and Aaron. They just attack them. And I think, man, how could you do that? The Israelite people are 100% ungrateful for anything in this moment when they just run out of food. Even to the point, did you guys notice what they said? How chaos was it? We wish we'd rather had left us in slavery, at least we had food. So they are to the point where they are not even thinking straight they're so hungry, that they are saying, we would rather be in slavery under oppression, having to work whatever hours every single day before sun up to after sundown, at least there was food. What? Sorry, I don't know what dead end job I'm sticking around for because they got donuts in the morning and a coffee machine in the break room, I'm sorry. This is crazy. How could they respond this way? And so how quickly, and I think we're right there with them, right? How quickly do we forget when God does something in our life and then immediately we go, how could you do this to me, God? God's like, we're not even out of this moment over here where I did this for you. So I think there's definitely some relatability here to the Israelite people.
Let me try to point the picture this way a little bit. Everybody been around either maybe your child or a child you've seen where the temper tantrum begins to boil up. You guys seen that? Where it's something happens, kids not acting right. Maybe it was one of my children in the hallway. Never, never. Maybe it was a child at a restaurant or at the mall or at a store somewhere. And you see the temper tantrum try to start to unfold. And you start kind of going, okay, let's see what happens here. You're curious on two parts. One, you wanna see what happens with the child. And two, you wanna see what happens with the parent, right? You wanna see how they're gonna handle it. But then it gets to the point where it starts to escalate. Maybe there's a kick in the shin. Maybe they throw themselves on the ground. Maybe some words start coming out. Maybe you get the, "No!" No! And then you go, all right, now I'm fully glued in on this. I wanna see fully what happens here. And it's like, okay, what's mom or dad? What are they gonna do in this situation? This is what we're seeing right here. We're seeing Israelites go into a full temper tantrum right in the middle of the desert, right there in the sand. They are throwing a hissy fit because they're a little hungry. And they think that God who brought them all the way out of this slavery and bond for generation after generation, that they are just gonna, God just brought them out to watch them die in the desert. But we know that's not God, right? We know that's not gonna happen. And so right now, the Israelite people have a choice to make. They have a choice to make. Either they're gonna keep going this path of grumbling and moaning and crying and being hangry at God and that more specifically Moses and Aaron, 'cause they're the representative of God before them. Are they gonna go after them? Or are they gonna have this moment where they're gonna choose to look back, to remember and to have faith? Because every reason up to this moment should point them to this faith side. Everything that they have experienced, everything that they had gone through, And it's kind of absurd honestly, for them to respond the way that they did. And yet God responds in mercy. Let's read about verse four, it says this, "Then the Lord said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. "The people are to go out each day "and to gather enough for that day. "In this way, I will test them "and see whether they will follow my instructions. "On the sixth day," the day before the Sabbath, "they are to prepare what they bring in, "and that is to be as twice as much as they gather "on the other days. "So Moses and Aaron said 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." Moses also said, "You will know that it was the Lord "when he gives you meat to eat in the evening "as quail and all the bread you want in the morning "as manna, because he has heard your grumbling against him. "Who are we? "You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord." So God, in a very loving, gracious way, says, "Okay, I hear you guys, I got a plan." And God tells Moses to tell the people what's gonna happen is in the evening, you're gonna get quail, a little bird to be able to eat for some protein. And then in the morning, you're gonna wake up and you're gonna find on the ground bread that'll be able to get you some carbs to get your blood sugar out for the day and get you going until I get you that protein at night. I'm gonna do this every single day, day in and day out. But there's some instructions in there. There's some instructions of how they're supposed to go about this, 'cause this is gonna be different, this is gonna be counter-cultural to what they know or experience and have experienced in their entire life up to this point. We read on in verse 11. "The Lord says to Moses, "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. "Tell them, at twilight you will 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 this, 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 commanded. "Everyone is to gather as much as they need. "Take an omer or a portion for each portion "and 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. When Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning." However, some of them paid no attention to Moses and they kept part of it until the morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell.
So the Israelites find out that God is gonna freely provide for them all of their nutritional needs. But there's some rules. There's some rules in this, is that you are only supposed to collect as much as you need for you and your family. And I love what it says in scripture there, how it says some were probably a little bit anxious, gathered a little bit too much, but it was just right. Some maybe didn't have enough time, they slept over, the alarm clock didn't go off for them in the morning. And so their spot of gathering had already been taken. So they had to quickly gather what they needed and they didn't think they had enough, but at the end of the day, they had enough. That's amazing. There's a story in a moment right there, in that piece right there. But Moses tells them, "Don't take too much." If you try to take too much and then hoard it, it's against the rules. It's against the way that God wanted them to live. Why is that? Well, the reality is what's going on here, the writer Douglas Stewart says it this way. It says, "These instructions given by the Lord were not so that he could see if they would follow directions, but in their hearts, but if their hearts were inclined to be his covenant people. So the question here that God is asking in this moment of providing for them, God is saying, will you follow me even if my way is different from yours? Because here's what's going on. The story is incredibly important because there's two things that are happening right here. And this idea of manna being referenced multiple times throughout scripture points to this symbol of God's provision for his people. And when we really dig deep into what this manna thing is, there's two sides to this. The first side of that is manna is satisfying. In these instructions, the Lord gives to his people, He says to them, you're gonna go out every day and gather a portion. That word there, omen, means a peace or what they needed for the day. And when that's all that you need, you come back and you don't gather too much. You get exactly just what you need. So he's setting up some guard rails here to try to lead them in this place where he needs them to go. And he says, whatever is left over, whether it's the result of you taking too much or maybe you had hungry eyes that morning and you went out and gathered a few extra two loaves and you get done at the end of the night and you've eaten up, you're like, "Oh, I've eaten my full, there's still some leftover." That's okay, you don't keep it. I don't know what they did with it or where they put it, probably someone smarter than myself knowing the Old Testament would say they gathered up, I don't know what they did with it. But they weren't supposed to keep it in their tent because God here is trying to take them to this place of trust. He's trying to grow them into this place where they press into God every single morning.
Because the reality up to this point was when you harvested food, you had a crop, you grew it for X amount of months, then you harvested it, you brought it back to the storehouse, and then you just hope and pray that either you planted enough or it grew enough, or you don't have kids that turn into teenagers in the middle of the crop harvest. And you pray to Jesus, to God, God make this last. Because why? Crops don't grow new every day. And so in the Israelites mind where they are, well, this man is here, I don't know if the man can be here tomorrow, I'm gonna take extra. But what happens to it? It goes bad. It goes bad almost instantly. Then God says, "I need you to trust me. "I need you to press in to who I am "and this way that I'm providing for you. "Yes, this manna is satisfying. "Yes, it has this peace that you are, "you're being nourished "and your physical needs are being taken care of, "but I need you to trust me." Charles Spurgeon has this great quote. He says this, "When we can't see his hands, we can trust his heart." God here is saying, "I got you and I need you to trust me." And what's awesome about this is that this is the beginning of God doing this for 40 years into the future as they wander through the desert. God is gonna do this day in and day out and provide for them as they travel to where God has them to the place called the promised land. God wants them to flourish, not just succeed.
There's a difference here between the two, okay? God is teaching his people that success in the times of tough is through him and that he wants them to flourish under his leadership. It's about achieving a certain aim. See, flourishing is about growing healthy in an intentional environment where succeeding is about getting everything we can and it's all about me and being me taken care of and me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I'm good. I don't care about you, me. God is trying to change them, which leads us to this place of the other part, which is manna is sanctifying. God just isn't providing for their needs for them physically. God is changing them and their hearts to focus more on who He is for their lives. Deuteronomy eight, when Moses remembers back this time in the wilderness, Moses says this, he says, "Remember how your Lord, your God, led you all the way in the wilderness for those 40 years to humble and to test you in order to know that in your heart, whether or not you would keep his command, he humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had even known what it was, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." God here is shepherding their hearts and teaching them to trust in Him every single day. Why? Because God is worthy to be trusted for bread, is a God that can be worthy of being trusted and obeyed for salvation. That's what's happening right here. This is what God is doing in their hearts. Charles Spurgeon continues on, he says this, "God desired them to teach them himself by the gift of the manna. He taught them first their care over them, that he was their God and they were his people, and that he would lay himself out to provide for them." Think of the care that God had over them, each and every one of them, to teach them, each of them, that their own portion of manna was not forgot. That God knew in his, God just didn't throw out manna or throw out quail. There's a record where one of the times God throws out quail about two feet, three feet deep for two miles around the camp, just to kind of go, fine, here. I love God's moment of silly in that point. But God knew their portion. God brought every day the exact amount that they needed for each and every person. That mean that God knew each and every person's position, even before they woke up, of how hungry they were gonna be, what that day was gonna entail, the hard travel, the hard moments, the struggles, whatever they were in, God knew and provided each and every one of them their exact portion. Spurgeon continues on, "Every morning, "there was sufficient quantity for every person, "according to the needs that day. "There was no more, there was never no less. "So carefully did God watch over each individual." The individual divine love is a great part of the sweetness of the story. To think about that God thinks of every separate child as his own, as his own. There's an infinite affection that each morning God would care for each details of each person's life. And that you would see your portion filled precisely to the ounce, that he will give you all you possibly need. and He will give you nothing that you can lay by to minister in your pride. They didn't have anything left over to be able to go, "Oh, hey, Susan, I'm short on manna. Do you have any?" You go, "Well, yes, I do. Here's your manna." They didn't have any to be able to do that. All they had was enough for them to go, "God, thank you for today. I have eaten to my fill. I'm good, thank you God. And to have that dependency each and every morning.
So it takes us to this question. Will we trust God for tomorrow? Will we trust Him as the Israelites had to each and every day, not knowing what tomorrow is gonna hold, not knowing what even this afternoon is gonna hold. Will we trust God for tomorrow, even before we face the impossible moment? Will we wake up and say, God, you got today, and that's all that matters because you got me and I got you, let's go. Is that our mindset when we wake up? That God wanted to test them in their hearts if they were inclined to follow him. This story is ultimately foreshadowing God coming, Jesus coming to bring salvation, the biggest need that anybody could ever have. That Jesus was gonna come and he was gonna provide fully, freely and finally forever in Christ Jesus for all of humanity. They move on just moments after this to this place where they run out of water. Just shortly, I mean, we're talking just a couple weeks or so, they run out of water and what do they do? They turn to Moses and Aaron, "How could you do this? We would rather be in here." And Moses and Aaron are like, "Are you kidding me?" Like again? So God tells Moses, "Hey, take the staff, they're the one that, you know, I did stuff in Egypt and the Nile and the Red Sea and this and that and the snake and all this stuff." Yeah, remember that staff? Yeah, Israelite people, same staff, same God. Go over that rock. God tells Moses, I got your back, I'm right there with you. Hit the rock, water's gonna come out. Goes over, hits the rock, water comes out. Again, impossible moment, chaos. Everybody thinks it's the end of the world. Boom, God shows up.
Time and time again, we have these stories about God showing up. In 1 Corinthians 10, one through four, it talks about manna. It says, "For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, "brothers and sisters, that our ancestors "were under the cloud, which God led them, "the Israelites and the widows, "to cloud by day and fire by night. "We were under the cloud. "They all passed through the sea, the Red Sea. "They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud "and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food "and drank the same spiritual drink, "for they all drank from the spiritual rock "that compared them with the rock who is Christ.”
So we come to the point of, cool pastor, cool story, pastor. What does this mean for me? Well, I think it means a couple things for us. This weekend we're talking about freedom, right? Fourth of July, America freedom, maybe you celebrated with fireworks this weekend, we had our showcase here, it was great. Maybe you saw us celebrate America in the park, maybe you're gonna watch some fireworks, River Cats, I don't know what you're gonna do, fireworks somewhere. And it's all about freedom, right? It's all about our freedom. But I don't want us to forget in this weekend and these times of celebration of where our true freedom comes. We get caught up in this idea of American freedom and it's a selfish freedom. It's not the kind of freedom that God wanted to bring the Israelites out of Egypt into him. The story goes, whether it's Abraham Lincoln or somebody else, that a person was visiting a slave auction and upon arriving, they saw a young slave girl who was up for bid. Moved by compassion, this person bid and won. After purchasing her, they told this disbelieving girl that she was free. To her surprise, she said, "What does this mean?" They replied, "It means you're free." What does it mean that I'm free? Does this mean that I can say whatever I wanna say? They said, "Yes, my dear, you can say whatever you wanna say." She then says, "Does this mean I can be whatever I wanna be?" They said, "Yes, you can be whatever you want to be." She said, "Does this mean I can go wherever I want to go?" She said, "Yes, you can go wherever you want to go." And with tears streaming down the face of this little girl, she said, "Then I will go with you.”
The driving disbelief with the American dream and American freedom is that we have control. That's all about us. And God says, yes, I've given you freedom. I've brought you out of Egypt, the Israelite people. I've given you freedom from death, eternal in hell through Christ Jesus' blood on the cross, the sacrifice, the rock on which they are brought, our impossible moment out of. We were brought into a freedom, but not a freedom for ourselves. That's the freedom that the Israelite people struggle with. They were free, but they didn't understand this freedom to fully step into. Because when they stepped out of slavery into freedom, they had to step into the true freedom, independence on God that meant they didn't have to worry about their food every day. They didn't have to worry about where they were gonna get water. They didn't have to worry about what the next day was gonna bring them. All they had to do was step in and as the response of the young woman says, if that is what it's about, then I'm with you. The question for us today, even in our American freedom is the freedom we have in Christ do we say, then God, I'm with you. God, I am stepping into you so that when we find ourselves in impossible moments, we press in to what God has for us, every single moment.
So what is our response in the midst of impossible moments? That's the question for us today. I'm gonna invite the worship team back up and close out with a few songs. But we need to wrestle with this idea that do we have the response to the Israelite people did? Do we grumble? Do we whine? Do we complain? Even when a smallest hardship comes our way. Or do we press into the freedom, this new found freedom we found in God that isn't even a fraction of what American freedoms is. But it's spiritual, eternal freedom in God to step into that to go, you know what? My God's done it before, my God's gonna do it again. My God has my back. My God knows the details of my life and what I'm walking through each and every moment. Do I trust God that He can make all things possible? That He is the one that's gonna take care of my every day. Reality is following Christ isn't easy. But the reality is that in stepping with Jesus, he has everything taken care of. And when we put our faith in Christ, and he comes on us, he covers us all. Tops of our head to the bottoms of our feet. And that he's gonna make everything be all right. whether it's here on this side or on the other side of heaven, everything's gonna be all right. Whatever impossible situation that you face, God's got it taken care of. So I encourage you, don't have the response that the Israelites had, have a response of faith to go, God's got my back, God's got it taken care of because His provision is sanctifying, but it is ultimately satisfying as well.
Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for today. God, I'm so grateful for the story of your care and compassion and mercy for your Israelite people. Those people that you cared for each and every day for those 40 years wandering in the wilderness, you had there every day. So Jesus, we're thankful for that. We worship you. We praise you. God, let us respond in the similar way that if that is freedom, then I'm with you. Let us choose that today, Jesus. Love you, we thank you.