I want to push a little further into Exodus 16 here because you might as well know what happens for the whole chapter. So we just finished here where flow stopped and the bread has come and you would think that everything would be normal and we’d be good. They’re fed, they have the bread now. Of course, that’s not what happens. We see multiple different responses to the bread. Some people listen. Some people only collect as much as they need for the day. And then there are others who collect more in the hopes that they can stockpile it, that they can secure it to make sure they still have some for the next days. That bread, over the course of the evening, when they try to keep it in a jar, became infested with worms and stank. That’s an important piece there, too. Moses ends up being furious with these people, and they seem to finally learn their lesson towards the end of the chapter. But what happens after that is God commands that one jar of manna can be kept, just one, and it’s to be kept in the tabernacle in front of the ark where the people can see it and remember for all generations that God provided for them in the desert.
Give us this day our daily bread. We pray it at least once a week. I know you do because we just did. You probably pray it more than that. And it’s a really reassuring line in the Lord’s Prayer, I think, that Jesus tells us all we need to do is ask the Father to give us what we need to make it through the day ahead of us. And yet, when we find the Israelites in the Sinai Desert this morning, wandering and starving, we’re forced to see the image of daily bread in a different kind of light.
And this chapter opens in the midst of a severe crisis. There’s about to be a rebellion, a mutiny against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites are murmuring is the traditional way that that’s translated, that there’s just this kind of buzz of rebellion. The people are hungry. We don’t know how long they’ve gone without eating. At the end of chapter 15, God miraculously gave them water from this bitter spring. He ends three days of thirst after they make it across the Red Sea. They don’t get to drink for three days, but then he miraculously transforms this spring into sweet water. And after that, they make camp at an oasis of 12 springs and 70 palm trees. And we can assume there there’s at least something to eat. But now they’re on the move again. They’re not in an oasis anymore. They’re in the middle of the desert in a region called Sin. And they are grumbling and furious as they just lash out against Moses. And they say, oh, how we wish the Lord had just put us to death while we were still in Egypt. There we could sit by the pots of cooking meat and eat our fill of bread, and instead you’ve brought us out into this desert to starve this whole assembly into death.
And it’s amazing, this constantly happens in Exodus. How fast the Israelites move from miracle to mutiny. Constantly. Just a month prior, a chapter ago, all the people were united. They’d just made it across the sea, and they were singing praises to God. One of these beautiful hymns in the Old Testament. I will sing to the Lord for an overflowing victory. Horse and rider he threw into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my power. He has become my salvation. This is my God whom I will praise. The God of my ancestors whom I will acclaim. The Lord is a warrior. The Lord is his name. They all are singing this on the banks of the Red Sea. And now, a month later, the people are ready to swim back across it. into the chains that Pharaoh has had waiting for them, because at least in Egypt, they knew the smell of cooking meat.
Better a predictable slavery than an unfamiliar freedom. And so God speaks to Moses, and this is interesting, by the way, because as you read this chapter, it doesn’t seem like Moses is asking. God has something to say to Moses without him asking first. He needs him to know. And God speaks to him about how God is going to respond to this murmuring, this rebellion that’s bubbling up. And God’s plan is this. Bread will rain down from heaven every night. And every morning, the people may gather it for food, but each person can only gather one omer, which is enough grain for one person for one day. It’s about two quarts. The only exception is the day before the Sabbath, when they’re allowed to collect enough for two days, allowing them to rest on the Sabbath day, even in the midst of this desert, of this struggle, of this suffering. Sabbath rest is still respected. That day is still sacred and peaceful.
And as a bonus, a huge flock of quails is going to come the very first night. It covers the camp. It’s covered with these game birds and gives them meat to hunt. And so Moses gathers and addresses the people to tell them what God has said, and he repeats it. The Lord will give you meat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning because the Lord heard the complaints you made against him. And then I think it’s interesting here, too, he distances himself. Point to Aaron, he goes, who are we? Your complaints aren’t against us, but the Lord. Definitely trying to quell this rebellion here.
But Moses is clear and firm in sharing the instructions that he received from God. Don’t keep any of it until morning. And naturally, the people don’t listen. The rumbling of their bellies and the memory of their hunger is louder than the sound of God’s voice. And some of them decide that the best thing to do is to stock up. Again, they keep manna for the next days. But within a single night, it rots. It fills with worms. It stinks with the smell of decay. It’s inedible. Can’t be kept. and Moses is furious finding out that the people did this.
Some disobey in the opposite way. We also find out later in this chapter, they refuse to collect double the day before the Sabbath, and they go out the morning of the Sabbath to go find their breakfast, and oh, nothing there. God this time lashes out, not Moses, but God this time, and addresses Moses for the failures of the people and says to Moses, how long will you refuse to obey my commandments and instructions? Their leader is responsible for the way they’re behaving.
And this singular most important role of the manna here that’s dispensed by God’s will on God’s schedule is to remind the people that the one who brought them out of Egypt is the one who maintains their life and their well-being every single day still. It’s not themselves. It’s not Moses. It’s not Aaron. It’s God. The bread comes from God. Give us this day, they might pray, before they go out to the desert to collect their rations flavored like honey, our daily bread. No more, no less. And to keep that memory alive, God commands this jar of manna be kept in the tabernacle so that all future generations can see that the same God who brought the plagues upon the Egyptians, who plunged Pharaoh’s chariots into the deep, who split the Red Sea, also fed them day by day in the midst of the desert. As much as liberation and power and this warrior spirit are part of who God is, so is this motherly daily bread.
But here’s the thing that every Israelite in the Sinai knows, whether they say it out loud, and some of them actively rebel against it, but they all know this is true. Relying on God’s daily bread sucks. And we’re tempted to be pious about that. And we say to ourselves, God gives us just what we need to make it through the day. But that is not often what it feels like. We don’t feel particularly grateful for that. And these Israelites are not less faithful than we are. I think we have to remember this. They have seen in the past month the power of God before their eyes in ways that we can only dream of. They saw the sea parted with Moses’ staff. They saw the plagues, the frogs, the rivers of blood. They were freed from slavery, and they know that God did it. So it’s all that they don’t believe. They know full well God cares for them, but the fear remains. And I have to deeply sympathize with those Israelites in the Sinai who can’t help themselves to gather extra manna. Because, you know, what if it doesn’t come tomorrow? What if it doesn’t come tomorrow? What if God decides to stop? They’ve been hungry before. And you and I have felt the pain of needing God’s help before, the desperation that emerges when it doesn’t come when or how we want it. What if it doesn’t come?
But daily bread means just enough for the day. And it means trusting that God is going to be as good tomorrow as God has been today and yesterday and the moment he split the sea. And it is an incredibly difficult spiritual discipline to pray for daily bread like we do in the Lord’s Prayer and mean it. And I can confess that I am not at all there to the degree that I hope to be. God measures out grace. God measures out providence as God sees fit. We don’t get to stockpile it. There’s no way to stockpile it. Whether it’s this bread that’s scattered on the frost or this full day’s wages given to a worker that shows up at five, God refuses to work to give on our terms. And God provides what is needed for our lives. No more, no less.
And these stories force us to deal with the reality of our lives. That no matter what we might prefer to think, our lives are in God’s hands. and we’re just infinitely better off when we live that way because you can’t and aren’t self-sufficient. It’s by God’s blessing, not the strength of our efforts, not our worthiness that our work comes to fruition. It’s by God’s grace that we are fed in the deserts of our lives, in our minds, in our bodies, in our souls. God is the provider. All that we have is a trust from God, one day at a time, because there can only ever be manna for today.
As you all know, as we’ve discussed a little bit this morning, stormies do any day now, right? And something has happened to me within the past couple months, and that is that I have become deeply, viscerally anxious about this baby coming. I’m very serious about this. I’ve dealt with anxiety for quite a few years now. But this is the worst that it’s been in a long time. And it’s hard to explain what that means unless you’ve dealt with it yourself, as I’m sure many of you have, because like worrying isn’t the issue, right? Anxiety like something like this is something else. And I told Stormy earlier this week that I can’t pinpoint exactly what’s going on with me here, but I have a hypothesis. And that is that I have absolutely zero control over anything that’s to come in these next few weeks or like 20 years. And this is probably the first time, if I’m honest, this is probably the first time since I’ve been a conscious human being that I have felt this way. Completely out of control.
All I can do is grab my bag of, you know, T-shirts and sweatpants and cookies, grab it, put it in the car and sit in the hospital bed, sit in the hospital room for however many hours it takes. I have no details of what’s going to happen. Besides, at the end of it, there will be a baby buckled in the backseat of my car in the car seat that’s already there haunting me. I can think, you know, what if I can’t do it? Right. What if I’m a nervous wreck for the rest of my life all day long? or I can just feel that gnawing in my stomach all the time. But whenever I have those questions, you know, what if I can’t do it? God has an answer. And that answer is what we hear in Exodus 16. Go out tomorrow morning and gather the bread for the day. The answer will be exactly the same tomorrow. Go out in the morning, gather the bread that you need for the day. One day at a time, God will give the manna this miraculous nourishment that God knows I need to make it. And regrettably, this has not cured my anxiety.
If only it were as easy as knowing that everything is going to be okay. Again, the Israelites of the Exodus, they know God’s power quite well. They know God can handle it. They have walked the seafloor of the Red Sea, and yet they are still anxious enough to find themselves desperately squirreling away some extra jars of manna that turn into worm-filled rot, right? The work that God does in us, that we do with God’s help, happens over the whole course of our journey as we first accept that God’s grace comes on God’s schedule. And this is what a life of faith, of growth in faith looks like as we move from doubt first, Then maybe to gritting our teeth and affirming that God will provide even if we don’t feel it. And eventually, hopefully, losing that deeply human compulsion to bring an extra jar just in case.
So whatever desert you find yourself walking through this week, whether it’s a hospital room, an empty house, some uncertain future that’s keeping your stomach tied, we can decide to leave that extra jar behind. You don’t have tomorrow’s grace yet. You only have today’s, and that’s all you ever get. So go out and gather what you need for the hours right in front of you and trust that when tomorrow morning breaks, all you need is going to be there again. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
