Of Food and Faith
Exodus 16:1-18; Psalm 95

Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt. 4:4). He was actually quoting Moses, who spoke the words to Israel in Deuteronomy 8:3. Moses said, “He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” This is how Moses summarized the purpose and meaning of the events recorded in our reading from Exodus 16.

Having enough to eat and drink, having food security, is not enough to give life meaning, purpose, and direction. There must be something more; God is the missing element. This was true long ago in the wilderness of Sin, and it is still true today. St. Augustine, the fourth- century bishop of the city of Hippo in North Africa famously prayed, “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” Think of all the people in our country who have more than enough of this world’s goods, but are still dissatisfied, empty, and miserable. Human beings cannot be fully alive if God is not at the center of their lives.

Now, having said all this, it is important to note that man cannot stay alive without bread. “Bread” in this morning’s text is a general term for “food.” It can mean “bread” specifically, but its sense in this passage is more generalized to mean “food.” You can live for up to two months without food as long as you have water, but eventually you cannot continue living without “bread.” We are mere mortals. We do not have the power to keep ourselves alive. Our mortality creates a fundamental anxiety in us because the will to survive is also built into us.

It was the anxiety of mortality that was driving the Israelites in the wilderness. Their anxiety came to expression as complaints against Moses and Aaron. The people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Ex. 16:3).

Essentially, they were forming a “Back to Egypt Committee"! They were fondly remembering the fine fish from the Nile River and the tasty Egyptian chicken. They had forgotten they were enslaved and the hard labor the Egyptian taskmasters imposed on them. More than that, the Israelites had forgotten God’s mighty acts for them: the ten plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the defeat of Pharaoh’s army in the waters of the sea, and the song of victory they sang following their deliverance. All they could think about was the hunger gnawing in their bellies and the fear of death in the wilderness.

We should not be too hard on the Israelites. Mortality anxiety is a powerful force driving human behavior. Real hunger is an all-consuming obsession. Furthermore, while Israel had witnessed the Lord’s mighty acts for them, they must have been at least somewhat traumatized in the process. Imagine witnessing the destruction of Egypt by the ten plagues, or the anxiety of being chased by Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, or walking through the Red Sea with the menacing waters towering over you, or seeing hundreds or even thousands of soldiers drowned before your very eyes. All of that coupled with hunger and ongoing food scarcity made them uneasy and even tenuous in their relationship with the Lord. Would the LORD turn on them? The food crises turned into a faith crisis.

Their complaining, while not justified, is certainly understandable. Trusting God when you are staring at your mortality is very hard. God seems to have viewed the Israelite’s complaints with compassion and understanding. God is not angry with Israel. In response to their complaints, the LORD simply says, “Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day'" (Ex. 16:4a). God provided for them plain and simple.

The LORD saw an opportunity in this food and faith crisis to help the fledgling nation know the LORD, trust the LORD, and obey the LORD. The experience would reveal God to them. “So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, 'At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord'” (Ex. 16:6-7a). “Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God’” (Ex. 16:12). Israel would know and trust the LORD to be God with and for them as a result of their ordeal.

Israel would also begin to learn obedience. They would learn how to follow God’s instructions. God revealed He was allowing this trial in order that He might test the Israelites and discover whether they would walk in his ways or not (see Ex. 16:4b).

And so, the LORD provided quail at night and manna in the morning. There has been quite a bit of debate about whether God used natural or supernatural means to feed Israel in the wilderness. Numbers 11:31-32 tells of another occasion when the LORD rained quail on Israel. Apparently, migratory birds are sometimes blown in from Africa or the Mediterranean Sea. The birds are so exhausted from flying against the wind you can catch them by hand. Although quail from heaven was sometimes a naturally occurring phenomenon on the Sinai Peninsula, the timing as well as the quantity of the quail was certainly ordered by a kind, divine Providence.

There may be a similar natural explanation for the manna. When the Israelites first experienced the manna, they said to one another, “What is it?” (Ex. 16:15). The question in Hebrew is “Man hu.” You can hear the similarity between the question and the name “manna.” The name is derived from the question. One commentator writes about the possible natural cause of the manna this way. “A type of plant lice punctures the fruit of the tamarisk tree and excretes a substance from the juice, a yellowish-white flake or ball. During the warmth of the day it disintegrates, but it congeals when it is cold. It has a sweet taste. Rich in carbohydrates and sugar, it is still gathered by natives and baked into a kind of bread. The food decays quickly and attracts ants.” It does not sound too appealing! Again, the manna, like the quail, may have been a naturally occurring phenomenon on the Sinai Peninsula, but the quantity, timing, and regularity of the provision must have been the miraculous work of the LORD. Whether the quail and manna were natural, supernatural, or both, they were the LORD’s provision for his people to help them learn to know, trust, and obey their God.

A couple of other details are worth noting. First, God provided for all of Israel equally! “They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat” (Ex. 16:17b-18). Second, God’s gifts were given in such a way that the people of God were forced to learn daily dependence upon the LORD (Ex. 16:4a). God supplied only their “daily bread,” nothing more.

God faithfully gave them their bread each day, but the lesson of trust is hard to learn. Israel, during the course of her forty years of wandering in the desert, complained repeatedly. Food crises, water crises, or leadership crises repeatedly became faith crises.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the wilderness generation. Paul said, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor. 10:11). Psalm ninety-five also sees the events of the wilderness as paradigmatic for the people of God. The psalm preserves a perpetual warning for us. “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, ‘They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.’ Therefore, I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest’” (Ps. 95:7b-11).

The events of the wilderness stand as a warning to us too, but they also suggest a possibility. Unlike Israel, we can listen to God’s voice. We can keep our hearts malleable to God’s will. We can be cherished by God. Our hearts can stay on the right way. We can enter God’s rest.

All of this is possible because of the LORD Jesus Christ. When he was famished and alone in the wilderness, when he was tempted to turn stones into bread, he did not complain. Jesus knew that there is no lasting life apart from every word that comes from the mouth of God. Jesus knew, trusted, and obeyed his Father in heaven perfectly. Ultimately, Jesus sacrificed that perfect life on the cross to pay for our sins, and in so doing, Jesus became the true bread that came down from heaven that gives life to the world. Whoever eats this bread will never be hungry or thirsty.

Jesus Christ is in us, indwelling us in the person of the Holy Spirit. We still must face our mortality anxiety, and we will experience scarcity of various and sundry kinds. Like Israel of old, we have experienced our hard knocks; we are bruised and battered by the journey. When hardship comes, we can feast upon the heavenly manna. He will strengthen us to live through life’s difficulties with trust and obedience to our heavenly Father. We know that our Father in heaven is aware of all our needs, even before we ask him. We can trust and obey. We can know the LORD. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia! Amen.