A Sanctifying Wilderness

Most of you, I think you know, Pastor Matthew is on vacation.

And just to reemphasize what Jim Franks mentioned last week, that's normal.

It might be new for our church, but it's normal for a pastor to be released to vacation.

He's enjoying his time with his family in Maryland for the next couple weeks.

And instead, we have Reverend Jeff Kreisel.

He's also a familiar face.

You've seen him a few times before.

And I think enough times that we can bestow on you the title Friend of Cheyenne Mountain.

So I'm going to do that today.

I bestow upon you the title Friend of Cheyenne Mountain.

And many of you have heard from Jeff before, and he's going to be preaching for us today.

His other title is RUF Campus Minister at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

So he's been ministering there for almost two years now?

Almost three years now, yeah, as the campus minister.

So that's a ministry that needs your prayers.

It's a ministry that's growing by leaps and bounds.

But there are a lot of cadets struggling with a lot of college things, normal and abnormal things.

And they have a campus minister in Jeff that needs your prayers.

He also has a sign-up sheet in the back where you can get on his email list and some swag, some reminders of RUF serving invisibly to us way down here in the south, but serving faithfully at the Air Force Academy.

So I'd like to invite Jeff Kreisel up to preach for us this morning.

Thanks, brother.

Hi, well, good morning.

My name is Jeff Kreisel.

I'm excited to be here again with you this morning, bringing God's Word to God's people.

This is the second year in a row where I've had the privilege of bringing God's Word to you on the first Sunday of the year.

So that's kind of a neat thing.

All right, so this morning we are going to return to the book of Exodus, and we're going to see what life looks like after justification.

Okay, we're going to see what life looks like after crossing the Red Sea, after crossing over from death to life.

And as we looked at last week, as I mentioned, life after justification does not get easier, right?

But it does get better.

It's a huge thing that we need to remember.

Our lives may become more difficult on the justification side of the sea, but our lives also become more joyful and more content and more satisfying and more purposeful.

After crossing the Red Sea, the first place that God leads the Israelites is into the wilderness.

He takes them into the wilderness.

It is a scary wilderness.

It's unpredictable.

It is a harsh wilderness.

It is a wilderness where their faith would be tested and stretched through a number of various trials.

He takes them into a wilderness that would appear barren and inhospitable.

But it's also a wilderness where God would continually meet their needs.

God takes them into a wilderness that would expose their doubts and their fears.

But it's also a wilderness where God would comfort and assure his people during the hardest of times.

God takes them into a wilderness in which God himself would sometimes seem absent and distant and removed.

But it's also a wilderness where God would walk with his people every step of the journey.

He takes them into a wilderness.

He takes them into a wilderness that would sometimes feel purposeless.

But it's also a wilderness where God has written purpose into every word of their sanctifying stories.

Are you familiar with this wilderness?

Have you walked through this wilderness?

Have you walked through the valley of the shadow of death?

If you have crossed over, if you have gone through those baptizing waters of the Red Sea,

and you are now on the justification side of salvation, I know that you have.

I am sure that you know that this wilderness often isn't pleasant.

I am also sure that there have been times during your wilderness wanderings,

maybe even this morning, that you have forgotten the purpose of the wilderness.

You have forgotten why God has placed you here.

And you have also probably, during some point in your wilderness wanderings,

you have forgotten where you are headed.

We're not going to forget this morning, we are going to remember where God is leading us.

So buckle up, because we are heading into the sanctifying wilderness of the Christian life this morning.

So I invite you all to please stand for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, and inspired word

that is sufficient for our salvation.

We'll be looking at Exodus 16, verses 1 through 4,

Exodus 16:1–4

then we're going to bounce and we're going to look at 13 through 21.

They set out from Elam, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin,

which is between Elam and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month,

after they had departed from the land of Egypt.

And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

And 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 into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

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,

that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not.

In the evening, quail came up and covered the camp,

and in the morning dew lay around the camp.

And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine flake-like thing,

fine as frost on the ground.

When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another,

What is it?

For they did not know what it was.

And Moses said to them,

It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

This is what the Lord has commanded.

Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can.

You shall each take an omer according to the number of persons that each of you has in his tent.

And the people of Israel did so.

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.

And Moses said to them,

Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.

But they did not listen to Moses.

Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank.

And Moses was angry with them.

Morning by morning they gathered it,

each as much as he could eat.

But when the sun grew hot, it melted.

This is the word of our Lord.

Let me pray for us.

Heavenly Father,

you are the author and sustainer of our faith.

And we pray this morning

that you would show us what we do not see,

that you would teach us what we do not know,

that you would convict us where we need to be convicted,

and encourage us where we need to be encouraged.

We pray, Lord,

that you would use my finite words

for your infinite and holy purposes,

for our good and your glory.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Amen.

No, I put a,

I put some cover on this.

Nice.

All right, so I want us to,

I want us to see that the wilderness

shows us three things in this passage.

The first thing the wilderness shows us

is that it exposes our fearfulness.

All right?

Our text begins two months

after the Israelites have crossed the Red Sea.

Okay?

After 400 years in Egypt,

in much of that time they were slaves to Pharaoh,

they were finally free.

They were finally under God's rule and reign

instead of Pharaoh.

They are now following God by day and by night

through this wilderness.

And they are headed to the promised land.

They are headed to a land

that is flowing with milk and honey.

They're headed to the land of Canaan.

The picture here is that it is essentially

like a paradise on earth

where God dwells and meets with his people.

He lives with them forever.

They're headed there.

They're headed to the promised land.

But they're not there yet.

They're in the wilderness.

And in the wilderness,

the Israelites have discovered

that God's decisive defeat of Pharaoh

has not solved all of their problems.

In fact, God's decisive defeat of Pharaoh

has introduced a new set of problems

and a new set of challenges.

Challenges that would expose their fear,

their most deep-rooted fears.

And these fears would cause them

to forget their redemption story.

They would start to long to return

to slavery in Egypt.

You see, like us, the Israelites,

they feared a whole lot of things.

Okay?

Our fears are not unique.

Okay?

They feared what we fear.

They feared failure.

They feared isolation.

They feared being alone.

They feared the unknown.

They feared being uncomfortable and insecure.

They feared being unproductive.

They feared a lack of purpose.

They feared feeling shame and guilt.

But more than anything else, like us,

they feared death.

The great enemy.

Not just their great enemy,

our great enemy.

Like the Israelites,

we fear death more than anything else.

And that is what they feared here in Exodus 16.

This is a universal condition.

All right?

It doesn't matter what you believe.

Everybody fears death.

I was reading last night

just kind of some strategies you can employ

to combat your fear of death.

And the number one thing

was to convince yourself

that death is a natural occurrence.

But how is that working out for these people?

They still fear it.

You can't avoid it.

You can't run away from the fear of death

because it isn't natural.

And we all know that it's not natural.

There's something wrong.

It is the great enemy.

We try to escape from it, though.

A few years ago,

I read a story of a guy

who built this beautiful playground

right next to a cemetery.

And it's an amazing park,

and nobody brought their kids

to play at this amazing playground.

And he was kind of stumped.

He was trying to figure out why it is

that no one was bringing their children

to play at this playground.

So he thought outside the box.

He's like, maybe it's the cemetery.

So he built a fence

to block people from seeing the cemetery.

He put the fence up.

And the next day,

the playground was just filled

with laughing children.

We wanted to block it out

because we're uncomfortable

with just being reminded

that death is in our future.

We don't like to grapple with death

and the questions surrounding death.

But we try all sorts of things.

Just look at what our culture does

to combat their fear of death.

People get plastic surgery, right,

late in their life

because they see the aging process,

and they want to combat that

because they know what aging brings.

A lot of people play video games

that are really horrific, right?

They make light of death.

They dumb it down.

They try to view death through a screen,

try to separate themselves from it

because they can't handle the reality of it.

Something that's new in our day and age

is that when a loved one dies,

we've started to have celebration

of life ceremonies

instead of mournful funerals

where we grieve the loss of our loved one

in a healthy way.

We don't want to touch death

with a 10-foot pole.

The same is true with the Israelites.

You see, the irony in Exodus 16

is that the same Israelites

who were so afraid of death

were redeemed.

They were delivered from death's grip

just two months earlier, right?

The Egyptians were about to kill them.

The Israelites were surrounded.

They had nowhere to run and hide.

Death was all but certain,

but then God saves them from death's grip,

and then the Egyptians perish in the sea instead.

The threat to their lives

had already been defeated.

You see the irony here?

It's an irony that is not unique to them.

This irony pervades our lives as well.

In the wilderness,

our greatest fears are exposed,

especially our fear of death.

The wilderness, it causes us to forget

that God has already delivered us

from death's grip.

In the wilderness,

we forget that Jesus already went through death

in order to defeat death

so that we wouldn't be afraid of death.

In the wilderness,

we forget that Jesus has already redeemed us.

We're free.

We don't have to be slaves of fear anymore.

In the wilderness,

the Israelites' fears were exposed.

They didn't know if they would survive this wilderness.

They didn't know if the God who delivered them from Egypt

would also meet their physical daily needs

here in this harsh wilderness.

And I'll be honest,

it's hard to,

you can't blame them, right?

They're in a really rough condition, right?

I have been to some Middle Eastern deserts in my time.

For many months,

I've lived in Iraq and Afghanistan

and Qatar and Kuwait.

And I can tell you all from my experience,

these deserts are not hospitable places, right?

They're dry.

They are hot.

The terrain is rocky and it's really rough.

It is not a hospitable place to be.

And the Israelites have been wandering

in this barren desert,

which is what wilderness is actually translated to mean

in Hebrew.

It means desert.

They've been wandering in this desert

for two months now

and they have many mouths to feed.

And they have very little food

and water and shelter

and they have enemies surrounding them still.

This is a fearful place to be, right?

Why would God do such a thing?

Why would he lead them here?

Why wouldn't God just skip the whole wilderness

wandering stage

and like teleport his people

from the Red Sea to the Promised Land?

Why wouldn't he just rapture them up?

There is purpose to the wilderness.

God purposefully led the Israelites

into the wilderness

in order to expose and defeat their fears

by strengthening their faith.

Okay?

He's going to expose and defeat their fear

by strengthening their faith

in the midst of the wilderness.

My friends,

while the wilderness is always painful,

it is always purposeful.

God understood that it would be easier

to get the Israelites out of Egypt

than to get Egypt out of the Israelites.

Right?

The Israelites have been in Egypt for 400 years.

They have adopted their idolatries.

They have adopted their idols.

They have adopted all of these sins.

God understood this.

And so he uses the wilderness

to sanctify them,

to rid them of these lifelong idolatries

that they had picked up

over the course of 400 years in Egypt.

You see,

while the Israelites were no longer

under the rule of Pharaoh,

they were still living as if they were.

They didn't really believe

that they were free.

They didn't really believe

that God was with them,

that God was for them,

that he loved them more

than they could fathom.

They didn't really believe

that they could live by faith

instead of by fear.

What about you?

Do you believe that God is with you

and that he loves you more

than you can fathom?

Truly, do you believe that?

If you do,

then why are you still living

like a slave to fear?

Do you believe that you are

who God says that you are?

Do you believe truly

that you are a beloved child of God?

If you do,

then why are you still living

like an orphan?

When Moses and Aaron

confronted Pharaoh

for the first time,

do you remember

what God told Moses

to say to Pharaoh?

He told him to say this.

He said,

Israel is my firstborn son,

and I say to you,

let my son go

that he may serve me.

These are family terms

that God is using.

He's describing himself

as their father,

and he is their child

because they were,

because of the covenant

that God made with Abraham.

The Israelites were

God's covenant adopted children.

God was their loving father,

and he was with them,

and he was for them,

and if God was for them,

who could be against them?

If God was with them,

what could they fear?

Listen,

in order to get Egypt

out of you,

in order to be free from fear,

in order to be who you are,

you have to remember

who God says that you are.

You have to remember

who God says that you are,

and you aren't a slave,

and you aren't an orphan.

You're a child of God.

Truly, you are.

A few years ago,

I came across a story

of a young girl

who was adopted

by this very loving

Christian family,

and the home

that she came from

was really broken,

and this poor girl

was abused,

both physically

and emotionally,

and she had deep

external

and internal

scars and wounds.

Right?

And so,

moving into a home

with a loving family

was not easy for her

because she carried Egypt

into that home,

and it also wasn't easy

for her new parents.

Although she was legally

their daughter,

this girl did not treat

her new parents

as her parents.

Instead,

she was cold towards them,

and she was full of fear

whenever they were around,

fearing that they would

do the same

that her previous parents

did to her.

Well,

over the course

of the next year,

this young girl

was loved on

by her parents,

and her parents

met her daily needs.

And over time,

her heart began

to soften.

It began to warm

towards her new parents

until one day,

after multiple failed

attempts to tie her shoe,

she walks over

to her father,

and for the first time

in her life,

she says,

Daddy,

will you help me

tie my shoe?

And he has tears

streaking down his face,

and he says,

Yes,

I would love to.

You see,

in this moment,

what was legally true

had become practically true.

She was already

their daughter,

but she didn't fully

understand or believe it,

but now it had become

practically true.

That truth had been

driven into her heart.

It took a year

in the wilderness

for her to realize

that she was no longer

a slave to fear,

that she was no longer

an orphan,

but she was a daughter

who was deeply loved.

According to J.I. Packer,

the revelation

to the believer

that God is their father

is in a sense

the climax

of the entire Bible.

I'm going to say

that one again.

The revelation

to the believer

that God is their father

is in a sense

the climax

of the entire Bible.

When you understand

and firmly believe

that God is your loving father,

that changes everything.

Right?

It changes everything.

Being able to cry out,

Abba, Father,

is at the heart

of Christianity.

And it is the truth

that must fight your fear

in the wilderness.

The second thing

the wilderness shows us

is that it addresses

our forgetfulness.

Our problem

is like the Israelites.

We are a very forgetful people.

With the Israelites,

God was visibly with them.

He was visibly leading them

by day and night

through the wilderness.

They had just witnessed

God perform

ten miraculous plagues

to deliver them

from slavery in Egypt.

They got to see that

with their own eyes.

As we saw last week

in Exodus 14,

the Israelites just walked

through the Red Sea

on dry ground.

But when hunger struck,

they forgot

their redemption story.

It only took two months

for spiritual amnesia

to kick in.

And they start to grumble

and complain.

And they start to long

to return to Egypt

of all places.

And like I said last week,

they start to rewrite history.

They keep doing this.

And they're going to do it

over and over again

throughout the remainder

of their time

in the wilderness.

They rewrite history.

Look at verse 3.

It says,

they said,

back in Egypt,

we had meat pots.

We had meat and bread.

We had water.

We had shelter.

We had everything

that we could have needed

and then some.

Which is not true.

Right?

They say,

what have you done

bringing us out here

into the wilderness?

Back then,

back there,

we had everything we needed.

But here,

we're barely surviving.

And that's how

the wilderness feels sometimes.

It feels like

we're barely surviving.

It feels like

we're holding on

by a thread.

But the good news

of the gospel

is that that thread

that we hold onto,

it's indestructible.

Right?

It won't let us go.

Their conditions

in the wilderness

were very rough.

I will conceive

that point.

Okay?

But they're acting

as if the God

who was with them

in Egypt

was not with them now.

I was wondering,

like,

how could they not

trust God

after God

just delivered them?

The amazing thing

about Exodus 16

is that even though

the Israelites

were grumbling

and complaining

and longing

to go back

to slavery in Egypt,

God still gets down

and ties their shoes.

He knew their physical needs

and so He meets

their physical needs.

God knew

that their fragile faith

needed a daily

divine reminder

of their redemptive story.

They needed to be reminded

every single day

of God's faithfulness

towards them.

And so He sends bread

from heaven

every single day.

You see,

the bread wasn't only

to feed them,

it was to remind them

of who they were

and where they were headed.

I love this.

This is often overlooked.

God doesn't just give them

enough bread

to survive the wilderness.

He gives them

plenty.

He gives them

an abundance of bread.

In verse 18,

it says,

each of them gathered

as much as He could eat.

Their stomachs

were full

people,

which was a rare experience,

a rare thing

in the world

back then and today.

They were feasting

in the wilderness.

This was like

an all-you-can-eat buffet.

God was not

stingy.

And God also,

He wasn't just giving them

like this buffet

of tasteless,

stale bread,

like the bare minimum.

He was giving them bread

that tasted like honey,

which was the delicacy

of the day.

He was giving them

bread that tasted

like heaven.

And you see

what God is doing here.

He's giving them

this honey bread feast

in order to give them

a taste,

a foretaste

of what they will

one day experience,

what they will enjoy.

He's giving them

a foretaste

of the place

where they were headed,

and that is to a place

flowing with milk

and honey.

He's giving them

a taste of paradise

in the wilderness.

Listen,

to survive

the wilderness,

you have to remember

where you are headed,

that you are headed

towards the promised land.

You have to remember

that life,

this life,

isn't the promised land.

You have to remember

that your dream job

isn't the promised land,

that your dream vacation

isn't the promised land,

that successful children

isn't the promised land,

that retirement

isn't the promised land.

Right?

We have to remember

that this world

is not the promised land.

This world,

my friends,

is a spiritual wilderness

where we get to taste

heaven now,

but it's not yet

been fully consummated.

It is a painful wilderness,

yet it is a purposeful wilderness.

And thankfully,

God knows exactly

what He is doing

in this wilderness.

And so we can trust Him

throughout it.

He has placed us

in this wilderness

to sanctify our souls,

to free us from fear,

to instill in us

a dependence on Him,

and to prepare our hearts

for the real promised land.

There's a story

about Michelangelo.

I don't know how true it is,

but it's a fun story.

He was asked about

the difficulties

that he faced

while sculpting

his masterpiece,

David.

And supposedly,

Michelangelo replied,

you just chip away

the stone

that doesn't look like David.

I love this

because that's what

the wilderness is for us.

In the wilderness,

our fears,

our struggles,

our idolatries,

our deepest sins

are being chipped away

by God

to reveal

this beautiful

masterpiece of faith.

In the wilderness,

God is chipping away

the parts of you

that don't look like Jesus.

Do you trust God

in the wilderness?

Truly.

The Israelites

did not trust God

in the wilderness,

which is why

they begin to hoard

the manna

that God sends

from heaven.

They start to hoard it.

Instead of gathering

enough food

for one day

as God commanded,

they gathered food

for multiple days

because their physical fear

trumped their spiritual faith.

The Israelites

suffered from what I like

to call spiritual amnesia.

They were quick

to forget

their redemption story.

They were quick

to forget

the Passover lamb

who was sacrificed

as their substitute

and whose blood

sheltered them

from God's judgment.

They were quick

to forget

the baptismal waters

of the Red Sea

that cleansed them.

They were quick

to forget

who they were

as children of God.

We are no different.

My favorite

Adam Sandler

and Drew Barrymore

movie is

50 First Dates.

These two have been

in a slew

of movies together.

50 First Dates

is my favorite.

In the movie,

Lucy,

played by Drew Barrymore,

she gets in a bad

car crash

and she has,

she causes

short-term memory loss

and as a result,

every day

that she wakes up,

she thinks

is the same day

that she got

in the car crash.

Right?

And her family

and friends,

they weren't really

helping the situation.

They come up

with this elaborate plan

to make her think

that every day

was, in fact,

the same day

as her car crashed

because the few times

that they told her

what happened,

she freaked out

and she had a panic attack

and they didn't want

to deal with that.

She was unhappy

so they wanted

to kind of keep her

in that little bubble,

that little lie

that they had created

for her.

And their plan

was working great.

Right?

It was working fine

for month after month

until this guy

named Henry Roth

comes around.

He's played by Adam Sandler

and he falls in love

with Lucy.

And Henry wasn't content

with a lie

that was being fed

to Lucy

over and over

and over again.

And so Henry,

he makes Lucy

this video.

He calls it

Good Morning Lucy.

Right?

It's her Good Morning Lucy video.

And every morning

she was to watch

this video

to set her memory free.

In the video,

she saw pictures

of her car crash.

She saw what happened

to her.

And then she saw

like cat scans

of her damaged brain.

And then she saw clips

of her friends

and they were telling her

like it's going to be okay

and we're going to walk

with you through this.

And then the video ends

with like the most

profound thing.

She watches

her own wedding ceremony.

And then she looks

down at her hand.

She sees a ring.

And she's reminded,

I am married.

And then she walks

out of her room

and she goes up the stairs

and she meets

her husband

for the first time

every single day.

My friends,

you have to meet

Jesus every single day

because we are so forgetful.

You serve a God

who is not content

with the lies

that the world

is feeding you.

And so he graciously

inspired a book.

It's like our

good morning

Christian book

that we are to read

every day

to set our memories

free.

We are to be reminded

of who we are,

who God is,

and where we're headed.

He's given us

a book

that it tells us.

All right?

You need to be reminded

of your redemption

story every day.

You need to be reminded

of Genesis 3,

the event that caused

your spiritual amnesia

that explains

all of the

bad in the world.

All right?

You need to remember

that you were married

to a Savior

who despite

your many flaws

chose to set

his love on you.

That's the greatest

news you'll ever hear.

The third thing

the wilderness shows us

is that it strengthens

our faithfulness.

In order to survive

the wilderness,

we have to remember

our redemption story.

Right?

And to help us remember,

God has graciously

given us

a taste of heaven

now

in the midst

of the wilderness.

I'm going to give you

three things

that God has given

to us

to get through

the wilderness.

First,

he gives us

a Christian family.

Did you notice

how the Israelites

gathered manna

every morning?

They were to gather

bread as a family,

as a community.

They didn't go out

into the wilderness

alone.

They went together

to find manna

and to feast

on this bread.

They didn't go

as individuals.

They went together

as a family.

And we are

to do the same.

You and I,

we cannot survive

the wilderness alone.

You can try

all you want,

but it's not going

to work.

Okay?

You can't survive

this wilderness alone.

You need this family

that God has graciously

given to us.

And my friends,

this family

is a taste

of heaven now.

This morning,

we're going to celebrate

the Lord's Supper.

In this meal,

it's a family meal.

You don't take it

as an individual.

We take it corporately.

We take it together

because it is

a family meal.

We take it together

in faith.

The second thing

that God gives us

is the Sabbath.

Since God made us,

he knows what is

best for us.

He knows

better than we do.

He knows that we

have a limited bandwidth.

He knows that we

can't go forever.

He knows that we

need to slow down

and take a deep breath

and rest.

He knows that we

need a day each week

to fix our eyes

on him.

In Exodus 16,

God set aside

the Sabbath.

It wasn't to be

a day of labor.

It was to be

a day of rest

for the Israelites,

and it is the same

for us.

The Sabbath,

it may not make

economic sense,

but it makes

divine sense,

and that's where

true wisdom lies.

Wisdom is believing

and trusting that

God knows what's

best for you.

Listen,

we are wired

for worship,

worship,

and God gave us

a day each week

for worship

to remember

who God is,

to remember

who we are,

and to remember

where we're headed.

The Sabbath

is a gift from God.

It is a taste

of heaven.

The rest that we

experience

each Sabbath,

each Sunday,

it is a taste

of heaven

in the wilderness.

the third thing

God gives us

is bread,

and he gives us

an abundance

of bread.

He gives us

the one bread

that actually

satisfies our hunger.

Get this,

the word manna,

it literally means

what is it,

or what is this?

That's what they

named the bread

because they had

no idea what it was

or where it came from,

but they still feasted

on this bread

in faith

to survive

the wilderness.

Similarly,

after Jesus

calmed the storm

in Mark 14,

do you remember

what the disciples

said to one another?

Who is this

that even the winds

and the seas

obey him?

In Luke 5,

after Jesus heals

the paralyzed man,

do you remember

what the Pharisees

said to one another?

Who is this?

Who can forgive sins

but God alone?

You see,

the Pharisees

and the disciples,

they didn't fully

understand

who Jesus was.

The answer

to this question,

who is this?

It comes from

a very unlikely person

in Matthew 27.

After Jesus

was crucified

and the curtain

and the temple

was torn in two

and the barrier

that separated God

from his people

was removed,

the earth shook

and the centurion

who nailed Jesus

to the cross

looks over

at his friends

and says,

truly,

this was

the Son of God.

It clicked for him.

Right?

Listen,

do you see the connection

between the manna

that came down

from heaven

in Exodus 16

and Jesus Christ?

We read from John 6

earlier.

They're the same thing.

Right?

Jesus says

in John 6,

35,

I am the bread

of life.

Whoever comes

to me

shall not hunger.

You see,

the manna

that came down

from heaven

and satisfied

the fearful

and forgetful

Israelites

is the same bread

that comes down

from heaven

to feed

fearful

and forgetful

us.

And we don't

just get a taste

of it.

Right?

We get the

fullest

and final

revelation

of God himself

and Jesus Christ.

Listen,

when one of my kids

is hungry,

they don't look

at their report cards

to satisfy

their hunger.

They don't look

at their bank accounts

or their Instagram feeds.

They come to me

and they say,

hey,

dad,

I'm hungry.

Can you give me

something to eat?

They go to the right

source to satisfy

their hunger.

Likewise,

we are God's children

and we have to go

to the right source

to satisfy

our soul's

deepest hunger

because it's the only

place where we'll

actually find

satisfaction.

We are to be

a people

who,

like in

John 6,

say,

give us this bread

always.

We're to be

a people

who pray,

give us this

day

our daily bread.

In other words,

give me this

day,

Jesus.

And tomorrow,

give me

Jesus.

And the next

day,

give me

Jesus.

And next week,

give me

Jesus.

Next month,

give me

Jesus.

Next year,

give me

Jesus.

And give me

Jesus every

single day

until it's

my last

day.

Because on

that day,

I won't

just get

a taste.

We're

going to

feast.

Brothers and

sisters,

this year,

I pray that

you remember

this life-changing

truth.

Even in the

wilderness,

God is with

you.

He is for

you.

He loves

you.

He knows

what he is

doing.

And his

mercies are

new every

single morning.

Amen.

And let me

pray for

us.

Heavenly

Father,

we thank

you for

this paradigm

that we see

of our own

salvation in

Exodus 16.

That as

Christians,

we have

crossed over

to the

justification

side of

the sea,

the

sanctification

side,

and we

are walking

and wandering.

Sometimes it

feels through

a wilderness

that is harsh

and difficult

and painful.

But we

know that

you are

with us,

that you're

for us,

and that

you will

not abandon

us.

We pray,

Lord,

that you

would press

these truths

into our

heart,

that we

would remember

who we

are,

that we

are children

of God,

and that

this truth

will change

the way

that we

view ourselves,

view others,

and view

this entire

creation that

you have

given to

us.

We pray

that you

would change

us,

form us,

chip away

the parts

of us that

don't look

like Jesus.

And it's

through his

name we

pray.

Amen.