Exodus 16

Alright, you may be seated.

Good to see you.

Good morning.

How are y'all?

Good Thanksgiving.

Everybody?

Good?

Good?

Great.

Okay, well, we're back in Exodus again.

Exodus 16.

We've been traveling, journeying through this book for the past, I don't know, 10 weeks or so.

We're about halfway through the book, and so we continue, we pick up the story this morning.

So our Thanksgiving we celebrated on Wednesday at my house with my sister, her two little girls, her husband, my mom, and my granny.

Now, Granny is 93 years old.

She doesn't leave the assisted living place in Decatur that often at this point.

She's confined to a wheelchair.

She has dementia.

And so granny going somewhere is a big deal.

It takes a lot of planning.

I mean, even for my mom to take her out, it's very difficult.

My mom will have to call down there and they have to get her ready and she gets all ready, and then my mom has to kind of strategically plan how to get her to the car and where are they going and if where they're going is okay for granny to be able to get around in a wheelchair.

There's lots of planning that it requires.

And so even on Tuesday, uh my mom and I we got together and we started talking about Granny coming to my house because it takes a lot of thought and a lot of time and care.

So my mom and I we talk it through.

Okay, how many hours do we think she can stay at our house before she's going to be exhausted?

Okay, so we kind of determine that.

And then at what point and who's gonna pick her up, and so we determine that.

And what wheelchair is gonna go, and once she gets here, how are we gonna get her in the house?

Because my house isn't built for handicap accessibility, and so how are we gonna get her in the house?

Okay, where can she sit?

Where do you think she would like to sit?

Well, all the girls will probably be playing uh over here, and maybe if she sits here, then she can see the girls playing, but then she can also see kind of what's going on in the kitchen, and so there's all this time and all this planning for her to come, right?

Some of you did this just for like uh just like your you know a 30-year-old sister of yours or her daughter, and just that high maintenance, and we can counsel about that later because you're feeling the weight of it even this morning, you're exhausted.

Um, hopefully they've already left your house and gone home.

All right, so here's what we're doing.

When we do this for an aging parent, or even you do it for a high maintenance relative, or you do it for a young child.

Here's what we're doing.

You're anticipating the care they will need, right?

You're going before them.

Does anybody remember our term from last week?

Did anybody hold on to the term?

Anticipatory providence.

Anticipatory providence.

Can we say it together?

Anticipatory providence.

Just put it in your pocket, just put that one in your pocket, and this week you're around some elitist intellectual and they think they're so smart, and you can just say, hey, can we take a few minutes and talk about anticipatory providence?

I'd like to discuss uh the ramifications of it coming out of the book of Exodus, particularly chapter 15 and 16.

I mean, you've got something here, is what I'll tell you.

You really have something here.

So uh this is about anticipating the care they will need.

So when the moment comes and it's easy or it's difficult, when the moment comes, the providential care is there.

That's what my mom and I were doing, right?

On Tuesday.

On Tuesday, we were going before Granny into Wednesday to consider what was going to happen.

And it wasn't going to make it easy, mind you, right?

I mean, there there were five little girls of a volume level that is not natural inside of a house that you know that that's bothersome to granny.

Granny's used to her routine, her food, how things work, that volume level, and all of that's shaken up.

So it's not easy, but at least the providential care has gone in front of her.

So now let's take this idea, anticipatory providence, let's take this idea into Hebrews 16.

We learned about it last week in Hebrews 15.

I mean, not Hebrews, the Hebrew people in Exodus, Exodus 15 and 16.

So the Hebrew people, they've been rescued out of slavery.

They were in slavery for 400 years.

400 years making bricks in Egypt, oppressed.

And God raises up this unlikely guy, Moses, and we have that whole story coming through these people being rescued.

Now remember, they have they have no Bible.

They have no churches, they have they have very limited teachings.

They're just listening and they're going because God is moving through them and rescuing them.

God is beginning something, and so they set out toward the Red Sea.

Remember, they went the way of the wilderness, and so they headed down that way, and that's the more complicated way.

And then the backs are against the Red Sea, and they think this is it, and then they get the great victory through the Red Sea.

This is where we begin to see a little bit of the reality of life.

We get the great victory, and they get through the sea.

Do you remember what they did on the other side?

They just erupted in celebration.

So you get the great victory, the great celebration, and then Exodus 15.

Last week, we saw just despair, right?

They get they get a few days into the desert and they're out of water, and they get to Mara, and the water is bitter.

And so it's you're don't we know that, right?

Like this is reality.

The victory is reality, the celebration is reality, and then you're just like a few days off from like the best time of your life, and all of a sudden you're dying of thirst.

And what we saw last week is gonna be the same thing we see this week, is that there's anticipatory providence for us, and there was for them.

And God gave them water.

That's what we saw.

God had gone before these people to provide the water in the difficulty.

We we said that the remedy had been there the entire time.

The remedy has always been waiting for us because of anticipatory providence.

So these people leave Elam, that's where they had been after the water, and they head into the wilderness of sin, and it's not a pleasant trip, it's another brutal trip in the desert.

And if just a couple days in, a few days in, the grumbling begins because the food starts to run out.

So first they run out of water, now they're running out of food.

And the grumbling's about God, right?

But they're aiming it at Moses and Aaron because you know you can always just aim your grumbling to the leader, right?

Just aim it to the leader.

Thank you.

Just aim it this way, I'll take it whenever you get upset.

Just aim, you can be angry at God, but just aim it at whoever's in charge.

And that's what they do.

Because they don't have any food, and they start to say in verse 3, they say, hey, you shouldn't have how many times have they said this at this point, right?

Like, you Moses, you shouldn't have taken us out of Egypt.

Like, at least there we had food.

Yeah, we were oppressed and we were enslaved, and it was horrible, and it was awful.

We cannot forget how horrible it was.

But at least we had food.

And so then we get Exodus 16, verse 4.

Exodus 16:4

Then the Lord said to Moses.

Okay, we can just stop there in those few words.

Because this is the storyline.

I mean, this is the storyline over and over again.

Like after the hunger, the doubting, the grumbling, the difficulty.

Not before it, mind you, right?

Right?

I mean, it's true in your storyline too.

Not before it.

Like after all that junk starts, then the Lord says, like, I'm like, why didn't you say it before?

That would have been really helpful.

Just say it before, speak before, rescue before, but he doesn't.

He doesn't do it that way.

And we have this feeling, and it's the feeling we see these Hebrew Hebrew people.

Uh we see it over and over again with them, we see it over and over again with our lives, and it's this feeling like we just aren't sure if we're gonna make it out of this.

Like if this will ever work out, if this will ever end, if I will ever get any better, then the Lord said.

I'm into Christian spiritual walk 20 years, right at about 20 years, 22 years, somewhere around there.

And his timing just continues to baffle me.

It just does.

I just still don't understand it.

I don't think I will.

I mean, I look at my life, I don't understand his timing most of the time, I don't understand his timing.

Uh most of the time when I look at your life, I don't understand it.

I'll go to lunch with you, I'll talk to you, and I'm going, yeah, I don't understand that timing.

Just like maybe you'll understand it in time, maybe you'll understand it, maybe we won't ever understand it.

But here's the one thing I I am learning is that his timing always feels slow and definitely feels imperfect to me, but it's always perfect.

Because here's what it does is it forces me into some honesty and desperation just enough to break me.

And this is his point.

And this is anticipatory providence.

The brokenness is as much anticipatory providence for us as any gift of relief.

The waiting and the brokenness is a gift as much as the relief.

Because only, we said this last week, because only the broken cry out for redemption.

And redemption is what you and I really need.

And so the gift of waiting, the gift of desperation, the gift of brokenness, it is a it is a gift, it is providence to you.

Because then you'll cry out.

You won't cry out before.

I mean, this story is never.

I was in my uh I was in my new matte finished Tesla, and I was driving from my Sea Island cottage up to my Highland house, and I got a phone call from my stockbroker, and we had hit it big on some currency exchange, and everything was so wonderful, and um, and I just cried out to the Lord for rescue and redemption, right?

I mean, it's never the storyline.

And if you're on that drive in that car from those houses, I want to be with you, share, hello, share a little this way.

I want to be with you.

But the storyline would be like I'm in my new Matt finished Tesla from my Sea Island cottage to my Highlands house, and I get a phone call from my stockbroker, and we hit it big on a currency exchange, and I realized I'm still broken.

I'm still hungry.

I still need an outside savior.

Verses four and five.

Then the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I'm 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.

Right?

He's gonna test them.

We talked about this.

He'll test you because he wants to teach you, and he wants to teach you because he loves you.

Whether they will walk in my law or not.

On the sixth day when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.

So God's showing us two things here.

We get two points, two point sermon, two things.

Number one, we can trust them.

Pretty basic point.

You've heard that before.

Number two, often we do not trust them.

We see it in this story, it's real simple.

Number one, we can trust them, and number two, often we do not trust them.

And you think, okay, good news, bad news, but here's the deal.

The deal is that the good news and then the bad news, it leads us to something, and what it leads us to is it leads us to realize this story has a deeper level than what we think the story is about, because it is about the bread, and yet it is about something much more than the bread.

So, first, we can trust him.

He provides for them.

These complaining, grumbling, miserable, faithless people that have over and over and over again received providence and care right when they are desperate and needy, and yet again, same situation, different setting.

They are again complaining and grumbling.

And what is God doing?

He's not going, you know what?

I did it like four times for you, and I'm out.

I'm done.

Like you kind of the reservoir's tapped on grace for you.

No, no, no.

He he they are complaining and grumbling, they don't deserve it, and he goes, I will rain down bread.

It sounds familiar.

We offer apathy and greed and lust and self-righteousness and hard-heartedness and selfishness and pride and pity.

And then he says to you, Oh, you frail, little, beautiful sinner.

I love you.

And you are my beloved.

Not because of what you do, but because of what I've done for you.

And so we pick the story back up in verse six.

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, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord.

For what are we that you grumble against us?

And Moses said, When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat, and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling, that you grumble against him, what are we?

Your grumbling is not against us, but against the Lord.

Now we can take a little tangent here about displacement.

Right?

Like you're angry against the Lord and you take it out on your spouse.

Like you're angry about the Lord's timing in your life and you take it out on your children.

You're angry about your job, you're angry about your children, and you take it out on your spouse, you're angry about your spouse, you take it out on your children, right?

Right?

There's something here about displacement.

They're angry toward the Lord, but they take it out on Moses and Aaron.

And Moses, they're saying, hey, hey, none of this.

If you're angry at the Lord, you take it to the Lord.

Don't grumble against us.

And if I could just be pastoral for a moment, I think the book of Psalms reveals to us that he can handle it.

Like here's a whole book we get in the middle of the Bible of just people upset with God.

He can handle it.

At least if you're grumbling with him, you're in relationship with him.

He's a big God.

He can handle your grumbling.

So evening comes, and sure enough, quail covers the ground, and then in the morning after the dew, there's there's something it's fine as frost, is what it says.

It's fine as frost.

It's like a flake-like thing, and they've never seen this.

What is it?

Is what they say.

What is this?

So they gather it, they get as much as they need for that day, they have none left over, they just have enough for the day.

And God's showing them something, right?

He's showing them, live in the day.

Life is rough, but live in the day, live in this moment.

There's enough for today.

Learn from the past, plan for the future.

But but my addict friends who've been to all this counseling for addictions, here's what they've learned, and they've helped me learn is that living and living in those places, the past and the future, living there, not learning from them, but living in those places is incredibly dangerous because those places can be filled with shame and regret over what has been done, or can be filled with anxiety and fear of what might or might not ever happen.

But then the question comes like, okay, but what about right now?

You go, well, I've got this like flake-like bread.

It's feeding me right now.

I guess I'm okay right now.

If you're okay right now, maybe you'll be okay right now, like the next moment.

Well, at least you have this job, this friend, this family, this home, this day, this sunshine, this acceptance, this forgiveness.

Jumping back in at verse 19, and Moses said to them, Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.

They did not listen to Moses, of course they didn't.

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

Like that word, stank, good biblical word.

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.

So this manna, there's so much that they feel compelled to get as much as they can, right?

It would be like you walk out the door, and while you've been in here, and we haven't, mind you, because so don't like hit the exits.

Uh we have covered the parking lot with Chick-fil-A sandwiches.

They're all individually wrapped.

And you know what you would do, same thing as me.

Once we tell you they're safe, you know, like you can, like they're they're healthy, safe sandwiches.

You would try to grab as many as you can, right?

Like the natural, the natural thing to do is get as much as I can while I can get it.

So many of you know I've taken maybe seven trips to Guatemala over the course of maybe the last 10 years or so.

And so we go to this lake up in the mountains, and a lot of times we'll take suitcases full of shoes.

And we'll do this big shoe giveaway about halfway through the week at one of the little local churches.

And so one evening, one week, we were doing this at this town called Santa Clara.

It's this little church, this little village.

We have enough shoes for everyone, okay?

We've made sure that we know this.

And so we have different sizes and different suitcases, and we're getting set up inside the church, and doors are shut, doors are locked, and people are showing up outside.

More and more people, there's a little church, probably the size of this.

This church, the whole building is just the size of this room, and outside there's a little outside courtyard, and that's walled off and locked also, so doors are locked.

More and more people are showing up in the street and they're gathering, and they're just they're starting to push against the doors.

And so now the locks no longer are sufficient, and so now we're still setting up.

We're not ready yet.

We're still setting up to give away the shoes, and so now we have to have guys hold the doors while the crowd's pushing against them.

And in the courtyard, a couple of that guys could kind of see through the fence and see what was going on out there.

And a couple times uh one of our Spanish speakers has to get up, stand up and just say, Hey, we have enough for you.

There's enough for you.

You don't have to rush, you don't have to push.

There's enough for you.

We promise there is enough for you.

But slowly what happened is a few of the little kids they start to squiggle their way toward the front, like up to the door, and they start getting smooshed, crushed in between like the weight of the crowd and the doors, and so we just have to let the doors go, and this just rush.

It's just like just a rush of water, just people flood in, and we sort of like guard the stage that doesn't turn them into hysteria, and finally they all sit down.

And it was just this feeling, a natural feeling for them.

I'd probably be in the same situation.

This feeling like surely this abundance.

No way this lasts.

No way they really have enough for all of us.

I I think I really need to take something into my own hands.

I think I really need to work a little here.

So we get the sixth day, and they're they're told to gather twice as much as they need so that on the seventh day they could rest, they could know rest, they could know what it was like to not work for something.

And remember, God's showing them something because some of the people on that seventh day, sure enough, they go out to collect because they're thinking, you know what, just get some more.

Right?

Like just get some, it's it's it's gonna be out of there.

I know he said not to collect, and we have enough for today, but we might as well just try to get some more.

And this is the dilemma we live in, sort of like this seventh-day dilemma.

Will we rest or we go back out to collect some more?

Let me be clear on that.

That could be a metaphorical question.

Let me be clear.

Will we revert to self-justification and the inevitable condemnation it brings?

Because it will.

If you try to justify your life and your identity by your work, you will bring condemnation on yourself.

You will feel that.

Or will you trust the work God has already done for you and Jesus?

That's what this story is about.

It's a picture foreshadowing for us.

Will you use religiosity as merit on a day-to-day basis and be exhausted and condemned by it?

Or will you live spiritually in gratitude?

Will it be your work or will it be his work?

Is the work of Jesus really enough?

His substitutionary death for your sin and your shame and the imputation, those are big words, but they're good words.

Put those in your pocket too when you meet that elitist intellectual this week.

You got anticipatory providence, substitutionary death, and imputation of righteousness.

That Jesus, in Jesus, you are given all the righteousness you ever need and transferred to him is all of your mess.

All of your doubt and lust and greed and self-righteousness and self-centeredness, all of that's put upon him.

And that's why the cross is a big deal.

And it just goes against all human reason to stop fighting to justify yourself with your own merit.

I mean, all of human reason says, go collect some more on the seventh day.

God says to that urge, why don't you just rest from the endless toil?

Why don't you stop all the self-justification, all the pretending, the performing?

Why don't you quit all that ridiculous self-righteousness reporting that you're doing?

Don't spend your life pushing against those doors and rushing into a place when there's always been enough for you.

So point number one, we can trust him.

Number one.

But number two, what we've seen in this story with these Hebrews out on the seventh day, often we don't trust him.

It's our nature to be provident.

And in general, this is good.

Like you're in Proverbs for us to be provident for ourselves, to think about the future, to save.

I mean, this is wisdom, but this isn't about that.

This is about your identity.

This is about your redemption.

This is about relationship with God.

This is about anticipatory providence to us.

So we see that it's about the bread, but it's more than the bread because the bread shows us our brokenness.

Because where will we find our strength when we realize that we were actually never that strong to start with?

Where are you going to go?

When you feel ashamed and you have that urge to try to redeem yourself with something, and it could be your work, it could be another person, it could be just another Instagram fix for the moment, and not for entertainment and not for productivity, not, but out of a shame drive, or out of a fear drive, or out of an anxiety drive, when that moment comes, can you trust that his work for you to be beloved and loved and accepted and forgiven and whole, even if you don't feel like it?

Could you trust that?

Could you live in that rest, that Sabbath?

So when we see that we can trust him, point number one, and then often we don't trust him, point number two, right?

Anybody with me on that point?

I'm good at that.

Then we see that this story has another layer because the thing in the story is the manna, like the bread falling from heaven.

That's kind of the big point here.

That's the thing in the story, right?

But the manna is also about something else.

And Jesus says in John 6, 31 and 35, our fathers, he's talking about these people, these Hebrew people.

Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness.

As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Jesus then said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father 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.

They said to him, Sir, give us this bread also.

And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

You're going, man, he's just thinking about Exodus 15 and 16.

Exodus 15, you're not going to thirst.

Exodus 16, you're not going to hunger.

And it's just a great picture for us.

That's what Exodus is.

So what we're seeing, picture after picture, and the manna is another picture of what God is like and what we are like.

And Jesus pulls from this picture and he says, I am that bread.

I am what you need.

I am your Sabbath.

I'm your seventh day.

So, brothers and sisters, may you know God's great anticipatory providence for you.

May you see the moments your heart and your hands go out on that seventh day to collect manna.

And may you rest again in Christ Jesus, the Redeemer, your Sabbath rest.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that we can trust you.

And in the same moment, we confess that we have some hard, stubborn, self-justifying hearts.

We still love to trust ourselves.

And we like to do it with our secular ways and our religious ways.

And yet we know that those paths continue to exhaust us and condemn us.

Because we need you.

We need your work.

We need to trust this story that you provide enough for this day, enough for us, and that Jesus is enough, and that your work for us is enough for our salvation, our redemption, our identities, while we lack faith, would you help us?

Would you help us to trust you in greater ways?

Thank you that you love us in all of our sin and mess.

Thank you that you are love incarnate.

And as we head into this season of Advent, a season of a celebration of your coming, and that we remember that this first Sunday in Advent is a Sunday remembering hope, would you give us hope in our mess because you came into this world to live and to die.

That while we're still sinners, you died for us.

Such love is this.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.