Nourished and Satisfied

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Today's scripture reading is from the book of Exodus, chapter 16, verses 2-5 and 27-35, as printed in your liturgy.

Exodus 16:2–5

A reading from the book of Exodus.

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 have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.

Then the Lord said to Moses,

I will rain down bread from heaven for you.

The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day.

In this way, I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.

On the sixth day, they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.

Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it,

but they found none.

Then the Lord said to Moses,

How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions?

Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath.

That is why on the sixth day, he gives you bread for two days.

Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day.

No one is to go out.

So the people rested on the seventh day.

The people of Israel called the bread manna.

It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.

Moses said,

This is what the Lord has commanded.

Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come,

so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt.

So Moses said to Aaron,

Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it.

Then place it before the Lord to be kept for the generations to come.

As the Lord commanded Moses,

Aaron put the manna with the tablets of the covenant law so that it might be preserved.

The Israelites ate manna forty years until they came to a land that was settled.

They ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.

The grass withers and the flowers fall.

The word of our God stands forever.

Good morning to you all.

We are in this new sermon series on the Ten Commandments.

We've been spending the last several weeks just looking at the prologue of the Ten Commandments,

which we find in Exodus chapter 20, verse 1.

Exodus 20:1

And the prologue of the Ten Commandments goes like this.

It says,

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

And I think a lot of people in the Bay Area, you know, the word salvation can kind of feel vague and abstract.

But when we get to this prologue of the Ten Commandments,

we find a pretty adequate definition of what salvation is when we hear these words,

I brought you out of slavery.

I've set you free.

I've liberated you.

Salvation is liberation.

And that's what this book of Exodus is all about.

Salvation is liberation from our bondage.

And if you remember over these past few weeks,

we talked in Exodus 12 about the blood of the Passover lamb

and that we were people who had been bought with a price, the price of blood.

We talked about in Exodus 14, the parting of the Red Sea,

that when there was no way, God made a way,

that God made a way out of slavery.

He made a way through death and into a new kind of life.

And so when the New Testament looks back on these events,

these foundational liberating events of the Old Testament,

it sees these as signposts.

At Exodus 12, the Passover lamb is a signpost pointing us to Jesus,

who had shed his blood to deliver us from our sins.

It's pointing us, Exodus 14, the parting of the Red Sea,

is pointing us to the resurrection of Jesus,

where God made a way where there was no way.

He made a way out of slavery and out of death into new life.

And so that brings us now to Exodus 16.

Here we are.

We've been liberated from Egypt.

We're on the other side of the Red Sea.

We've walked through slavery.

We've come through death.

We're out here with new life on the other side.

Now what?

What now?

What is this journey with God, this liberator God,

what's it going to be like?

And here's the thing that a lot of people either don't know or easily forget.

It's that God's salvation, God's liberation,

is not about being set free to go and do whatever we want to do.

And that, I think, is where the postmodern worldview

has seeped into the church quite a bit

because postmodern philosophy says that freedom is the absence of constraints.

Freedom is the ability to do what I want to do without anybody telling me what to do.

But what you're going to hear over and over in the sermon series on the Ten Commandments

is that that is a different kind of slavery.

That definition of freedom is actually a slavery to self.

It's a slavery to your culture.

It's a slavery to the subjectivity of your present historic moment.

And what this is telling us is that real freedom, real liberation,

is about no longer serving harsh taskmasters and oppressive tyrants in Egypt,

but rather to have a new and better king.

Real liberation is not about being set free so that you can live according to your own agenda

and set your own rules and do whatever you want.

No, it's about learning how to be a free human being under your sovereign Lord as your king.

That's what Exodus is about.

And so the question is, what can we expect from this God who's newly liberated us?

What does it mean to belong to him?

What does it mean to now be on a journey of liberation with him?

And that's what we're going to talk about today.

We're going to talk about the God who trains us,

the God who provides for us, and the God who refreshes us.

Okay, the God who trains us, the God who provides for us,

and the God who refreshes us.

I want to start by talking about the way in which God trains us.

This God who liberates us from slavery is the same God who leads his people

into what verse 2 calls, quote unquote, the desert.

Why would God do that?

Why would a good and powerful God lead us into the desert of all places?

Why would he take his people straight from their liberation into a howling wasteland?

Why does he not take them straight into the promised land that's flowing with milk and honey?

I mean, he's surely powerful enough to do that.

Why doesn't he just take his people on the quickest, easiest, most efficient, comfortable route

to the promised land?

To use New Testament terms, why doesn't God just take us straight from justification to glorification?

Why does God think it's a good idea to take us through this wilderness we call sanctification?

I mean, I thought he liberated us so we could be happy.

I thought he liberated us and set us free so that we could have all we need and all we want.

I thought life with God was going to be this graph that goes up and to the right,

onward and upward, forever and ever, better and better and better.

But strangely and inexplicably, here is this God who brings us in our liberation out into desolation wilderness.

Here we are as the people of God in the Mojave Desert.

This God-forsaken Nowheresville.

Why are we here?

Last week we saw in Exodus 14 that the Lord intentionally put his people in an uncomfortable position in the desert.

They were hemmed in there.

They had a mountain on their left, a mountain on their right, Red Sea in front of them, Egyptian army behind them.

And they were sitting ducks.

Why did God put them in that position?

And we were told because he wanted everyone to know that he was the Lord.

He wanted everyone to see that he had the power and the glory that belongs only to him.

And there's a very similar pattern, a very similar dynamic here.

What is the Lord doing?

Well, if you read the story, Exodus 15, God takes his people through the wilderness where they have no water,

not one day, not two days, but for three days.

And then here he takes them in Exodus 16.

They've got no food.

Exodus 17, they have no water.

Again, what is he doing?

He's training his people.

He's training his people.

He's first of all showing them their need and their vulnerability and the weakness of their hearts.

And then secondly, he's showing them that he can be trusted to meet their most basic and deepest needs.

Look at verse two.

It says that in the desert, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.

The Israelites said to them, if only we died by the Lord's hand in Egypt.

There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.

But you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.

Any of you ever get hangry?

Your parents, your kids ever get hangry?

Here's our redeemed brothers and sisters, the church of the Old Testament.

These are the mothers and the fathers of the faith.

But they're spiritual newborns.

They're spiritual infants.

And here they are.

They're one month, you know, out of slavery.

They're 30 days into this new life, this new journey of liberation.

And how's it going for them?

Well, these people who've been redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb,

they're terrified by the harsh cruelties of the desert.

They're feeling serious pain.

They're feeling serious hunger pains in their stomachs.

And if you've been a Christian for like five minutes,

surely you've felt this.

Right?

You know what it means to find yourself in an awful place.

God has brought you for some reason to this hard and difficult place.

This dangerous and uncomfortable and troubling place.

And your experience of life is causing you to wonder whether you are indeed one of the Lord's people.

It's causing you to wonder whether or not you got your guidance wrong.

It's causing you to wonder how the evil one has come in to spoil the Lord's perfect plans for you.

And our hardships breed all kind of questions.

Why me?

Why is this taking so long?

Why is this so brutal?

How could I have slipped so far from the will of God?

Where did I go wrong?

You ever wonder what you're doing out here in the wilderness with all this pain?

The quick and easy spiritual answer is that all of our troubles are down to the evil one, Satan,

who is ever watchful to find some vulnerability in our defenses.

Another answer is that knowingly or unknowingly,

we've strayed out of the will of God or somehow gotten our guidance wrong.

And in some circumstances, these can be sufficient explanations,

but oftentimes they don't tell the whole story.

Because the reality is the Israelites are here in this wilderness

because the Lord who loves them has led them there.

A pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night,

he's led them right here where he wants them.

And so far in this journey, every move in whatever direction,

every stop and every start, every turn of the pathway was by the will of God.

Whether or not they were at a desert oasis and they were feeling good

or they're out here and they're in dire straits feeling thirsty and hungry,

it's because the Lord has led them here.

And why would he do that?

Because God trains us by leading us into situations which call for our trust.

He puts us in situations that call for the endurance and obedience

that prove that our trust is real.

So that as we exercise that trust in him,

in the face of new challenges,

our trust begins to develop.

Our trust begins to mature

until we come to see that everything that happens to us

is under his divine supervision

and everything that happens to us is full of God's purposes for our good.

Our Lord trains his people by putting us in places

where we have this perpetual choice

between either complaining against God

or living out our trust and obedience to him.

And let's go back now to verse 3

because they say,

If only we died by the Lord's hand in Egypt.

There we sat around pots of meat

and ate all the food we wanted,

but you brought us out into this desert

to starve this entire assembly to death.

They say,

We are so desperate for food to eat

that we wish the Lord had struck us down

on the night of Passover.

We wish he'd have just drowned us in the Red Sea.

Why would he send the plagues?

Why would he display his power?

Why would he go through all this trouble

only to bring us out here

so that we would die in the desert anyway?

This is absurd.

I wish he'd have left us alone in our slavery.

I wish he'd have never bothered

to liberate us in the first place.

And why do they say these things in their hearts?

Because they say,

Well, we miss the all-you-can-eat buffets of Egypt.

I mean, the fish was good.

The cucumbers, the melons, the bread.

It was so good.

And notice that they're kind of speaking

in the language of addiction,

the language that addicts use

when they kind of have a selective memory of the past,

this mistaken nostalgia

for what was actually killing them.

They're living in denial.

They're only remembering the tiny pleasures,

and they're blocking out the massive pain

and misery of being slaves.

And this sort of delusional, pathological preoccupation

that God's people can sometimes have

of how great life was

when we were oppressed without God.

You know about Stockholm Syndrome,

where you kind of come to love

and admire your abusers and your slave masters?

That's Stockholm Syndrome of the soul.

That's what's going on right here.

And if you turn in Deuteronomy chapter eight,

which is kind of necessary to understand this story,

Deuteronomy chapter eight, verse two says this.

It says, remember how the Lord your God

led you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years

in order to what?

In order to humble you and to test you

so that you might know what was in your heart.

Why does God want us to see what's in our hearts?

What does he want us to see that's there in our hearts?

We're saying to ourselves,

it would have been better to have died

as slaves with full stomachs

than to be here as God's free people with discomfort.

Forget about God.

Forget about his liberation.

Forget about his freedom.

We want to feel good.

See, though we are legally out of slavery,

in our hearts, spiritually, internally,

we can still be slaves.

Slaves to our stomachs.

Slaves to our situation.

Slaves to our senses.

Slaves to all the thought systems

and the patterns of imagination in Egypt

about the good life.

And as was said last week,

though God has gotten his people out of Egypt,

he still needs to get Egypt out of his people.

What would the right thing have been to do

in this moment of pain and panic

when the people were hungry?

It would have been to drop down on their knees

and cry out to this God

who'd already saved them

and say,

God, you've given us so many reasons

to trust in your goodness and your grace.

You've shown us time and again

how powerful you are,

that you're our protector,

that you're our provider,

and we need your help.

Have mercy on us.

But they don't do that.

They don't cry out to God.

They cry out against God.

And there's a grumbling,

complaining spirit in their hearts

against the Lord

that he needs to simply train out of them.

And I wonder about us.

What about you?

How many of us started

strong in our journey with God?

But like these spiritual newborns,

these spiritual infants,

we begin facing the first challenges

of our liberation.

We begin to face those first challenges

of being free yet hungry and thirsty.

And we realize that here we are out here

in this wilderness

with a severe shortage of supplies

and we start freaking out

and we start complaining against God.

You see,

if that's in your heart,

God leads us out

into these wilderness places

so that he can train us

to see that that's what's there.

And so that he can train the slavery

out of the hearts

of his people.

So this is the God who trains us.

But I want us to also look at verse four

because this is the God also

who not only trains us,

who brings us into the desert,

but he's also the God

who provides for us.

Look at verse four.

It says,

Then the Lord said to Moses,

I will rain down bread

from heaven for you.

Now if I were God,

this passage would say,

I will rain down fire from heaven

on you ungrateful people

who complain against me constantly

even though I liberated you

from your slavery.

That's what you deserve.

Fire from heaven.

Now maybe if I'm having a good day,

I would say,

actually,

I'm going to rain down on you

on some random occasions

a scant supply

of low quality,

crusty, moldy bread.

But thank God I'm not God.

Right?

And thank God you're not God

because I don't know

what you would say.

But this manna does not come down

on random occasions.

It comes every day.

And this manna does not come

in scant amounts.

It comes in abundant,

generous supply,

two quarts per person per day,

which is plenty.

It's enough to satisfy.

And this is not low quality bread,

but in verse 31,

it says that this manna

tasted like wafers made with honey.

This is Trader Joe's quality bread.

Some of you are like British

and from the Anglosphere.

This is like McVitie's biscuits.

Okay?

The people would read this,

these wafers made with honey,

and they'd say,

this is the most delicious food

you could possibly imagine.

And the sweetness

and the substance of this manna,

it's given not just daily,

but it's given in a double supply,

one time a week.

And it's this gift

that just keeps coming

day by day,

week by week,

not just for one year,

but for 40 years.

And what does that tell us

about God?

What does it mean

that a jar of manna

was miraculously preserved

in the holy of holies

of God's tabernacle,

right beside the Ten Commandments

as a sign

for generations to come

of who God is?

What does it say

about the person of God

and the work of God?

What says that we need

to be continually

reminding ourselves

and reminding each other

of how good

and how gracious

and how generous

this provider actually is.

He continually supplies

an abundant,

delicious,

nutritious,

daily food source

for thousands

upon thousands

of people.

Friends,

do you know

how good he is?

Do you know

how gracious he is?

Do you know

how generous

this God is?

And here's the thing,

if he's able

to meet his people's

short-term

and long-term needs

with material bread,

what does that mean?

It means that he's also

able to meet

all of our

non-material needs.

You see,

if he rains down

material bread

from heaven

that is not necessarily

what the people expect

but it's exactly

what they really need,

then how much more

can he meet

our spiritual needs,

our existential needs,

our eternal needs?

How much more

can he give us

of the abundant

spiritual riches

of heaven?

I want us to remember

that Jesus'

ministry

began

when he was hungry

and tempted

in the desert.

That's the

official starting point

of his ministry.

He was baptized

and he goes

into the wilderness

and he's hungry

and he's tempted

in the Gospel

of Matthew chapter 4

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

and Jesus

in that place,

he quotes that passage

from Deuteronomy 8

that I read earlier.

I'll read a little bit

more of it here.

It says,

remember how the Lord

your God led you

all the way

in the wilderness

these 40 years

to humble you

and to test you

in order to know

what was in your heart,

whether or not

you would keep

his commands.

He humbled you,

causing you to hunger

and then feeding you

with manna,

which neither you

nor your ancestors

had known,

in order to teach you

this,

and this is what

Jesus quotes,

in order to teach you

that man does not

live on bread alone,

but on every word

that comes

from the mouth

of the Lord.

Jesus is saying

there,

Moses is saying

there that

our needs

are way deeper

than our material

need for bread.

In fact,

in the Sermon on the Mount,

Jesus asks the question,

he says,

is not life

more than food?

And then immediately

he says,

seek first the kingdom

of God.

Life is about

so much more

than food.

And what he's saying

is that we don't live

on material bread

alone,

that's the lesson

of the manna,

but that spiritually

we live on

every word

that comes

from the mouth

of our king,

every word

about his kingdom.

And you remember

in the Gospel

of John,

John chapter 6,

John 6 · chapter mention

Jesus goes out,

he's with at least

5,000 men

plus women

and children,

they're hungry,

they're in this

forsaken place,

and what does he do?

He multiplies bread.

And then he says,

he says,

it was not Moses

who gave you bread

from heaven,

but my father

who gives you

the true bread

from heaven.

For the bread

of God

is the bread

that comes down

from heaven

and gives life

to the world.

The deeper meaning

of the manna

is that it points

to our spiritual need

for God's word,

which God has so

abundantly provided

for us,

not only in the scriptures,

but in his word

made flesh,

his son,

Jesus.

And Jesus goes on

in the Gospel

of John chapter 6,

John 6 · chapter mention

he says,

we heard it earlier,

I am the living bread

that came down

from heaven.

Whoever eats

of this bread

will live forever.

Whoever eats

the bread

of my flesh,

he says,

has eternal life

and I will raise

them up

on the last day.

So how do we

get this manna?

How do we get

this living bread

from heaven

that God has provided

for us

in Jesus Christ?

It's interesting

to consider

if God's

so powerful,

why didn't he

just put the manna

straight into

their stomachs?

Right?

They're like,

they're walking around,

they're like,

we're in the wilderness,

we're hungry,

and then boom,

oh,

I feel better.

He's already

doing a miracle,

why didn't he just

go ahead

and put it

straight in?

Well,

the answer is

that they

were passive,

right,

at Passover

and all they

had to do

was just put

the blood

of the lamb

over the doorpost

and they just

had to sit there

and basically

watch God

do everything.

Same thing

at the Red Sea,

they were just

completely passive.

God did everything,

all they had to do

was just walk,

like from one

end to the other.

And even here,

God is actively

providing the manna

while everybody

just sits around

passively watching

him do it.

But once the manna

has been provided,

God's people

are called

to be active,

right?

They've got to

actively go out

and they've got to

put their faith

in God

by going out

to receive

his provision.

And I think

that's important

because if you're

exploring Christianity,

it's so important

to take the time

to understand

who Jesus is,

to understand

what he did,

to understand

why he's

the living bread

that God gave

to come down

from heaven.

But there comes

a point

where you've

got to

actively put

your faith

in God

by going out

to receive

what he's

provided.

You've got to

put your trust

that if you

take Jesus in,

he will be

the bread of heaven

that can fill you,

that he can

satisfy you,

he can give you

life.

That's how you

become a Christian.

But if you've

become a Christian,

you've got to

realize that just

because the Lord

is providing

your daily bread,

you can still

die in the desert

if you don't

go out and

get it.

And this is

what it says

in verse 4,

Then the Lord

said to Moses,

I'll rain down

bread from heaven

for you.

The people

are to go out

each day

and to gather

enough for that

day,

and in this way

I will test

them to see

whether or not

they will follow

my instructions.

Literally,

I'm going to see

whether or not

they will walk

by my Torah,

they'll walk

by my law.

This will show

the degree to

which they put

their faith in me

and their trust

in me.

Will the provider's

people trust

the provider's

word about

the provider's

gift so much

that they put

their trust

into action

and go and

get it?

When you

become a Christian,

one of the

things you need

to learn right

away is that

your schedule

is no longer

your schedule,

but that God

has a different

plan for your

daily schedule,

and what the

plan is,

is that you

need to get

up and go

do something

every morning.

Just like these

people went and

got the manna.

You've got to

actively trust

him by getting

up and going

out and gathering

the sweetness

and the substance

that he provides.

You're to express

your faith

by expending

effort

to go out

and get for

yourself this

delicious,

nutritious bread

from heaven.

Jesus teaches

us in the

Sermon on the

Mount.

This is the

way you should

pray.

Father,

give me today

my daily bread.

But then we

don't just sit

there passively,

we put our

trust in God's

provision,

and we go

and we get it.

if you read

this whole story,

some people

lacked confidence

in God

that he would

provide the next

day,

and so they

tried to keep

some of the

manna more

than they needed.

They tried to

keep it overnight,

and it just

completely spoiled.

And the reason

is that God's

trying to train

us to live

by faith

and trusting

him every day

afresh.

It doesn't

matter what you

did yesterday,

what about today?

You've got to

eat bread

today.

God is

training us

and challenging

us to

rearrange our

daily lives

and our daily

schedules around

his gracious

provision so we

don't die out

here in the

wilderness.

And this is my

concern.

I'm concerned

that some of us

who profess

faith in Christ

may be

experiencing

unnecessary

self-inflicted

pain and

misery and

stress.

that some

of us are

experiencing

self-inflicted

exhaustion and

malnutrition and

emaciation because

we're not going out

by faith and

gathering our

daily spiritual

bread and that

heavenly substance

that God wants to

feed us in his

word.

And if that's

you, we love you

so much.

We're doing a

class today called

How to Read the

New Testament.

And we encourage

you, if you can't

come today, come

next week.

Can't come next

week?

Come the following

week.

We want to

teach you how

to go get your

bread so you can

feed yourself and

not die in the

wilderness.

Okay.

He's the Lord who

trains us.

He's the God who

provides for us.

And I want to say a

last word here on the

God who refreshes

us.

He's the God who

refreshes us.

Look at verse 5.

It says that on the

sixth day they are to

go and prepare what

they bring in and

that is to be twice

as much as they

gather on the other

days.

And then down in

verse 29 it says,

bear in mind that the

Lord has given you

the Sabbath and that

is why on the sixth

day he gives you

bread for two days.

Everyone is to stay

where they are on the

seventh day.

No one is to go out

so the people rested

on the Sabbath day.

What does it say to

us about this God

that one of the main

things he wants for

his people who've

been wearied and

exhausted by 80 plus

years of slavery.

Never had a day off,

seven days a week.

They're just in the

daily grind generation

to generation to

generation.

What does it say that

this God is providing

for their rest?

He's providing for his

people's physical

refreshment and their

spiritual renewal.

It tells us that

though Pharaoh was an

oppressive tyrant,

this God, this Lord is a

liberating father who

wants his children to

experience refreshment

by stopping every seven

days to just worship

him and enjoy him,

to rest in his grace.

But as you can see,

this is sometimes hard for

God's people to trust

because it says in verse

27,

nevertheless,

some of the people went

out on the seventh day to

gather the manna,

but they found none.

God's asking his freed

people to do for their

refreshment something

that feels counterintuitive

to them.

He's not only wanting them

to gather the manna every

morning and not take more

than they need because it's

going to spoil overnight,

but he's also every six day

wanting to ask them to

discipline themselves to

trust in him that what he

provides will be enough.

And that they can have a

Sabbath and that it's not

going to spoil overnight as

it might on all the others.

And this is just a really

strange thing.

It's unfamiliar to them.

Why would God ask them to do

something that's

counterintuitive to them?

Because God is training them

to do things that are not

normal to their cultural

sensibilities.

He's testing to see if his

people will obey not only

those commands that make

perfect sense to them,

but also especially the ones

that do not.

If I give you a double

amount once a week,

will you just take me at my

word that it will be enough

for you?

And just rest and worship me.

And see, clearly the Sabbath

didn't make sense to people.

Verse 27,

Nevertheless, some of the

people went out on the

seventh day.

They gathered the manna,

but they found none.

And then the Lord said to

Moses, how long will you

people refuse to keep my

commands and my instructions?

Some people just couldn't

resist trying to get ahead.

They couldn't resist trying

to advantage themselves.

But of course they go and

they find no manna.

And in trying to find the

manna, they also don't stop

to rest and worship.

So they get no refreshment.

God is not going to bless

his people when they try to

do things their way

rather than God's way.

And the reason I'm pointing

this out is because we're

going to jump into the Ten

Commandments next week.

And the question is,

if there's an attitude or

there's an action that seems

intuitively right to us,

it seems culturally reasonable,

it seems like this is a no

brainer, this is pleasurable,

this is not so bad to us,

but God happens to disagree

with us about that thing

that seems so normal and

natural, what do we do?

And the Ten Commandments is

going to address all kind of

like practical things like

money and sex.

And what we're going to see

is that pagan societies,

they've basically always been

stingy with their money and

promiscuous with their bodies.

Every pagan society says,

this is the way to be free.

This is the way to be refreshed.

This is the way to be human.

And so, pagan societies,

you see that, you know,

they would basically give

nobody their money and

practically everybody their

body.

But then God's people come

along and we can see

historically and biblically

like they give practically

nobody their body and

almost everybody their money.

It's the exact opposite of

what our culture says and

what our intuition says.

And what happens as a result?

Well, the same thing that

happened when they kept the

Sabbath holy.

When they did it God's way,

they got refreshed.

And when they did it their way,

they got exhausted.

When they did it God's way,

they were blessed.

And when they did it their way,

they were cursed.

When they stopped to worship

their liberating God,

when they stopped to worship

the God who was providing for them,

they were refreshed.

They were blessed.

And the question for us as we

continue on this journey is,

will God's people pattern our

lives on God's counterintuitive,

countercultural ways?

It says,

so the people rested on the

seventh day.

And as they rested,

they remembered,

oh yeah,

this is the God who graciously

led us out of slavery.

Oh yeah.

This is the God who generously

rained down bread from heaven.

Oh yeah.

This is the God who knows what

it means to be human.

This is the God that can show

us how to be free.

Oh yeah.

This is the God that can give

us life.

He can give us refreshment.

He can give us a blessing that

we cannot get for ourselves.

That's what happened when they

stopped and they worshiped and

they rested and they fixed their

heart on God.

In the name of the Father,

Son,

and Holy Spirit.

Amen.