Do you often find yourself being discontent? Our heavy use of social media does not help this. Instagram has just been named as the worst social media for the mental health of young people: it is heavily associated with high levels of anxiety and depression. How does God provide for his people amidst their discontentment? What does God have to tell you when you see others around you getting a work promotion, starting a family, earning more qualifications, driving bigger cars, and moving into even bigger houses? In today’s passage, God teaches his people, the Israelites, a lesson on who he is, and why that matters for their contentment.
(A) A People’s Grumbling Against The LORD (Exo 16:1-3, 7b-8)
Before we jump into today’s passage, remember that this is the second account of their complaints. In the first account, the people of God were without water till God made water sweet and brought them to an oasis-resort with abundant water. They are coming out of a place of great refreshing, a place where God provided abundantly for them in Elim. They set out of this refreshing place, entered the Wilderness of Sin, and were on their way to Sinai. We also get a time marker: 15th Day of the 2nd month. Remember that they ate the Passover on the 14th Day of the 1st Month, so it has been about a month since those events. Essentially, they haven’t left Egypt for a long time.
But as it was in the first account, so it is in this account. Israel quickly begins to grumble about the lack of food! They go about this by some sort of historical revisionism - in remembering their bitter lives in Egypt as slaves, they actually exaggerate their quality of living. They somehow recall that they had meat pots and ate bread to the full, forgetting their groaning to the LORD (Exo 2:23-25). This is not the first time that the Israelites have longed for Egypt (see Exo 14:12). Instead of trusting in God's leading, they longed for Egypt, pined for it, and preferred it falsely.
One month can seem like a short time, but sometimes when we look back into our lives, we also suffer from very short term amnesia where we forget things in the past very quickly. How often do we forget God’s goodness to us and grumble about our circumstances? Like the Israelites, we tend to forget what life under the slavery of sin is like. Further, we are even tempted to think that a life in sin is more fulfilling than life with God. Have you ever just felt tired being a “Christian”? Do you tend to suffer from this amnesia today? How can you stop your grumbling heart?
Beyond that, they even wished that they were dead - they wished they had never been saved. The phrase “by the hand of the LORD” that we read here was previously used to describe God’s power and strength in saving his people (Exo 6:7, 7:4-5, 13:3). However, we have the Israelites using this phrase to wish that God had killed them too in the plagues in Egypt. The Israelites did not understand that they had a God who acts on their behalf on the basis of his promise to them, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exo 2:23-25). They did not truly know God as the covenant-keeping God. We recall that we spoke last week that the Israelites were no different from the Egyptians as they are just as sinful in their forgetfulness and distrust. They rebelled against God in last week’s study, and again in this week’s study.
But are we any different from them? Do you know what you have in God today as a Christian? Are you one who easily forgets what God promises in times of trouble? It is easy for us in testing times to think that God is against us, that God is punishing us for something we did. When things turn out to be not what we had hoped for, it is easy to think that the hand of the LORD is trying to “kill us”. But the Bible promises that God’s condemnation is not for us if we have placed our faith in Christ, thereby being joined to Christ (Rom 8:1). How does that comfort you that we have a God who acts based on his covenantal promises? This is an amazing comfort, that when God hears our groaning and grumbling through the different phases of our lives, he does not look to how much good we have done - he looks at himself.
Moses and Aaron’s response is illuminating. They try to tell the Israelites that their grumbling is not against them but against the LORD: They repeatedly tell the people of God that the LORD has heard their grumbling (4 times this is mentioned in verses 7,8,9,12), and this grumbling is against him. This reminds us that every horizontal grumbling against another individual bears with it a vertical component that grumbles against God. It also tell us that Moses and Aaron are self-aware of their status - that they are not God. They kept asking “What are we”, showing that even as they are leaders of God’s people, they are nothing compared to who God is. They know that God is the one ultimately leading his people, God is the one who has brought his people out of Egypt. The sovereignty of God not diminished by His commissioning of leaders for his people.
How can we be more like Moses and Aaron today? If you are a leader in your church today, are you pointing others towards God? Are you saying “what am I? I am no one. I want to be as little as possible that others don’t see me and what I am about, but see God and what he is about”? There is much humility in Moses and Aaron, and we can learn from that. What if we live our entire lives like this? Not just in church, but in our relationships at home and work. Not showing on Instagram how good my life must be, but how great my God is! Friends, this passage tells us that our grumbling is ultimately against God himself. When we grumble about our personal circumstances, our spiritual leaders, and others in the church, it tells us that there is a problem with our relationship with God. How can we see more of God’s goodness today instead of being grumblers? Are there things in your life where you need to fight to be grateful for instead of grumbling about?
(B) The LORD’s Response to Grumbling: Come Near (Exo 16:4-7a, 9-12)
The LORD responds amazingly to his people’s grumbling. He rains down bread from heaven, and commands the people to go out daily to gather a day’s portion. On the 6th day, they are to gather twice as much. The reason he does this was to test whether they will follow his law. Remember last week, when we spoke about how God turned the water sweet and gave them a statute and a rule: to obey his all his commandments, and he will be their healer. There he tested them at Marah to teach them to depend on him and obey his word, promising to be their healer. Here, God again tests his people to see if they will obey him. Note that the test here is not one of hoping for failure or shame. Culturally, we like to think of “test” as a way of being prideful or shaming another, but the testing here is about examination - it is about God teaching his people about himself (Exo 20:20).
Deut 8:3 tells us that “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD”. What does that mean? Why is the Bible talking about bread and food in the same way as God’s word and commands? Jesus himself quotes these words when tempted by Satan (Luke 4) The Bible speaks of these matters, for God’s word and God’s trustworthiness is more essential than our most pressing needs, and more reliable than our greatest temptations. As much as bread and water were essential things for the physical, God’s Word is all the more so for our every need! It also tells us that life is beyond sustaining ourselves physically, and about keeping God’s word that we may rightly follow him. The overriding lesson that God is teaching His people isn’t that bread and water aren’t important, but that God’s Word is even more so! Knowing God rightly and knowing what He has to say is all the more important.
What sustains you today? Is it your job? Your determination to succeed, your smartness, etc. It has to be the LORD who sustains us, and he calls us to obey his word, to feed on his word. Are you doing so? It is so difficult to delight more in God’s word than in other things!
Moses and Aaron proceed to claim two things that Israel shall know and see in Exo 16:6-7a:
1) It was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt (evening; meat)
2) See the glory of the LORD (morning; bread)
These two things tie in with Exo 16:12, which reads, “then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.” Remember the whole point of the plagues: Egyptians (7:5) and Israelites (6:7, 10:2) alike are meant to know the LORD, the one and only true God. You and I thought that the Israelites in being saved out of Egypt must have been those who are aware of this, but this is clearly not the case. Despite seeing God act for them in their redemption through the plagues, passing through the red sea, etc., they still needed to learn that the LORD is their God. Yahweh is their God, and God teaches them that here. And God does this by performing the most amazing thing.
If you are a Christian today, do you recognise God to be who he truly is? Do you know that he is your God? The God who saved you to worship him. He is not just a God who saved you so that you can go on sinning and worshipping yourself. You and I are not God, and we are prone to forget this. Even after God has saved us in Christ, we also are prone like the Israelites to forget that God is God, and we are called to obey him. This also tells us that what God gives to us in providing for our needs are not so that we can turn away from him, but so that we would turn to him. So often, when we receive good gifts from God, we go on with our lives and live in the way we want to live. But, here, the Bible tells us that the people were meant to know who saved them, see God’s glory, and know their God.
Perhaps the most amazing part of today’s passage is when the LORD calls them to “come near”. What kind of a God calls grumblers to draw near to Himself? Still, God draws them close to himself and shows them his glory: a manifestation of his presence. The LORD wants his people to see him, as he truly is, glorious, that they may know him to be their God, one who is not powerless, but one who is mighty and glorious. The most amazing thing wasn’t that bread rained down in the morning, and that meat was available in the evening. The amazing thing was that God revealed Himself to His people, and they saw His glory. Here, we are reminded that the solution to our grumbling isn’t to will ourselves to grumble less. It isn’t even finding the sustenance for the lack we were grumbling about. The solution to our grumbling is seeing the glory of God.
This is an amazing picture of a God who is so glorious and yet tender towards his people. He draws them close and shows them his glory that they may know him and worship him as God. He is the God who calls the unlovely/unworthy irritating grumblers to himself. If you are a grumbler today, this is what God does, he calls you to recognise him as your God. Respond to Him!
(C)The Bread that The LORD Gives: Jesus Christ (Exo 16:13-15, John 6:31-35)
Moses concludes our passage by referring to the manna as "the bread that the LORD has given you to eat."
In John 6, Jesus identifies himself as the true bread from heaven, and he says that he is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. The bread that the Israelites ate finds its fulfilment in Christ, whom God sends to give life to a grumbling people. God sends us Christ to fulfil our deepest needs, not just physical needs but spiritual needs. God provides Christ, the true bread of heaven to point us to himself, to worship him, to obey him, to love him. And in Christ’s provision of Himself, we also see God’s glory.
God’s providence in our lives is never meant to drag us away from him to other things, but toward him. If you struggle with discontentment today, will you turn towards a God who calls sinners/grumblers toward himself? Will you treasure Christ above all things? Will you say, yes, I am satisfied in knowing him, loving him, and my life is not about more physical stuff, but more Christ, that I may love God more fully.