“1They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. 2And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”” Exodus 16
The Israelites just got out of Egypt, a place where they were literal slaves, and here they are already complaining. They are actually saying that they prefer to live in Egypt because they are starving. Their complaining is something we do often and a conversation for another time, but let’s look at how God provides.
“4Then 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.” Exodus 16 God is going to provide a miracle in order to give them the food that they need. He will rain down bread from heaven. But He has rules about this. “5When 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. 16This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’” 17And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. 18But 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. 19And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” 20But 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. 21Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.”
They must go out and gather every day. And they must gather enough for each day, not too much and not too little. (This is with the exception of the 6th day in order to keep the Sabbath v22-26.) We can see that everyone had enough. We also see that those who did not listen to Moses and tried to hold onto it for tomorrow learned the hard way. Their manna grew worms and stunk. It couldn’t last longer than a day. And it melted in the sun, the heat was too much for it to withstand.
Again in Deuteronomy 8:3 the Bible talks about manna, “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Man does not live by bread alone. This can be a confusing concept. Of course, you don’t live on only bread, sometimes maybe you want something to go with the bread. But this is not what the Bible is talking about. The Bible isn’t telling you to add some peanut butter and jelly, it says we live by every word from the mouth of the Lord. We understand this better in the book of John.
John 6:48-51, Jesus is speaking here, “48I am the bread of life. 49Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”“
Jesus is the bread of life. He is the bread that came down from Heaven. God provides for us in another way, in a more fulfilling way. In the Old Testament, manna came from Heaven to provide for the Israelites but in the New Testament, Jesus is sent from Heaven to provide for us all. Jesus is the bread that allows us to never die but have eternal life. In the same way that the Israelites needed to seek out manna every day, we need to see out Jesus each day. We cannot expect yesterday to hold us over today. We must go to Him and receive our daily bread. The great blessing is that every morning when we go out to seek Him, He will be there, waiting for us.
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