January 8, 2017 - Manna in the Wilderness

TONY & MICHELLE PAWLAK

MEMORY VERSE

Give us this day our daily bread,

Matthew 6:11

Look around you.  Do you have food? Clothing? Shelter? Everything you need?  I'll bet that you usually take time to look at what you don't have instead of what you do, don't you?  What you don't have tends to make us forget what we do have.  It's easy to become ungrateful when we forget the things we've been given.

So far, God has brought the Israelites out of terrible slavery in Egypt, gave them the riches of Egypt, parted the Red Sea for them to cross, and had promised them a great land.  You would think that they would have learned by now to trust Him for all their needs.

Unfortunately, after a little while in the wilderness, the

people started to get hungry.  They began to grumble to Moses saying things like, "Did you bring us out into this wilderness to die?" or,  "It would have been better if we died in Egypt.  At least there we had plenty of food!"

Moses decided to take the people's complaints to God because they were really complaining against God, not Moses.  God 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.” (Exodus 16:4-5)

That evening God appeared to the people in the pillar of

cloud.  God then said to Moses,  “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God." (Exodus 16:12)

That evening, a huge flock of quail, a tasty bird, came to the Israelite's camp.  The Israelites caught what they could and had a good dinner that night.  The next morning, when the dew had dried, the Israelites found a strange bread on the ground.  They began to ask each other, "What is it?"  The Hebrew word for What is it? is Manna.  So, the people

began calling the bread Manna.  The Bible says that it liked like white coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.  

Just as God had said,  there was manna on the ground for six days and everyone was supposed to gather

what they would need only for that day except on day six when they were to gather twice as much.  Some people were afraid that God would break His promise so they gathered as much as they could and saved it for the next day.  When they came to get some the following day they found that it had spoiled and was full of maggots.

God said there would be no manna on day seven because it

was the Sabbath, the day of rest and God did not want people gathering and cooking that day.  Some people, however, didn't listen or were too lazy.  They only gathered what they needed for one day on day six.  When they went out on the Sabbath to get more manna, there wasn't any. So they had to go hungry because they did not listen to God. 

So, remember, the next time you start to focus on what God has not given you, take a minute to think about and thank God for everything He HAS given you.  After all, we couldn't make it without Him.