"O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endures for ever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, who He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy; and gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south. They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses." (Psalm 107:1-6)
That is a description of a portion of the experience of the children of Israel in their journey from Egypt to Canaan, and it is written for the instruction and encouragement of God's redeemed people in all lands to the end of time. Read the whole story, in the 16th chapter of Exodus.
One of the first lessons for us to learn from it is that God gives according to our need, and not according to our actions. The people murmured in the wilderness, charging Moses and Aaron with having led them out to kill them, and thus denying God's leadership; yet God supplied them with food just as readily as though they had honored Him.
"He has not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities." (Psalm 103:10)
The next lesson that we should learn is the uselessness and the sinfulness of complaining when in trouble. Many hundred years later several thousand of the descendants of the same people were out in a desert place without any food. Jesus said to Philip: "Whence shall we by bread, that these may eat? And this He said to prove him: for He himself knew what He would do." (John 6:5-6)
Even so it was when the people were in the desert without bread in the days of Moses. The same Lord was with them, and, "He himself knew what He would do." (John 6:6)
God knew that there was no food in the wilderness, yet He had led them there; and this is the reason why: "You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, and to prove you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments, or no. And He humbled you, and suffered you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you knew not, neither did your fathers know; that He might make you know that man does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord does man live." (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)
The most obvious reason for the giving of the manna, was to satisfy the hunger of the people. But we are told that God first "suffered them to hunger." (Deuteronomy 8:3)
He knew what He would do; He designed all the time to feed them out of His abundant storehouse; and His suffering them to hunger was for the purpose of preparing them for His gift, and causing them to appreciate it. So we may know that whenever God suffers us to get into distress, that is an evidence that He has something for us.
Why God Gives Food
But this is not all. God suffered the people to hunger, and then fed them with manna, in order that they might know that man does not live by bread only. That is, God wishes us to know that our daily food is to teach us of His salvation. This is plainly set forth in: "They believed not in God, trusted not in His salvation: Though He had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels' food." (Psalm 78:22-25)
Even though they had bread from heaven, they did not trust in God's salvation! That bread which came down from heaven was Christ's own self,--His body,--for Jesus said: "The bread of God is He which comes down from heaven, and gives life unto the world. ... I am the bread of life." (John 6:33,35)
The fathers "did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ." (1 Corinthians 10:3-4)
They drank from Christ, and they ate from Him; their life day by day was sustained by Him,--in fact, He was their life,--yet they trusted not in His salvation! Was it not strange?
Do you not see the real reason why God gives us food for the nourishment of our bodies? It is that we may know and remember our dependence upon Him. We eat in order to live; but it is "in Him that we live, and move, and have all our being." (Acts 17:28)
God could, if He wished, keep us alive without food; but in that case we could not so readily recognize the fact that we are not self-existent nor self-sustained. Our daily bread--our life--not only comes from heaven, from the hand of God, but it brings to us the very life of God,--the life by which we are saved. The power of God, which saves every one that believes, (Romans 1:16) is seen "in the things that are made." (Romans 1:20)
This truth is made very apparent in the miracle recorded in the 6th chapter of John, together with the talk that followed.
There were five thousand hungry men, besides women and children, and but five loaves of bread; yet as Jesus took the bread in His hands, and broke it, it multiplied, so that all were filled, and there was more bread at the close of the meal than at the beginning.
There the people could see with their own eyes that the bread that they ate came directly from Christ; and this is the truth which this miracle, as well as that of the manna, is designed to teach us concerning our daily bread.
Our daily bread contains the life of the Lord, and yet it is but representative of that life; for Christ came that we might have life, and that we "might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10)
The life that is contained in all the food and drink and air and sunlight on this earth is but a small fraction of the infinite life of the Great Creator and Father of all, which is at the service of all who will accept it. These visible media of His life are designed to teach us our dependence on Him, and to introduce us to His inexhaustible storehouse of power.
A Sabbath Lesson
So giving the children of Israel manna, God was proving them whether they would walk in His law or not. It was not merely to see if they would keep the Sabbath day. They could not very well help keeping that, outwardly, at least, when no manna fell on the seventh day, and twice the usual amount fell on the sixth day. For forty years God made it plain which day of the week was the seventh day, and how sacredly He regarded it; and the same day, with the same sacredness, is the Sabbath of the Lord today; and if we do not keep it, we read the story of the manna in vain.
But, as already stated, it was not for the purpose of seeing if the Israelites would nominally keep the Sabbath, that the manna was given.
• It was to see if they would trust God implicitly; for that is true Sabbath-keeping.
• It was to see if they would accept His life as their own, and recognize and acknowledge day by day that they lived only by Him, and so allow Him to control their every act and thought.
That is the lesson He wishes us to learn from the record, as well as from the food which He daily gives us.
The Sabbath itself is given to make us know God is the Creator and Sanctifier. You would laugh at the idea of anybody saying in the wilderness when the manna was being given every week day, that he didn't see how he could keep the Sabbath, and that he should certainly lose his living if he did. The God who commanded the observance of the Sabbath was the God who was feeding them from His own table, and, so to speak, making it easier for them to keep the Sabbath than not to.
Well, the same conditions obtain today. The same commandment is in force, and the same God lives to supply us with our daily bread. Do not think that the account of the giving of the manna was recorded merely for our amusement. It was that we might learn the lesson of trust in God. Dare you do it? or do you think that He cannot or will not do for you what He did for ancient Israel? Was the record written in vain, so far as you are concerned?
A Lesson of Unselfishness
The Apostle Paul refers to the gathering of the manna, to enforce the lesson of unselfish giving. When he was pleading for a liberal collection for the poor saints, he wrote: "I mean not that other men be eased, and you be burdened: But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance may also be a supply for your want: that there may be equality: As it is written, He that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack." (2 Corinthians 8:13-15, compare Exodus 16:16-18)
Some in reading the words: "He that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack," have supposed that in some reckless manner the manna shrunk if one had gathered more than a certain quantity, and increased if he had not gathered enough; but the fact is that those who had more than they needed for the day divided with those who had an insufficient quantity. There was the same condition that existed after Pentecost, when all the believers had all things common, and none laid up for the future.
The lesson of the manna is not only that God gives bread, but that He gives it to us as we need it. We can trust Him to provide for our wants, even as little children trust their parents.
The Lord feeds us from His own table, and naught of that which we have belongs to us. Therefore we are to consider that all of His children have the same right to the Lord's table that we have. If we find more "under our hand" than we need for the time, it is not to be hoarded up to spoil, but passed on to be used while it is fresh.
So as we live by faith in the "God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all," (Ephesians 4:6, RV) we will give day by day our daily bread, supplying all our need according to His riches and glory, and His kingdom will come, and His will be done in earth as it is in heaven.--Present Truth, June 19, 1902--Exodus 16:1-15.
E.J. Waggoner