Amen. The Psalms often, people of God, reminding us of how God worked in the generations and in the wilderness and before and after. And now we come to that wilderness, Exodus chapter 16. We'll read from verse 13 to verse 36, but we're going to look especially at verses 16 to 31. If you're looking at the outline in the bulletin, we're just going to make the first two points. We're just going to make it to verse 31 this morning. For some context, we'll read again verses 13 to 15, but again we're focused on 16 to 31. Page 74 in the Bible is under our seats. Exodus 16 verse 13, let us hear the word of God. In the evening, quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning, dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When 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. This 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. And the people of Israel did so. They gathered some more, some less. But 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. And Moses said to them, let no one leave any of it over till the morning. But 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. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat. But when the sun grew hot, it melted. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, this is what the Lord has commanded. Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake, and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning. So they laid it aside till the morning as Moses commanded them. and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none. On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See, the Lord has given you the Sabbath. Therefore, on the sixth day He gives you bread for two days. Remain each one of you in his place. Let no one go out of his place on the seventh day." So the people rested on the seventh day. Now the house of Israel called its name Manna. It was like coriander seeds. white and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. Moses said, this is what the Lord has commanded. Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generation so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt. And Moses said to Aaron, take a jar and put an omer of manna in it and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. The people of Israel ate the manna forty years till they came to a habitable land. They ate manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan." And Omer is the tenth part of Anipha. So far the reading of the Holy Word of God. congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is a nation of people, probably about two million people, going to do for food in the wilderness? We think about water. You have some hope that there's water over the next sand dune. There are wells in the desert. There are springs in the desert. And there may have been more springs in the Sinai Desert 3,000 years ago than there are now. There are oases. There is an elam here and there. But what are you going to do for food for two million people? What are you going to eat? They can't plant a field and harvest it. There's no fertile soil. I think, well, it's hunting season. The only clean edible animal that's kind of around the Sinai Desert is what the Nubian ibex but that's there's not very many of those and they're not going to go very far if you can find one and hunt it. They could start slaughtering their flocks and their herds but that's only a short-term solution to a long-term problem because Now you're losing your dairy product and you're also losing your livelihood. From a human point of view, marching to the promised land immediately, and even the couple weeks it'll take to get there, I mean, how are we even going to get there? But from a human point of view, that's the only option. What are you going to do? How are you going to feed two million people? in the wilderness. And brothers and sisters, they don't just need food for a couple of weeks. Food for many hundreds of thousands of people for 40 years. Just think for a second about how much food that is. We are talking about a huge need. Where will it come from? Well, brothers and sisters, only the miraculous provision of God. That is the only way that a nation like this can wander around in the wilderness and survive. It is only by the miraculous provision of God. And so we're going to take this manna, which taught lessons to the people of Israel, which still teaches us today, And we're even going to especially focus on how it taught them about work and about Sabbath rest. And so we come this morning with this theme, learn daily dependence upon God's heavenly gifts. And we're going to dig in a little bit to the details of what the manna actually is. Because brothers and sisters, it helps us to understand the lessons around the manna. when we understand what the manna is. Our first point, brothers and sisters, is this, the miraculous provision of the heavenly bread. God will, using the language from back in verse four, rain bread down from heaven. Now, there are some questions that we can't answer. How exactly did this fall? Should we think of actual food falling like rain? Probably not, but the text doesn't tell us. Where exactly did it fall? Even that's a little bit unclear. The preposition around in verse 13, that it was all around the camp. I mean, that can mean that it was like all around the outside of the camp and they had to go into the wilderness, or I mean, that preposition could imply that it's kind of throughout the camp. Probably, probably it was around the outside. So Moses uses language of they have to go to the field of the wilderness in verse 25 to gather the manna. Okay, so there's some questions that are uncertain or that we can only guess at, but there are a number of details we have about the manna and specifically verse 31 we're gonna look at in some detail because it tells us three very distinct things about the manna. It was, verse 31, like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. The first detail, brothers and sisters, tells us about its shape. It was like coriander seed. Not in color, because coriander seed is kind of reddish and brown. No, the color is white. That's the second detail. It was like coriander seed, and in what? In shape. What is coriander seed? It's a little, like three to five millimeter, mostly round seed. It's about the size of a of a pencil eraser that's been ground down a little bit that you can see on the top of your pencil. It's a coriander seed. It's not a tiny seed, but it's not a huge seed. One might say it's like a fairly big roundish grain. And that's exactly what it was. It was grain. It was grain that you had to grind up and then boil or bake. Numbers chapter 11 gives us a few more details about this. Numbers chapter 11, this is about a year later when the people are starting to get a little bit tired of the daily work with all the manna and we read a few more details about the work that was related to the manna in Numbers chapter 11 verses 7 and 8. Now the manna, Numbers 11 verse 7, was like coriander seed and its appearance was like that of bdellium. The people went about and gathered it and ground it in hand mills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it. So you're gathering a grain that you can then grind into a fine grain in two different ways. You can use a hand mill or you can beat it and then you can cook it in two basic ways like you can with grain today. You can bake it into a bread cake or you can, what else can you do with grain? You can make oatmeal with it. This is all part of the work. The shape of it tells us something of the size of it and the work they had to turn it into a fine grain and then to boil it or bake it. Brothers and sisters, this helps to make sense of everything else because while we can rightly call manna bread from heaven, it's the language of Psalm 105 verse 40, it is not a fully baked loaf that drops before the door of your tent in the night and then you wake up and there it is and you take it and you eat it and you're done. it is not like that it's it's bread from heaven that you have to work for you could also say and this is the language of Psalm 78 verse 24 that it was grain from heaven and you had to go out and you had to work you had to go gather that grain probably outside around the edge of the camp and then you had to crush the grain the coriander seed into bakeable grain and then you have to prepare it either boiling it or baking it. The second detail needs little explanation. It was white in color. Verse 31. We'll just say one thing about that. For the gathering process it's probably helpful that you have something white rather than something brownish or red like actual coriander seed is when you're gathering it from a brown desert area. So even the color helps in the gathering. It was white. And then the third detail is about the taste. It does not say that it was a honey wafer. It said it tasted like a honey wafer. Brothers and sisters, I love this quote from the commentator Douglas Stewart. He reminds us that honey is, quote, the apex of ancient flavoring, end of quote. If you want to make something tasty in the ancient world, what do you have? Your best option is honey. That's the tastiest thing there is. And it's not very easy to make a wafer. So that's kind of like a delicacy. So saying that something is like a honey wafer is saying this was the tastiest thing you can imagine. That's the point that Moses is driving home. Not that it actually had honey. Maybe it contained some actual honey. We don't know. We don't know what the actual nutrient makeup was, except that it was very nutritious because God sustained a whole nation of people in the wilderness with this as their main diet for 40 years with only a little bit of dairy product and the occasional slaughtered animal from their flocks and herds. This was the staple diet. This was nutritious. But it was not just miraculous. and nutritious, it was delicious. And brothers and sisters, I think we should love this detail. God provided for his people in the wilderness. He didn't just drop bread on their doorstep, even in the Old Testament. It was true even when God was miraculously providing food for his people, it was true that as the Apostle said, he who does not work shall not eat. But God did not give his people stale bread. He gave them the tastiest thing you can possibly describe in the ancient world. This is a miraculous, nutritious, delicious, and teaching lessons about work, manna from heaven. It is a beautiful gift. It's not arduous work. How long did the gathering process take? Well, that's another thing we don't know. Part of that is because how thick did the manna fall? You could maybe gather up an omer of it fairly quickly or maybe not. How far was it spread apart? We don't know. We do know it was not arduous. We do know that it could be completed before the heat of the day because by the time the heat of the day came, verse 21, the manna melted. But even though we can't put an exact hour number on it, This is something, especially when you then factor in building the fire and then baking and boiling it and grinding it, not just the gathering process. When you put it all together, this is something that we should measure in terms of hours and not minutes. God is providing for his people. He's providing work for his people in the wilderness. What are they going to do? They're wandering around the wilderness for 40 years. I mean, you got some work to take care of your flocks and herds, and you've got a busy day when you're packing up camp, but they didn't do that that often. What are you gonna do for work? God is providing everything for his people. He's providing daily food. He's providing daily work for them to do to get that food. It is a special miracle from God. And it teaches very directly the lesson to depend upon the Lord every day. So they went out and they gather. Now, I'm actually not exactly sure what an omer, how big an omer was because an omer may have been smaller before the exile than after the exile, but probably we're talking about like a couple quarts, two or three quarts per person. And then Why did some gather more and some gather less, verse 17? Well, we read that in the light of verse 16, because they each gathered according to the number of persons that you had in his tent, verse 16. In other words, some had to gather more because they had to gather some not only for themselves, but also for their children, who were too young to help in the gathering process, or to help much in the gathering process. Or they also had to gather for older members of the family that were tied to their tent, their household. However much anybody needed to gather, they all gathered enough so that there was, on average, one omer per person in the family, and they had what they needed. They did, verse 18. But there were some people who are thinking about, I mean, remember, What are you going to eat in the wilderness? This is a huge question. So there are some people who see this miraculous manna and they're like, can we really trust? Is God gonna do this again tomorrow? What just happened here? What is this most delicious and nutritious miracle? I don't know. I'm gonna gather some for tomorrow too. Or at least keep some leftovers for tomorrow. But that disobedience didn't last very long because anybody who did that woke up to worms in their leftover manna the next morning. Now, I also want to say something positive about verse 20 because that means some people did not gather extra. And brothers and sisters, that means some are learning. daily dependence upon God in the wilderness, because that would have been very tempting. What are we going to eat in the wilderness? Is this manna really going to be miraculously on the ground again tomorrow? But some are learning daily dependence upon the Lord. And certainly, brothers and sisters, it's the literal provision the literal day-by-day provision in the wilderness, but it's certainly, brothers and sisters, a picture for our depending upon the Lord every single day, every single circumstance. The Lord provides for his people, and while it only took this literal day-by-day form for 40 years, the same kind of lesson that the Israelites had to learn. The same kind of, I can't store it up and do it myself and all these things, that same kind of lesson, brothers and sisters, is for us. It's a time when God was literally showing his people his character and his provision. But again, it was not only the provision of food, but also the provision of work. which is clear, not only reading the whole context, but also just when we understand what the manna was. It was grain from heaven. And so that leads us into our second point, because work has a pattern to it. It's a pattern of six days of labor and one day of rest. And so God's miraculous provision of manna included miracles within miracles. For while any extra manna that anyone tried to keep from day 1 to day 2 or day 2 to day 3 or etc. would turn into worms, the whole pattern changes from the 6th to the 7th day. On the 6th day, the people have to gather twice as much grain, verse 23, and also see in verse 5, and any extra grain which is unbaked or unboiled as you can still do some basic work work on the Lord's Day but any extra grain they have that they lay up they must keep from the 6th to the 7th day and it will not have any worms. It is miracles within miracles. It's gonna have worms every other day but the whole pattern changes from the 6th to the 7th, so that the Lord is continually, literally showing the people, this is what Sabbath observance looks like. You do not go out in the field to get manna. If you go and look, and some of the people did, you're not going to find any. Doesn't mean you can't do anything. They still had to bake and boil it. They still had other various kinds of tasks like milking the goats or etc it doesn't mean you can't do anything but your main labor and if you ask an Israelite in the wilderness what's your job and they all had the same answer I'm a manna collector your main labor if at all possible you set it aside and the Lord in a very literal and miraculous and beautiful way taught his people this every single week, every seven days, for 40 years. Don't go and gather manna on the seventh day. Gather twice as much on the sixth day. And brothers and sisters, it is a miracle. It is miracles within miracles. And it does teach beautiful lessons, as all the miracles of God do. But here, let's go over to the New Testament. because the miracle of manna is not the final miracle of God. It's not the greatest miracle of God. It is wondrous, nutritious, delicious, and all of these things, but what do we need? We need the greater miracle. And so we think not about bread that comes from heaven and provides a wonderful meal. We think about the man who comes from heaven. And it's even a season where we sometimes think especially about that miracle. Which miracle? The miracle of the Incarnation. God-born, the Son of Mary, the God-man. Well, there is the greater miracle. His name is Jesus. He says, teaching the teacher who needs the teaching of Jesus. Jesus says to the Pharisee Nicodemus in John chapter 3 verse 13, no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man. Jesus is the greater miracle, the man from heaven. And so then he speaks to those who are caught up in material things and part of that false theology of the Messiah which taught a couple of things. It taught that the Messiah was going to deliver from earthly oppression and overthrow Roman rule. And also there was this specific teaching that the Messiah would come and would provide manna like the manna in the wilderness. That was one of the specific false ideas about the Messiah that the Pharisees had. And so Jesus, teaching the crowd that he had fed in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, and the crowd that was focused on those material things that wanted him to be king, now they're coming and they're saying, you're going to make the manna too, right? I mean, you're just going to bring loaves of bread right to our doorstep. You're going to provide for us in every material way, right? And Jesus says in John chapter 6, verses 47, to 51. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I 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." Oh, brothers and sisters, the manna is a beautiful miracle, but it is nothing compared to the miracle of the man of heaven. And so we are called to do what? To worship God. And yes, we're called to worship God every day, But from creation, God has given us this special pattern, this special gift, where we set aside our ordinary work and we worship the one who provides the manna in the wilderness, who is himself the man from heaven who saves us from our sins. And so we have a special day for Solemn rest, verse 23. Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Because he provides not only for our body, but also for our very soul. So how sweet it was that the miracle of the manna had this very special and direct way of repeatedly teaching the people Take a break from your ordinary work because this is a blessing. This is a gift that you can have a day to focus in solemn rest and holy worship to me in a special way. For God deserves all of our worship and all of our praise. We do this in imitation of God who himself rested on the seventh day after the six days of creation. This has been the pattern that God taught the people in this very direct and special way in the manna coming five days, double on the sixth day, not on the seventh day. But it's a pattern which existed before the wilderness, which existed after the wilderness. It's the same pattern that we are called to, people of God, and what a gift it is. Look at the gift language, brothers and sisters, of verse 29. See, the Lord has given you the Sabbath. The context is there were some who just went out and they tried to gather, verse 27, and they found none. God says, look, it's a gift. Stop going out and working. Stop using this day for ordinary things. This is a gift. I have given this to you. Jesus has the same theology of the Sabbath. Jesus speaks of the gift of the Sabbath. Sabbath was made for man. Mark chapter 2 verse 27. It is a gift. It is a most precious gift because it helps us to refocus and reorient our lives. Yes, our whole life is to be worshipped to God, but what a special gift the Sabbath is. So brothers and sisters, let's celebrate the Sabbath. Let's celebrate a time to put away ordinary labors and to worship God in a special way. This is what the Sabbath is to be. Now it's possible to make up extra laws about the Sabbath. If we look at verse 29, It's one of the places where extra laws have been made up. Therefore, on the sixth day, he now gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place. Let no one go out of his place on the seventh day. And what's the context there? Don't go, verse 27, out of your place to do the ordinary work of gathering manna. That's what it's saying. It's not saying you can't leave to go milk your goats. It's not saying you can't leave to go to the tabernacle once it's built to worship. It's not saying you can't leave to go outside of the camp to relieve yourself according to the law. It's not saying you can't do your daily duties. But this is a verse that was taken and one of the pharisaical laws that we know existed in the days of Jesus Christ was the law of the Sabbath days walk. And it is essentially based on this verse. And it was, look, you can't go out. So the only exception that we can think of is going to the tabernacle. And there's a text in Numbers that gives us a hint about how far the tabernacle was from the edge of the camp. And so we're going to take that distance, which is about 3 quarter of a mile. And we're going to make up a law about a Sabbath day's journey. And that's the only distance that you can walk. And we're going to make up all these laws about a Sabbath day's journey. And that was one of the pharisaical laws that Jesus had to contend against. And brothers and sisters, it's certainly possible when we take the beautiful gift of the Sabbath day to make up extra laws. We have to guard against that. We have to guard against that. But it's also certainly possible to forget that there are laws. Do not go out to gather manna. And this time, miraculously, if you do, you won't find any because it's the seventh day. But now, if we go out to find our manna, our work, we can find it. And there's all kinds of work to do on the Sabbath day. Sadly, there's way more work to do on the Sabbath day than there was even in this town 30 years ago, isn't there? And so let's move from one negative example where the Pharisees made up extra laws to one positive example in scripture. Somebody who had a right understanding of what the Sabbath day meant. What about Nehemiah chapter 13? What did Nehemiah do? He said, people of God, we are doing too much buying and selling on the Sabbath day. Why are we treating this and working with merchants like it's any other day? We cannot do this. And as a holy servant of the Lord, he barred the gates on the Sabbath day. And the people who returned from the exile began to learn the obedience and the holiness and the gift of the Sabbath day. That was not legalistic. That was holy zeal for God's obedience. And now, figuratively, if we put a wall around Wupan, You wouldn't have to bar out the merchants 40 years ago because all the restaurants and all the stores and all the athletic fields were closed. But the story is different now. And it's not legalistic to say that there are restrictions tied to this gift. No, a proper understanding is for our joy and for service to God, who calls us to go out and to work six days a week, who gave the miraculous provision of daily grain and daily work tied to that grain, who also gave that special pattern to teach his Israelites in a special way the blessings of the Sabbath day. People of God, let us learn these same lessons. When we go out to do our work, six days a week, our ordinary work, let us know the blessing of work. Work is something given before the fall. Work is a blessing that God even gave to his people wandering around in the wilderness. They didn't just have loaves of bread dropped on their front door. They had to go work. And that's a blessing. That's part of God's miracle. That's part of the provision of this nutritious, delicious miracle. And let us, people of God, knowing that He provides not only for our body, but also for our very soul, let us, trusting in the man from heaven who came down to die for our sins, let us see the blessing of setting aside our ordinary labor. Let us see the blessing of not going to get manna and having that solemn and holy day to the Lord. He is worthy of all our praise. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, our Lord, you provide. We thank you for the work