Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2332
“Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from Heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in My Law, or no.” Exodus 16:4.
IT seems to us that it must have been a very difficult thing to supply food for the hundreds of thousands, I shall not be incorrect if I say the millions who were in the wilderness. But, difficult as that was, the commissariat was not so difficult as the education. To train that mob of slaves into a nation under discipline—to lift up those who had been in bondage and make them fit to enjoy national privileges—this was the Herculean task that Moses had to perform. And their God, who loved the children of Israel and chose them—and determined to make them a peculiar people unto Himself, undertook to teach them—and He used their food as part of the means of their education. Animals are often taught through their food. When they cannot be reached in any other way, they have been instructed by their hunger, by their thirst and by their feeding. And the Lord, who knew of what a coarse nature Israel was composed, and how the people had degenerated from the old stock during their long bondage, took care to teach them by every means, not only by the higher and the more spiritual, by the typical and symbolical, but He also taught them by their hunger and by their thirst, by the supply of water from the Rock and by the manna which He rained from Heaven.
We will try to see, tonight, what the Lord taught them, but we will do more than that—we will try to learn what they learned and somewhat more. May the Holy Spirit, Himself, be our Teacher and as He has often taught us the most Divine lessons by the bread and wine, preaching to our very hearts by what seemed the lowly ministry of food and drink, so may He, tonight, teach us by that angels’ bread which with Israel was fed in the wilderness long years ago!
First, I invite you to consider how the Lord taught these people by His gift. And next, how He taught them by making this gift a test to them. Thirdly, I shall have to show how He teaches its lessons as to temporal things. And lastly, how He instructs us as to our spiritual food.
I. First, then, dear Friends, let us Consider HOW THE LORD TAUGHT THESE PEOPLE BY HIS GIFT.
He wanted them to know Him. His great desire was that they should know Jehovah, their God. If they knew God, they would know all else, for, after all, “the proper study of mankind” is God. And when man knows his God, he knows himself. But if he thinks that he knows himself while he knows not his God, he is greatly mistaken.
God desired, then, to teach them, Himself, by the gift of the manna. And He taught them, first, His care over them, that He was their God, and that they were His people and that He would lay Himself out to provide for them. Think of the care that God had over them, over each one of them, for each man had his own omer of manna. No woman, no child was forgotten. Every morning there was sufficient quantity for every man, according to his needs for that day. There was no more and there was never any less, so carefully did God watch over each individual. The individuality of the Divine Love is a great part of the sweetness of it. God thinks of every separate child of His as much as if He had only that one. The multiplicity of His elect does not divide the loaf of His affection. He has an infinite affection for each one and He will take care of the details of each chosen life. He will see your omer filled, precisely, to the ounce! He will give you all you can possibly need, but He will give you nothing that you can lay by to minister to your pride.
And this care was shown every day. The Lord taught them the continuity of His remembrance by its coming every day. If He had sent one great rain of liberalities to refresh His inheritance and had told them gather up the vast store and
carry it with them in all their journeying, they could not so well have learned His care as when He sent it fresh every morning. Besides, they would have had the burden of carrying it and they were free from that, for the heavenly supplies were always close at hand, exactly at the spot where they pitched their tents and tarried. Every morning, there was the manna precisely where they needed it, and that without any man’s shoulder being made raw by carrying his food in his kneading-trough. The Lord teaches you and me in the same way, that He not only cares for each one, but cares for each one each day and each moment, tracking our footsteps and meting out the full supply of the hour according as the peculiar necessity arises. “He is always thoughtful, always thoughtful of me,” you may say of your Lord—“always thoughtful of all the brotherhood, of the whole company of the redeemed, but none the less thoughtful of each one because there are so many myriads to be cared for every moment of every day.” Was not that a sweet lesson for the children of Israel to learn as they gathered their daily bread?