Exodus 16-18 Wilderness University

This morning we're going to continue our study in divine deliverance with this lesson that we called Wilderness University. And you know the reason we called it that, you read it, is because of the tests and the trials and the lessons produced in this wilderness experience. And you know you might remember that we used a scripture that the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, these things happen to them as an example, but they are written down for our instruction. And so there is a link for us between Israel's wilderness experience, the examples there, and the instruction for our Christian journey, right? There is a link, and those are some of the things we want to discover. Before we actually get into the text, I want to bring up two things in way of kind of summary that you probably saw too. The first thing is that Israel was a complaining people. This was clear in this. And you know what, we are too. We are complaining people. We have so much trouble just settling into this trust of the Lord right away. And the second thing that maybe wasn't quite as obvious that we saw over and over in this is God is so kind. God is so gracious in their experience. He never berated them. He never got frustrated with them. At every turn, He met their need. And you know, God is kind to us in all of our trials and in all of the things that we go through. God is for us. God is for you. He is not against you. And He's ready to just come in and provide the things that we need. Now, I made a little outline that I want to show you here that I kind of saw this in my mind, and so I wanted to share it with you. The trials that Israel faced from the Red Sea to Sinai have a form like this. Look at this. The first and the last one had to do with an enemy. The middle two had to do with water. And the creamy filling in the middle right there is the manna and the quail. And so I thought that that might help you as well be able to wrap your mind. It gives us structure and order to what we're looking at. Of course, we already looked at the first two in chapter 15 last week. Pharaoh's army drowned in the sea and then turning the bitter water into sweet water at Marah. So let's start with these last three now for this week. I'm going to start reading in Exodus 16, chapter 1.

So we're one month out, right? It's important for us to kind of get a timing. We've been out for one month.

And 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've brought us out into this wilderness to kill the whole assembly with hunger. All right, so let's stop and get a snapshot of the emotional and mental status of this group of people. First of all, they were grumbling against the leaders. They accused, they said, You've brought us out here to kill us with hunger. They were looking back longingly at their time in the kingdom of darkness. And so they were longing for that when they said, We sat by meat pots and ate bread to the full. But this last thing that they said, If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt, that's pretty terrible. You know, next week we'll study one of the commandments, Do not take the name of the Lord in vain. I call this taking the ownership of the Lord in vain. God went to great lengths to save them, to redeem them, to deliver them. And now they're saying things like, If only you had just killed us. Well, let's pit their perception versus the reality. Were they really going to die of hunger in the wilderness? Now, remember, they left Egypt with their flocks and herds. They had resources. They were just now turning into a different kind of a lifestyle for a short time, a nomadic lifestyle that was dependent on animal products. You know, they had milk and cheese and curds, and they could slaughter animals if they wanted to. They probably didn't want to at this point, but they weren't going to perish of hunger. Did they really sit by meat pots and eat bread to the full? Well, maybe they did have meat. They probably did eat meat in Egypt, and they probably did have bread to satisfy their hunger. But they probably also in a month have run out of any of those provisions they brought with them. This isn't like the Oregon Trail where they had a great big old wagon and 80 pounds of flour and 20 pounds of sugar and 40 pounds of coffee, and we've got provisions for four months. No, they didn't have big wagons. They maybe had a hand cart or two, but it was what they could carry as they left. So a month later, they have likely, this is just my assumption, they've run out of any grain that they brought with them. They've run out of anything else except their flocks and herds. All right, so their life was different. Verse four,

And so Moses and Aaron told the people in verse six, At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he's going to do something substantial here. But the sad part that we read is between verses six and ten, we had to read over that word grumbling four times after they were told this. And Moses and Aaron knew that they, even though they were being grumbled at, they knew it wasn't about them. They knew, and they told the people, they said, your grumbling is against the Lord. And I love verse nine here. They told Israel, Look toward the wilderness where the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. We want you to look this way. You know what I hear in this? I hear the little note passing or whispering thing in class. Tommy, would you like to share with the whole class what you've just said? What you're talking about? I feel like Moses and Aaron are saying, there's Jehovah. Look to the wilderness in the cloud. Would you like to share that with, like, you're not grumbling against us. You're grumbling against God that brought you out. And in verse 12,

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. And 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. Okay, so the focus turns in what we studied to the bread itself. We don't hear so much about the quail, but I want to focus on the bread, and I want to make five points about the manna that God had provided for them. The first point is that it was sufficient for their need. They were told to go out and collect, and some gathered more, and some gathered less, and by the time it was all said and done, it was just what they needed. And a little sub-point to that was, how long did it last? Way back at the end of the chapter, it says 40 years till they came to the habitable land. It was sufficient for their entire journey. So God provided them bread that was sufficient for their need. Second of all, he provided bread that was a daily provision, something they could set their clocks by. It told us in the text, morning by morning it showed up, and their instructions were, Gather what you need for today. If you gather more than what you need for today, what happened to it? It bred worms, and it stank, is what it told us. And so they tested the Lord by going out, by trying to gather more than what they needed. They tested the Lord to find out if his word was true, and they found out. The third thing about this is that God used it to establish a weekly rhythm for them of remembering their creator. And the reason I say that is because this is the first time we even hear the word Sabbath in the Bible. This is the first time here. So God was using this provision for them to begin a rhythm of taking the seventh day, making it a day of rest, and the reason it would help them remember their creator is, I'll help you remember what we studied in Genesis. Genesis chapter 2 verses 2 and 3, on the seventh day God finished his work and he rested. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. He set it apart because on it God rested from all of his work that he had done in creation. So this rest should have helped them remember creation, remember their creator. And they were told six days you should gather it, but on the seventh, there won't be any. On the sixth, there'll be enough to cover both days, but they tested the Lord, right? They went out on the seventh day to see if maybe they could gather more, and it wasn't there. So they tested the Lord to see if his word was true or not. The next thing we learned about the manna is it was tasty, tasted like wafers made with honey. God could have made it tiresome, but he made multiple ways that you could make it, so God was being good and kind and gracious to them. And the last thing is it was used, it was to be remembered. There was an instruction, keep an omer of it to all your generations so that you remember what God did for you in the wilderness. All right, those are some important elements that summarize for us what does the text say. This is clearly what it says. So we wanna go on and ask, what does it mean? Is there maybe a reality coming later that this symbol will make sense of? Absolutely there is, and it came out of Jesus's lips himself. That's why you're in John chapter six. You can open up your Bibles to John six, and here's the backdrop to what we're doing. Jesus was teaching, the crowds were following, and there are 5,000 people that became hungry, and this is the time when Jesus fed them with the five loaves and the two fish, and he met their need. And then he went to the other side of the sea, and the crowds followed after him. And I wanna go down to verse 30. So we're John six, 30. And the crowds asked him, what sign do you do that we may see and believe you? And then they offered a suggestion to him. For example, our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. It is written he gave them bread to eat from heaven. And in verse 32,

Look at here, he connects the dots. I am the bread of life and whoever comes to me will not hunger. And Jesus is clearly making a link between what we're studying in Exodus and who he is as a provision for those. He says that no one should hunger. So what does that mean? Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. What does that mean? Okay, let's think about it now. In the natural world, for our appetites to be satisfied with bread, it would require a huge amount of labor. Okay, ours is the only culture and time over the course of all of human history that you can hop in your car with a debit card, run down to Albertsons and choose any kind of bread that you want and poof, you have bread. Your appetite is satisfied. That doesn't exist in many places of the world today and it didn't exist in all of history before us. What did it take to satisfy your hunger? Much, much labor. You had to take your seed and you had to plant it in the ground and you had to grow your crop and you had to wait for the harvest and you had to take that grain and you had to thresh it and then you had to mill it and then you had to prepare it as dough and then you had to bake it. Work, work, work all along the way in order to be satisfied, right? All right, Israel in the wilderness had no possible way of doing that. The soil wasn't gonna produce anything for them. They didn't have the time to wait for a crop. It was impossible for them to be satisfied with bread that they worked for in the wilderness. So God gave them what they needed free of charge, free of labor. They didn't have to work for it. What does that remind you of? In our spiritual lives, Jesus has been given to us free of charge, free of labor so that our spiritual appetite can be satisfied. There's nothing we can do. We are in a place in this world that we cannot do the work that is required to satisfy our spiritual hunger with bread. We have to, so Jesus's words, whoever comes to me shall not hunger. He will give us what we need. Well, let's go and look and see where Jesus says this. Verse 29, you're gonna have to go up a little bit. Jesus told the people there in that moment, this is the work of God, that you believe in him who he sent. They made it clear. This is the only work that you can do. Believe whom he sent. Just like the Israelites, this is the only work that you can do to have bread. Receive what God has given them at the time, the manna. Isn't that sweet? Well, since grumbling is our vice of the day that we are discussing, now look down here. You're still in John chapter six, verse 41. What was the response of the Jews? This is fascinating. They grumbled about him. Isn't that something? Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph whose father and mother we know? How does he say, I have come down from heaven? So since it didn't make any sense to them, they were gonna argue the point and they were gonna grumble about it. But Jesus responded and he says, don't grumble among yourselves. I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat 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. We see this with people in the world that have not yet surrendered to Christ. It doesn't make sense and there's an arguing and a grumbling about it. But it's the only way. These are Jesus's words. He tells us clearly, I'm it. I'm the bread of life. I love it. So what does it mean to me? Well, grumbling is in the heart of man and woman. It was in Israel's heart in the wilderness. It was in the Jews' heart in John chapter six. It is in our heart as well. Even once we have surrendered our life to Christ, there's that habit. There's that underlying toe that makes us want to go back to it. But grumbling is out of agreement with a life in the kingdom of light, isn't it? And so we see that habit come up in our lives and our response should be, that needs to be weeded out. I need to take care of that because it's not in agreement with who I am now. And in Philippians, last summer, we went through Paul's words, do everything without grumbling and complaining. So certainly, we don't want to get in our discussion groups and say, oh, those Israelites, how could they? No, it's a mirror and we get that, right? All right, so we're still looking at our chart here. Let's look at the next provision, how God was kind to them. And we're jumping into chapter 17 and we read that they moved to a place called Rephidim and there was no water to drink. And in verse two,

And I'll tell you right here, I would have lost my last thread of patience with the whole group. But what I want to look at here is this phrase that Moses said, why do you test the Lord? So let's talk about what it means to test the Lord. We probably don't look at it that way. And so I just made a sentence, testing God means you are holding back trust. You are withholding your trust in God, maybe until such time as he produces something. It's like, God, if you fix this thing in my life, then I'll trust you. But I'm withholding trust, that is testing God. Have any of you had a job that you were a probationary employee? They put you on probation for 30 or 60 days and the employer was legitimately testing you. Are you worth it? Can I trust you? Can I move you to permanent status? So a little bit something like that. Sometimes we say to God, I'm not gonna make you, I'm not gonna really trust in you and make you permanent until you prove yourself. Problem is God had proved himself multiple times already, but you know, they had forgot. So why are they testing God now? Why are they withholding trust when God had done so much? Well, I'll tell you why. It's in the words, the people thirsted there for water. It was personal. It was personal to them. And in our life, when something happens that hits the personal button and it's personal to me, it might not be personal to your girlfriend, but it is to me, it's my button. When that happens in our life, all of a sudden we have this memory dump and everything that we knew about God, everything that he had done for us before just gets clouded and we withhold our trust because it's personal. We face those problems. We lose the ability to remember God's faithfulness. Well, verse three,

And they said this with manna between their teeth. Right? Like, why are you killing us? It was terrible. So look at the response. So Moses cried to the Lord. Oh, Moses, bless his heart. I want to be like that. I want to just cry to the Lord. What shall I do with this people? They're almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said to Moses, so pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place, Masa and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord there by saying, is the Lord among us or not? And that was the question. Was the Lord among them or not? There was a, obviously, he was there. But there was a greater reality that God was shaping there to give them another shadow that would make sense in another future time. And you don't need to turn to John 7. I made slides for this, because I want you to stay in Exodus. But I want to show you a passage here in just a minute. In John chapter 7, Jesus went up to Israel for the Feast of Booths. This is a fall feast, a fall festival. And the Feast of Booths is a time when Israel took time to go out and go camping, live under these leafy shelters that would help them remember this very experience, their wilderness wanderings. So this is the one time of year they're supposed to be thinking about the wilderness here. This is what's going on. Now, look at John chapter 7, verse 37.

Wow. They're supposed to be thinking about this anyway. They're supposed to be thinking about God's provision in the wilderness. And they knew the story. They knew. They probably had songs that told the story to them. They knew that Moses had struck the rock and water came out of it. Look in Exodus 17, 6 again. God said, you shall strike the rock and water shall come out of it and the people will drink. And they knew that Jesus was saying that somehow he would be struck, that he is the reality to that. And it doesn't stop there. I want to show you the next verse, John 7, 38, 39.

Now, out of his heart, if you believe in me, not only am I going to be struck and rivers of water will flow, but anybody believes in me, now, he says, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And it tells us what he meant. He said this about the spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive. So at each step of the way in this study, this is more than a historical narrative of a people group moving from Egypt toward the promised land. This is, we see these shadows. Jesus was to be struck to quench our spiritual thirst. But what convicted me when I was reading it, I know this passage, but it convicted me fresh this week that the intention, then, is that out of my heart, because I have the Holy Spirit in me, I have Jesus, I've believed in him, now, out of my heart should flow rivers of living water. I get so set on my own life, my own needs, this and that. Am I even thinking about that? Am I thinking about the potential that Jesus told them? This is my intention. Now you will flow through. So that was something I had to work through this week. All right, back to our chart here. And we're going to go to the last point there, when Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. Who is Amalek? It told us in Genesis chapter 36. He's a descendant of Esau. So there's a natural enemy-ish of Jacob right there. And sometimes they would call a whole tribe by, like, sons of Jacob. We call them the Amalekites also. But they were nomadic people living in this area. Maybe they were defending their territory. Maybe they were going to come raid Israel. I don't know why, but they came to fight. Now remember, God, in this top part here, the first trial, God supernaturally took care of the first enemy, Pharaoh. He did it all by himself. They didn't have to do anything. But now things are a little bit different. And now God treated this differently, OK? This time, God didn't do all the work. Verse 9, Moses said to Joshua, choose for us men and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand. And Joshua did as Moses told him. And he fought with Amalek while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Just a kind of a way my brain thinks. I sort of think, well, what did Joshua think? You go down and fight those. We'll stand up here with a stick. It'll be good. But he was obedient, and he fought the battle. But it was the presence of the Lord that was enabling. God was enabling them to fight. Verse 11, whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. Whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary. So they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and one on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. And then they made a banner in verse 15, or they made a memorial, and Moses built an altar and said, the Lord is my banner. Now, great. It's wonderful that we have a victory here. If you are in Christ, okay, God has supernaturally defeated the power of the enemy over your life, the bondage to the kingdom of darkness. That has been supernaturally done for you as you came to Christ and believed in him. You were born into the kingdom. There is no possible way, because that enemy is defeated in your life, he cannot come and snatch you out of God's hand and take you back to the kingdom of darkness. Right? Okay? So we are safe. No one can snatch us out of the hand of God. That enemy has been defeated. But we still face enemies that would come into our life to violate our present and our future. They're not taking us back to the kingdom of darkness. We are secure in God's kingdom. But we have an enemy like this who will come and mess and needs to be fought with the power of the Lord. And we talked about knowing the temptations of the enemy and his schemes. We've talked about that in past sessions. But I think that it's interesting that that first enemy was completely defeated and has no power over our life again. Just an interesting thought. I wanna finish up in chapter 18 with Jethro. And I love this story. In verse one, it says, Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel, his people, and how the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt. And so he brings Moses' wife, Sapphora. He brings the two sons, Gershom and Elie, I don't know if it's Eliezer, I didn't look it up. And then in verse eight, he gets a firsthand testimony from Moses. And Moses tells him about, it says, all the hardship that came upon them and how the Lord delivered them. There is a template for testimony right there. What was the difficulty in my life and how God delivered me. I love that. Testimonies are powerful. And Jethro heard the testimony from Moses' lips. And in verse 10, Jethro said, blessed be the Lord who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, out of the hand of Pharaoh. He's delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods. And so Jethro says back to him, oh, I see how God delivered you, how God delivered the people. He gets it. And in some Old Testament kind of a way, Jethro comes into the kingdom of God because he believes and he has this assurance. He says, now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods. And this puts flesh, first of all, what I love about it is he's not a son of Abraham. And so we see again that God's grace and God's kindness brings in any, whoever would, whosoever will, anyone who comes and believes is brought into the kingdom of light. But it also puts flesh on something that we've talked about a few times. And that is how does God use our trials, our testings. easy to say oh I know the answer to that it's God's glory in our good that's what that's the purpose you know much harder to walk it out but let's look at what it looked like right here for Jethro okay God's glory God proved to Egypt that he was greater than the Egyptian gods God proved to Israel that he indeed was God over all and God proved to Jethro through their testimony that he was greater than all other gods God got the glory and it was imparted to someone else through Israel it's eventually imparted to the whole world but this is one of the first that we see and so those trials because Moses told him of the hardship that had come upon them and how the Lord had delivered them fascinating so God's glory and at the same time he was he's working for our good because all these trials that we face in our own wilderness once we stop grumbling and once we start agreeing that God is with me God is for me in this situation he's been faithful in the past I'm gonna hold on to those memories not allow the memory dump because it's become personal for me and trust that he will be faithful in this trial so for our good we reap the benefit of that and I'll just recite again from James chapter 1 for you know that the testing of your faith produces what perseverance and excuse me I'm in I'm ESV here produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing so we're gonna pause there finish it up next week father we do thank you we dare Lord to open our mouth and thank you for our wilderness trials Lord the testings the difficulties Lord help us hold on to these treasures of truth that we know we are just like Israel we are not above them or any better but Lord help us to grab these treasures and to be able to hold on and say you are with me you have been faithful in the past you will be faithful in the future you love your kids you provide for your kids you are kind and you are gracious even at those times when I do grumble even in those times when I do lose trust and so Lord we thank you that you are that kind of a God and we exalt you for being that kind of a God and Lord we ask that you would help us be people who trust be people who don't freak out be people who don't grumble and who don't complain against you Lord we ask that you would change our hearts and work in our hearts Lord we pray this in Jesus name Amen you