The Indescribable Love of God

Introduction

As you can see on the screen, I’ll invite you to be making your way to Exodus chapter 16. We’ll have our lesson from this passage this morning. As was mentioned, Brent is ill. Many others are obviously ill. And I am just humbled and grateful for the opportunity to be able to present a section of God’s word to you this morning. These are some thoughts that have been kind of rambling around in my head for a good while now, and I was excited to have the opportunity to finally organize them and write them all down. So this is what we’ll be talking about this morning.

So that’s where we’re going to be this morning, I’m afraid. Thank you for being here. I know we have a number, of course, you are out, but we also have a number of visitors traveling through this time of year, and we are very grateful to have you with us. Hope that this worship will be edifying to you. Certainly, I have already been edified by the good song service this morning. In Exodus chapter 16, we find the people of God, the Israelites, 45 days removed from their Egyptian captivity. Forty-five days ago, a month and a half ago, God triumphantly defeated the Egyptians, and the Israelites walked out of Egypt with all of the spoils that they took from those Egyptians. And they are now camped in the wilderness.

In chapter 15, the preceding story, while they are wandering in the wilderness, God generously has provided for them water. He has turned the bitter waters of Mara to drinkable water. And God has provided for them miraculously at Marah. And they camped there for a little while, and then moved on to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water there, and seventy date trees were told. And then picking up in chapter 16, verse 1, read with me. Then they set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of sin, which is between Elim and Sinai on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

And the sons of Israel said to them, What would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full.

And it came about on the sixth day when they prepare what is what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily. So Moses and Aaron said to all the sons of Israel, At evening you will know that the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, for he hears your grumblings against the Lord. And what are we that you grumble against us? And Moses said, This will happen when the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening, and bread to the full in the morning. For the Lord hears your grumblings, which you grumble against him. And what are we? You your grumblings are not against us, but against the Lord.

Then Moses said to Aaron, Say to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumblings. And it came about, as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel. Speak to them, saying, At twilight you shall eat meat. And in the morning you shall be filled with bread, and you shall know that I am Yahweh, your God.

And in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew evaporated, behold, on the surface of the wilderness there was a fine flake-like thing, fine as the frost on the ground. When the sons 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 which the Lord has given you to eat. What an amazing story. What an amazing description of the gifts that God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness. But I want you first to notice in this reading the word grumble.

1. Yahweh Is Repeatedly Generous Despite Grumbling

In some places in this in these texts, these words like grumble or grumbling or quarrel or quarreling are used greater than a dozen times in chapters 15 through 17. And in our reading alone, we came across this word at least six times.

The grumbling started with the Israelites in chapter 15, in verse 24. When they came to that bitter water at the pool of Mara, it continues in chapter 16 as we just read, when they were hungry, and it’s going to continue even more in chapter 17, when they’re thirsty again. How long has it been since God showed his mighty power in the plagues of Egypt? Do you remember what I told you a few minutes ago? Forty-five days.

And here they are grumbling and complaining. But despite their continual grumbling, despite their apparent lack of gratitude, Yahweh is repeatedly generous to his people. In 15, in chapter 15, when they grumble about the bitter water, God makes it sweet. In chapter 16, when they complain about the lack of food, God pours out quail and bread from heaven. In chapter 17, when they run out of water again, Yahweh brings water forth from a rock. Over and over and over again, God responded to their grumbling with generous, life-sustaining, abundant blessings. Now, to be clear, God’s patience is not a license for us to continue to grumble. Because as we’re going to read later on in Numbers chapter 21, and this is just, I just happen to know what the Lord’s Supper talk is about.

2. What Is It? An Indescribable Gift

In Numbers chapter 21, God’s going to respond to their grumbling with less pleasant response, like snakes. God’s patience eventually runs out. But the idea that the God of the Old Testament is just a fierce and fickle, angry, malicious force, is just simply an inaccurate understanding of the God of the Bible. He is not just looking for excuses to smite people. In bringing his covenant people out of slavery from Egypt, Yahweh shows them immense patience and undeserved generosity. He loves them despite their betrayals and despite their ingratitude. In fact, his blessings often surpass their imagination and ours. Consider the people’s reaction when they discover the blessings from God that are literally raining down from heaven on them. Imagine these events in Exodus chapter 16. Imagine standing there at camp towards twilight, and suddenly a flock of quail large enough to cover a camp of one million people.

I’m not a quail hunter, but I would imagine, even if you are, you’ve never seen a flock of quail like that. Generous or conservative estimates, rather, estimate that the number of people of Israel at this time was at least a million people. How big of a camp would they require? A million people.

Imagine how many quail it would take to feed a million people. You ever eaten quail? It’s itty bitty. One quail is not going to do it for someone like my son. Trust me, we had wings last chicken wings last night. It took more than that. That’s a lot of quail. It says they covered the camp. Imagine the excitement when those quail just start coming and they’re not running away. Imagine the kids running around chasing the quail or the dogs or whatever it was. Imagine them hiding under the bushes. Imagine them grabbing them. Imagine the feathers. How many feathers did they pluck that evening? What did they do with all of them? I have no idea. But God did this for them night after night for 40 years.

Imagine waking up that morning. If you’re like my wife, you probably got up just before the sunrise. You watch the sunrise, you see the dew covering the wilderness. Probably beautiful as it was. And then as the dew evaporates, there is left behind this flaky substance. It’s described as looking like a coriander seed. I’m not even sure what that means. Maybe that’s referring to the size of the particles, that it’s small. It’s described as being white.

In verse where is it? Verse 31. It’s described as being white in color, fine and flaky like frost. It’s described as tasting like honey. A wafer with honey. I don’t know about you, but that sounds appealing to me. Imagine a wafer. I mean, think about it. If we could improve the taste of these wafers by adding some, I’m that’s not what I’m suggesting. Honey makes most things taste better, in my opinion. But when they discover this fine flaky substance, if they were fortunate enough to wake up and be some of the first ones to see it, what is their response here in verse 15? They simply say mana. In Hebrew, they said, what is it? Their experience and their language did not have a description for this gift.

They simply said, What is it? Of course, we don’t know the tone of this question. That’s not inserted into the text. Was it amazement? Was it disgust? What is it? Was it confusion? What is this? I don’t know. But one thing is clear. That they had no word. And that the description in the text is helpful. You know, but I can’t really quite imagine it fully myself. This white, fine, flaky, honey flavored coriander seed, I don’t know. I don’t know what that is exactly. I don’t know how to describe that even myself. I don’t know how to imagine it entirely myself. How did they gather it? Was it like powdery? Was it cake like? I we don’t know. But I do like to imagine that years after this manna stopped, so God was going to provide this manna for them for 40 more years as they wandered in the wilderness.

The manna was cut off once they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. But I like to imagine in the Promised Land, men like Joshua, men like Caleb telling the stories to their children or their grandchildren about what it was like to eat manna. What did it feel like? What did it taste like? How did we gather it? How did we serve it? How did we, how did the women make it taste different from day to day, perhaps? But I imagine at some point the questions that the grandchildren ask simply can’t be answered. And Joshua and Caleb, maybe some of the others just simply had to say, you just had to be there. It was beyond adequate description. It was like nothing they had expected, like nothing they had ever known.

It was beyond their understanding. And as I consider some of the blessings that God has provided me in my own life, I definitely can recall moments, and I’m sure you can too, where the means by which God provided for what I needed were entirely unexpected, sometimes confusing, but often as breathtakingly beautiful as the sunrise on the dew in the morning. In that moment, though, don’t we often ask, what is this? Quite simply, it is the love of God, given as an indescribable gift. While God’s provision for them in the wilderness was a declaration of his patient and endless love for his people. God’s provision for them here in this moment and always is also a revelation of his glory. And it is an assurance of his promises.

3. The Blessings of God Declare His Power and Glory

The blessings of God declare his power and his glory. Look back again in the text in verse seven. Moses and Aaron tell all the sons of Israel in verse seven, in the morning you will see the glory of God.

In verse 10, it comes to pass that as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. That guiding presence of God appeared to them in all of his glory. His blessings to us prove that he is able to see our needs, and that he is able to meet those needs abundantly beyond what we can imagine.

His blessings declare his glory.

4. His Blessings Declare His Promises

Declare his promises and that he is able to keep his promises. In chapter 15, backing up to the story about bitter water, in verse 26, he says, if you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians. For I, Yahweh, am your healer.

We are thankful that he keeps his promises. In chapter 16 and verse 12, he says, I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel, speak to them, saying, At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread, and know that I am Yahweh, your God.

He blesses us to prove that he wants us to know him. He wants us to have relationship with him. He offered generous provision, fierce protection in exchange for a loving and faithful relationship with his people. Yahweh was willing to take the lead, though, in this relationship, by offering gift after gift after gift, in spite of their grumblings, in order to try to win the favor of his people, in order to try to win their love and devotion. This is not a God smiting the grumblers in the wilderness. This is a God taking the abuse and offering love. And this is who he is. This is who he will continue to be throughout the Bible story. This is who he is even today.

In spite of the fact that his people are unable and unwilling often to offer very much in return. But he continually blesses us. In fact, he even blesses those who adamantly oppose him. Even the atheists and pagans woke up today to sunrise. He continues to bless us even when we reject him. Because his hope is that at some point his blessings in our lives will remind us or point us toward relationship with him.

5. God's Provision Gives Opportunity for Rest

This is who he is. This is who he continues to be. God’s provision, though, also gives opportunity for rest. Did you realize that the Sabbath day was not given at Mount Sinai? The Sabbath was instituted here in the wilderness before Sinai. Sinai doesn’t happen until chapter 19. They don’t even get to Sinai until chapter 19. God institutes Sabbath and rest here in the wilderness forty-five days after their escape from Egypt. My own opinion here, but I think it’s because God desperately wants to teach these people to trust him. And before he wants, before he offers them law, he first offers them gifts and relationship and rest. These people have been enslaved for literally centuries. They don’t understand rest. How many days off do you think they got working as slaves for the Egyptians?

How many holidays do you think they celebrated? How much PTO do you think they were allowed?

I do not expect that they were unionized successfully. I do not expect that they negotiated their contracts, at least very much in their favor. And so Yahweh must teach these people to lean less on their own understanding and to lean less on their own hard work and to learn to lean more heavily on God and the blessings that he so desperately wanted to provide them. He needed them to trust him that he could lead them. He needed them to trust him that he could protect them.

As slaves in Egypt, they only understood the provisions that their taskmasters would provide them.

That someone can protect me, that someone, although they own me, they will provide for me. And Yahweh here is teaching them in the wilderness to abandon that scarcity mindset, that mindset of slavery and bondage, and he’s encouraging them to put on a new mindset of plentiful blessings through loving relationship. When I am in bondage to sin, my life’s focus also becomes narrowed to myself, to my own desires, my own bondages. And therefore, my options also feel quite limited. Limited to what I can get for myself to appease my desires with my own limited resources and my own influences. But faith in God broadens my perspective. Faith in God broadens my perspective to see that He is able to provide everything that I need. Everything that is meaningful, everything that is important for life.

That freedom creates gratitude in my heart that moves me toward relationship with God rather than a transactional taskmaster relationship. And that faith and the freedom that comes from faith offers true peace and true rest from that struggle of bondage to sin. Transformation from slavery to the promised land begins with God’s abundant blessings. And it’s furthered by my willingness to believe that he alone is capable of even more than he is offered before. True rest comes when I stop complaining, when I stop grumbling, when I stop quarreling, true rest comes when I start believing that God is capable of giving me what I need rather than all of the devices and impulses and addictions that weigh me down. But Sabbath rest requires both faith, and as we see in this story, it also requires preparation.

Mana must be gathered.

And God provided parameters, even to his blessings and how they were to partake in these blessings, and he provided instructions on how they were to gather and when they were to gather and how much they were to gather. And only those who followed those instructions would have ultimately be blessed by the rest that was provided on the Sabbath. God says he did this in verse four to test the people, to see whether they would believe him or not, to see whether or not they had faith that he would provide for them. God’s blessings, as we see here in Exodus 16 and everywhere else, God’s blessings are bountiful, God’s blessings are plentiful, God’s blessings are abundantly beyond what we need. But we must be willing to heed his instruction.

6. Jesus Is the True Bread of Heaven

God’s abundant blessings for his covenant people of old revealed his glory, they declared his covenant love, and they provided for rest. And he would continue to feed his people in the wilderness for forty more years, every day with that bread that rained down from heaven until he brought them into the promised land. But to be sure, the blessing of manna was never intended to satisfy them forever. It wasn’t even intended to satisfy them for fifty years. It certainly wasn’t intended to satisfy them for the rest of their existence. Because God had something greater planned. Sure, he eventually was going to bring them into this land that flowed with milk and honey.

But let me tell you, even a land of milk and honey was not a gift sufficient enough for God, the generous giver. Because even this land of milk and honey was not intended to be their forever home. Nor yours, nor mine. Even the land of milk and honey was not sufficient to express this indescribable gift that God wanted to richly bestow upon his beloved people. Because this manna, this bread from heaven, was just a foreshadowing. Just a foreshadowing in the wilderness of the real bread of heaven that God intended to give to his people. In John chapter 6, and this is a long context. So we’ll probably jump around a little bit here for sake of time. In John chapter 6, Jesus had just provided for people, guess what?

Bread in the wilderness when he fed the five thousand. And in verse 31 of John chapter 6, actually, let’s back up. Let’s back up to verse 30. There’s a conversation here between Jesus and some of the people, and we’re gonna skip around and I’ll invite you to explore this context maybe later on your own. But says in verse 30, they said therefore to him, what then do you do for a sign that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus then said to them, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven.

For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They said to him, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. In this story, Jesus’ critics are going to go on to guess what? Grumble.

I don’t think John uses that term coincidentally. These people are going to literally go on and grumble among themselves about what Jesus is claiming here in this story. But for the sake of time, let’s skip down to verse 48. Jesus again says here, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate 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. All those people who ate manna, they all died.

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. Jesus is the true bread. He is the true manna. If we believe that he is the Son of God, we will never hunger. We will never thirst. We will never be cast out. And we will never die. Those are the promises that Jesus claims here in this passage in John. And we have hope and proof of those promises in his resurrection, which we celebrate today. Jesus is the blessing from God that is given generously despite our grumblings. Jesus is the revelation of God’s glory, and he is the assurance that God keeps his promises.

Conclusion

The blessings of God, despite our unworthiness, are exactly what we need when we need them. And they are richly bestowed upon us beyond even our description. Do you want this indescribable gift?

We can help you. We can help you find this gift. We can help you take advantage of this gift. We can help you give your life to Jesus in humble obedience. We can help you overcome the struggles, the grumbles. That’s why we’re here this morning. We simply want to help you. If you’ll just come forward as we stand and sing.