Manna

Exodus 16:4

“Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.”

When you walk through IKEA you see all kinds of nice things like beds, dressers, and shelves. You will also see areas where someone has a whole room organized for show. They start you on one end of the maze and some time later, after looking at all the mock rooms, you immerge with little slips of paper that represent what you want to purchase. You end up, at the end of maze, in a warehouse where all your fine couches, beds, and dressers are in neatly packed in cardboard boxes that you have to take home and put together. All of these items have instructions inside the boxes that tell you how to put that item together. Try to put those beds and shelving units together without the instructions and you end up with a mess that looks nothing the picture. It is always a good idea to read the instructions first. Thanks IKEA for driving this point home.

The Israelites did not go through IKEA, but they were in the desert of Sin across the Red Sea near Mt. Sinai. They started to grumble and complain to Moses and Aaron saying “…but you have brought us out into this desert to starve the entire assembly to death.” They were not happy campers and all the eyes were on Moses and Aaron. Verse 4 tells us what the Lord was going to do. He was going to send bread from heaven for His people called manna. But wait, there is a catch. The Israelites were supposed to collect enough for one day for five days of the week but on the sixth day, they were to collect enough for two days because the seventh day was a sabbath, a day of rest. The bread held was still good and everyone ate on the sabbath. This was a test from the Lord and he would be taking score. Most of them did just as the Lord told them to do, but a few did not obey the Lord and collected more than one days manna. The manna they did not eat on days one through five was filled with maggots and rotten the next morning.

If you look at it closely, the Israelites were led out of Egypt, a place of plenty. The Lord allowed them to plunder the Egyptians by taking gold and silver from all the houses of Egypt. He protected them from Pharaoh’s army and led them through the Red Sea on dry land only to end up a place where the only thing that was in plentiful supply was sand and rocks. Needing basic things to survive, the Lord gave them manna every morning but it came with a test. The test for them and also for us is to realize that the Lord will provide for you everyday, but when you put yourself in front of the provision of the Lord the provisions get rotten.

We have to come to a place where we trust in the Lord every day, and just like the command to collect only enough manna for that day, we must also feed on some Bible time every morning. The manna only lasted one day. We must renew our minds every day by the washing of word of God. The Israelites called the bread of Heaven manna which translates to “what is it?” God will provide each day and often times He does it in ways we don’t see coming.

Today, make a commitment to get up and collect your manna of the day. Feed on the Bible before life dishes you up a set of instructions that will take most of your time. The Lord tested the Israelites. They ate manna for 40 years and it stopped on the day they crossed the Jordan River going into the promised land. Are you passing the test and feeding on the Word of God?