Bible Passage: Exodus 16:15-31
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: August 11, 2024

Bulletin August 11, 2024

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to say, Give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6:11).  It is a very simple, no-nonsense petition.  In it we simply ask our dear Father to give us enough bread for this day.

I have sometimes wondered if when the disciples heard this, they remembered the stories they would have surely heard about the “daily bread” the Lord had given to their ancestors in the desert under Moses.  They knew all about the bread the Lord gave to the Israelites for 40 years!  Each day – except Saturdays – the quite literally provided daily bread.

This morning we have before us the story of how the Lord provided this bread for his people.  As we consider this lesson there are any number of lessons we can learn for ourselves from The Original Daily Bread.

To appreciate our text, we need to back-fill a little of the story.  The Israelites have been out of Egypt for about a month and half.  The provisions they brought with them from Egypt are beginning to run out.  The people begin to get restless.  In verse 3 of Exodus 16 they say to Moses and Aaron, If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt!  There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death. (16:3)  Drama!

The Lord then says to Moses, I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites.  Tell them…(16:11)  How do you think that sentence ends?  What should Moses tell them?  “Tell them…the Lord is done with you.  He saves you from slavery in Egypt and all you can do is gripe and say you want to go back!  Okay, wish granted!  Go back into slavery in Egypt!  You bunch of ingrates!”  Here is actually how the sentence continues:  Tell them, “At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread.   But the Lord promises them food!

We are told, [I]n the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.  When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost appeared on the desert floor.  When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.  Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. (v. 13-15)  “The bread the LORD has given.”  They deserved a spanking!  God gives them the gift of bread.  There is lesson #1 about this bread.  It is a gracious gift!  It was for Israel, and it is for us too.  What have you done to deserve a refrigerator full of food?  Who are you that God owes you cupboards filled to overflowing with six different kinds of pasta and four different boxes of cereal?  I grumble and complain about how much I pay for my daily bread, and yet always seem to have enough of it!  Grace indeed!

Daily bread is also a lesson in trust.  Manna came with instructions.  First of all, the Israelites were to go out each morning and gather an omer per person in the house.  An omer is about two quarts.  The Israelites would find that this would be the perfect amount for each household for that day!  They were not to gather a week’s worth, or a month’s worth.  They were not to gather more and try to save some till the next day.  Some people tested this, but when they checked on their manna the next morning it was rotten and covered in maggots!  Manna truly was “daily bread.”  We are told, when the sun grew hot, it melted away. (v. 21)  Imagine that!  There you are out in the desert.  You have in your clutches your little omer of manna and as you look out on the desert floor you see all the manna evaporate before your eyes.  All gone!  You wonder, “Will it be back tomorrow?”  You will have to trust the LORD and find out.

The LORD still wants to be trusted to provide you your daily bread.  Jesus taught us this in his Sermon on the Mount.  He said, So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?”  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. (Matthew 6:31-32)   Jesus says, “Don’t worry.”  You have a heavenly Father.  He knows that you need food to eat!  He knows that you need hydration!  He knows that you need clothes to function in decent society!  Trust that he will give you today what you need for today!  He is your Father.  Father’s do that for the children they love.

There is yet one more lesson in this daily bread of our text.  This bread was a lesson on priorities.  What do we mean?  If we go back to our text we will see that there were special instructions for gathering the manna on Friday.  On Friday they WERE to gather two-days’ worth.  That’s because the Lord wasn’t going to send manna on Saturday.  Saturday was a special day.  It was the Sabbath for the LORD.  “Sabbath” means “rest.”  The Sabbath was a shadow of the rest we ultimately find in Jesus.  So reducing this to the simplest form we could say that part of what the LORD taught the people with the manna was that Jesus was more important than gathering bread!  Rest for your soul in Jesus is more important than bread for your body.

That is a good reminder for us.  It can be so easy to schedule and plan right over the top of Word and Sacrament on Sunday morning either because we believe we have to go out and gather more bread on this day, or it is more important to enjoy our bread in recreation and leisure.  Shame on us!  Part of the lesson of the manna was there is nothing more important than finding rest for your soul in Jesus’ love and forgiveness.  This is to enjoy the Bread of Life.

“Give us this day our daily bread.”  That remains the prayer of Jesus’ disciples to this day.  Let us learn the lessons of the manna, the “original” daily bread.  Let us learn that God gives daily bread by grace.  Let us trust him to provide what we need one day at a time, not worrying about next week, or next month, or next year.  And let us remember, as important as bread is for our bodies, Jesus is even more important for our souls!

Amen.