Bible Readings
Reading 47: Yahweh provides for Israel’s daily needs
Read Exodus 16:1–36.
It’s been a month since Yahweh rescued Israel out of Egypt. He saved them from the ten plague judgments, saw them safely through the parting of the Red Sea, and destroyed the Egyptian army without any effort from the people. Imagine how these miracles could build one’s confidence in God.
And yet very quickly, the people start complaining again!
This time, the complaint was about the availability of food. They started to re-imagine their slave lives in Egypt as lives full of meat and bread. Instead of turning to God for help with this new challenge, they started wishing to go back to the past, even though the past had been extremely difficult.
Though they had brought livestock with them, they couldn’t eat all their animals at once. They would need an additional supply of daily food. This food situation was actually a deliberate test from Yahweh as He instructed them to camp in the wilderness. He gave them these small tests to let them practise obedience to Him.
He said He would provide meat and bread. The meat was in the form of quail. He would direct quail to settle into Israel’s camp. He also said He would provide a miraculous food. It would appear in the morning like dew but disappear soon after. The food looked like lumps of coriander seed; it tasted like a honeyed wafer; and it could be kneaded like dough to bake or boil. It was such a mysterious, miraculous food that the people called it, “What is it?” or “manna” in Hebrew.
These were God’s tests for them.
Each family was to collect just enough manna for the day and they could not keep any overnight.
There was to be no manna collection on the day of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was God’s gift of rest every seventh day of the week.
So the people had to gather new manna each day. And the Israelites could not gather extra even if they tried. On the sixth day, God told them to gather twice as much so that on the seventh day, the day of rest called the Sabbath, they could have food without having to gather or prepare the manna. God would ensure the manna wouldn’t go bad on the Sabbath.
These instructions were not hard to obey. After experiencing so much of God’s goodness and power, could they trust Him in day-to-day living?
The Israelites could choose to humbly obey God’s instructions. They could give thanks with grateful hearts for His daily provision. Or they could thoughtlessly and selfishly consume the provisions without any thankfulness. They could ignore His instructions and do what they thought best.
What was the result? Some of the Israelites disobeyed. These food tests were not dangerous, but they showed the people the state of their own hearts. When they tried to store manna for the next day or tried to collect food on the designated day of rest, their disobedient actions showed their faith was shallow and their trust in Yahweh was inconsistent.
Later, Yahweh instructed that a container of manna was to be kept as a reminder of His provision during these years in the wilderness. Later generations, when looking at the container of manna, would be reminded that their own existence was based upon Yahweh’s kind provision to their forefathers. Knowing their history with God would help them not just appreciate who God is, but how their lives were dependant upon Him.
We too can learn the same lesson. If we are mindful and thankful to God for His daily provision (the food and resources He provides, the security and safety, His wisdom and guidance, etc.), we will be more ready to acknowledge Him as the God of our lives and more ready to submit to His instructions on how to live.
From the Israelites we can also learn that a God-led victory over one major life challenge (like escaping from Egypt) doesn’t mean we’ve automatically conquered all of life’s challenges (like failure to obey the food instructions). But every victory builds our experience with God and allows us to go forward with stronger faith. But if we learn nothing from our life challenges, then we will keep facing the same fears and issues.
One other thing we can learn is that God didn’t explain how the manna worked. He just told them what to do and then told them to obey. Often, we want to know all the “whys” and “hows”. But these explanations sometimes don’t settle our hearts. We end up with more questions. What we can also do is to remember God’s track record in the Bible and in our lives, and then continue to trust God’s promises to us and remember the kind of God He is—a promise-making, promise-keeping God. Learning to trust God and His promises helps us to live in a calm, peaceful manner.