“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to rain bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. This way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. . . .I have heard the complaints of the Israelites. Tell them: At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will eat bread until you are full. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Maybe it’s because I grew up in Missouri, the “Show Me State,” but I remember growing up that it was not at all uncommon when someone in a group of friends made a claim that seemed particularly outlandish, the rest of the group responded with two words: prove it. When Israel complained that Moses had dragged them out into the desert to starve them to death, while food was the direct object of their whining, it wasn’t the real issue. The real issue was that they were essentially telling God to prove (yet again) that He really was God. So he did, and in a way that has shaped the cultural memory of the entire world ever since. Let’s talk about what’s going on here.

Remember, this next adventure began when the people of Israel started whining about a lack of food. We don’t know if there was really a lack of food or if they simply were unhappy at their perceived lack of control over their circumstances. Either way, they were whining. The Hebrew word in play there can be translated murmuring or grumbling or complaining. Perhaps the best way I can give you a picture of what this may have been like is from the meeting I’ve been at for the last couple of days. I spent all day yesterday in a room full of pastors who were all listening to a series of different preachers deliver their messages. Many of these guys are from traditions that vocally respond to things a preacher says on stage. When one or two of these guys speak up, you hear an isolated, “Amen!” or two echo around the room. When a whole bunch of them respond, you can’t discern any words. You just heard a dull roar of grunts. Imagine Israel’s murmurings kind of like that, but negative instead of positive in their focus.

In any event, God responds to their grumblings by telling Moses that He is going to provide food for them. They wanted meat and bread, and so He is going to provide both. That evening, He is going to blow a gigantic flock of quail into the camp for the people to kill and eat. They’ll have all the meat they want. From the way this part of God’s provision is presented, it seems like the quail is a one-time deal. We’re not told of God’s doing something like this but one more time (and then it turns out to be a punishment rather than a blessing).

On the bread side of things, God is going to begin giving the people a daily provision of bread. This is going to come in the form of a white, flaky substance that resembles coriander seed. It’s not really clear how it could be flaky and resemble a seed, but this was something new that the people really didn’t have a category for understanding. They were doing their best to make sense out of it. It appeared each morning when the dew evaporated off of the ground. It is often referred to as bread from heaven, but there was really nothing bread-like about it. Perhaps the fact that the people could crush it up and bake it is where it began to be associated with that particular image. The people called it “manna” because they didn’t know what it was. But at least it tasted good – like honey wafers.

God gives the people this daily source of food, but it comes with a slight catch. They are going to have to learn to follow His instructions and trust in Him if they are going to be able to enjoy it as they desire. They are to go out and gather manna each morning for five days. They are to gather just enough to feed themselves and their families for that day. (When Jesus later taught the disciples to pray for God to give them their daily bread, this is the image He had in mind.) They are not to gather more than they need to save up for the next day. Then, on the sixth day of the week, they are to gather enough for two days. On this day and this day alone it will stay good overnight. This will allow them to take a rest from their gathering on the seventh day. God makes sure they know it is Him providing all of this by appearing in a cloud of glory before the people.

I think there are two things we need to see coming out of this introduction to manna. The first is that God was giving the people a daily invitation to trust in Him. Like I said, manna came with a catch. If the people didn’t follow God’s instructions about how to gather it, it was going to backfire on them and not be a good thing. As Moses writes later, when the people inevitably didn’t trust Him at first, the leftovers they saved just in case God wasn’t telling them the truth and this was really going to be a one-time gift like the quail were smelly and filled with worms the next morning. It was no longer good to eat. Either they were going to trust Him, or things weren’t going to go well for them.

That’s still something that’s true for us today. Either we are going to trust God, or things are not going to go well for us. And, each day is an invitation to trust in Him. Yet what does our trusting in Him look like? We don’t see ourselves as dependent on Him for our daily food provision in the same way Israel was. We have the miracle of refrigeration. We can store food for months at a time. Speaking personally, with the exception of things like milk, bread, and fruit that spoil fairly quickly even with refrigeration, my family could eat for at least two weeks, and probably more without going to the store even once. The meals would start looking pretty odd by the end of the experiment, but we would at least have full bellies.

For us, accepting God’s daily invitation to trust in Him takes the form of our receiving what He has provided us with intentional gratitude and a willing acknowledgement that in spite of appearances, we really wouldn’t have it if He didn’t provide it. We are regularly tempted to believe that we are far more capable of meeting our own needs than we actually are. We could lose everything in a flash. The fact that we don’t is a testament to His faithfulness and grace. The other way we accept this invitation is by intentionally living out the character of Christ in our daily interactions with the people around us. Doing that will often go against our perceived self-interest. We do it anyway because of our trust in Him to provide for us even if the world doesn’t respond well to our display of Christ’s character.

The other thing we need to see here is God’s revelation of His character in a profound way. This is a facet of His character He was step-by-step helping the people to apprehend and believe. He is the God who not only can, but does provide for His people. It is not simply that He merely has the power to provide for our needs. All of the ancient gods had the power to provide for the needs of their people. That was to be expected. They were gods after all. With them, though, you never knew when they were going to deign themselves to actually do it. They constantly had to be appeased with sacrifices and showered with praises to put them in the mood to exercise their power for the benefit of their people. And even then, they still might not do it. The gods were a capricious lot. They really couldn’t be trusted. You did what they commanded, and hoped for the best. Of course, now we understand that the issue with the ancient gods was neither one of willingness nor ability. They didn’t exist. The people were worshiping nothing. Anything they received came from their own labor and the gracious provision of the One True God. But they didn’t recognize this.

The God of Israel was different. He was not merely able to meet the needs of His people, He was willing. He gladly used His power for their benefit. He took the initiative to go above and beyond what they needed because He is a good God. He didn’t need to be sated with sacrifices. His ego didn’t require their buttering Him up before He would consider playing ball with their requests. He did want them to do what He said, but this obedience and trust on their part were never expected to simply happen because He deserved that as God (although He certainly did deserve it as God), but rather as a response to His initial graciousness toward them. He didn’t drop down out of Heaven demanding obedience. He came and rescued them from generations of slavery, rescued them from a powerful army looking to destroy them, provided water and food for them when they couldn’t provide for themselves. In the next chapter He is going to rescue them from another enemy attack and provide yet more miraculous water for them. It is only after He establishes Himself as a God worthy of their trust and obedience that He invites them into such a way of life.

Friends, He is still that same God today. He is the God who provides for His people. Now, this doesn’t mean He is a vending machine who is beholden to meet our every whim and desire. That’s how the ancient gods worked (though they never worked that way very well). That’s how we want our gods to work. We want them on retainer to do what we need when we need it and to otherwise stay out of our way. That’s not the kind of God He is. He’s better than that. He meets our needs from out of His gracious abundance, and then invites us to trust in Him. He invites us into His way of life that will bring blessing and goodness in even greater abundance in our lives if we will live it. While we live in a world that is broken by sin, living His way of life will also bring persecution and suffering because the world doesn’t like or understand His way of life, but the life He has invited us to join Him in is eternal. The suffering we endure now doesn’t even begin to compare with the glories of what we have ahead of us in Him.

This is the worth of stories like these. They give us the confirmation that God is who Jesus tells us He is. He has always been this God. He always will be. We can trust in Him and that trust won’t ever prove to have been the wrong decision. I hope you’ll consider giving your trust to Him today.