“So they set it aside until morning as Moses commanded, and it didn’t stink or have maggots in it. ‘Eat it today,’ Moses said, ‘because today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you won’t find any in the field. For six days you will gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none.’ Yet on the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they did not find any. Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long will you refuse to keep my commands and instructions? Understand that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he will give you two days’ worth of bread. Each of you stay where you are; no one is to leave his place on the seventh day.’ So the people rested on the seventh day.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the most natural things in the world is for children to trust their parents. At some point they become more skeptical or even outright untrusting, but while this may be because their parents earned such suspicion (don’t ever lie to your kids, even in jest; that does far more damage to them than you could imagine), more often it is because sin has crept further into their hearts, leading them to a greater mistrust of everything. That’s one of the things sin does: it cultivates mistrust and doubt in our hearts. Because of this, trusting in God is not natural for us. As a result, God gives us things to help us learn to trust. Let’s talk about one of the most important ones He gave to Israel.

The story of God’s providing manna for the people of Israel is one of the most significant moments on the Exodus journey. It is significant for several different reasons, but two stand out as the most significant. It established further the character of God as someone who was not only able, but willing to meet their physical needs. This was important context for the giving of the Law that happens soon. As I was in fact just talking about with one of my boys yesterday afternoon, God never comes and gives commands to us without first establishing a context of relationship and trust. Once He has made clear that He is unquestionably committed to our best interest, then He comes to us and invites us into a relationship with Him that will involve our doing what He says. We can take or leave this invitation, though. There’s never any force behind it. Turning it down, however, means we will miss out on the chance to be in a relationship with the God who is wholly committed to our good.

The second thing this story does is to give an initial baseline for understanding the Sabbath. We talked about this some yesterday. As we said then, and as I want to explore in a little more detail today, the Sabbath is not primarily about not working. It’s not even primarily about going to some kind of a worship gathering. The Sabbath is primarily about God’s inviting us deeper into a relationship with Him rooted in our trust in His character as demonstrated by our willingness to keep His commands.

That’s something that comes out here in the language God uses when talking with Moses about the people’s unwillingness to trust in Him. He tells Moses that He gave the Sabbath to the people. It was intended to be a gift. It was never merely a command. It wasn’t about restricting them from doing this or that. It was always meant to be something for them. As Jesus would later explain to the Pharisees, the Sabbath was made for people, not the other way around. They were treating the Sabbath like it was something that existed entirely on its own at God’s command like a law of nature, and people needed to keep it simply because that was how the world worked. That wasn’t the case at all. God gave it to people as a gift for them. Yes, it comes with some commands associated with it, but these were never intended to be the main feature.

God passionately desires for us to trust in Him. He does that for a few reasons. His character is fundamentally trustworthy. He is the source of all truth. When we place our trust in Him, we are accepting Him for who He is. He wants that for Himself just like you do. He wants our trust because you can’t have a relationship with someone you don’t trust, and He wants a relationship with us. He wants our trust because, as we have said, He is able and willing to meet our needs. He doesn’t want us running around worrying about what we are going to eat or what we are going to drink or what we are going to wear like Jesus said the Gentiles (by which He meant pagans and not simply non-Jews) do. He wants us to be able to freely enjoy our lives in His creation without the anxiety of meeting all our needs all by ourselves weighing us down. The more we trust Him, the more we are able to do just that.

So, He gave Israel the Sabbath. He gives us the Holy Spirit and an invitation into His eternal Sabbath that we can start to enjoy now, but which we will fully enjoy on Jesus’ return.

Israel struggled to keep it because they struggled to trust Him. Sin led them to the conclusion that they had to depend entirely on themselves in order to get what they needed. As a result, even though they were sort of trusting God by going out to gather manna each morning in the first place, when God told them to take a day off from that, some of them didn’t. They went out because they figured they needed to hedge their bets just in case. They wouldn’t trust.

When we follow their lead in this, we’ll fall to the same anxieties and frustrations they faced. We’ll see the world through the same lens of scarcity. Nothing will ever truly be enough. People will be our enemies. Joy and peace will be fleeting. Life will be miserable. Trust isn’t easy to give because of the sin that resides in our hearts, but God will always be worthy of it. When you give Him your trust, He will be able to show Himself trustworthy to you. Take that step and trust in Him. You will be glad you did.