“The house of Israel named the substance manna. It resembled coriander seed, was white, and tasted like wafers made with honey. Moses said, ‘This is what the Lord has commanded: “Two quarts of it are to be preserved throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.”‘ Moses told Aaron, ‘Take a container and put two quarts of manna in it. Then place it before the Lord to be preserved throughout your generations.’ As the Lord commanded Moses, Aaron placed it before the testimony to be preserved.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Around my house, I have a frustratingly well-developed reputation for forgetting things. I’m getting better. I didn’t used to be like that. Throughout seminary I used to amaze my classmates because I never used a calendar. I didn’t write down any assignments beyond what was already in the syllabi. I just remembered everything. Now, as much information as my brain retains, short-term things are worthless to me if I don’t write them down. And set reminders for them on my phone. We are a forgetful people. We always have been. Let’s talk today about God’s final instructions to Israel regarding the food He provided for them and why remembering is so important.

One of the things scholars like to debate is the editorial process that might possibly lie behind the Scriptures as we have them today. For instance, and we’ll talk about this a bit more when we get to chapter 18, when Moses’ father-in-law comes to visit and winds up giving him some advice on how to better lead the people, the context in which that advice is given suggests a chronology after the giving of the Law. Moses was spending all his time offering legal judgments to the people. Jethro told him to raise up some other leaders to lighten his load. Keen-eyed interpreters, though, wonder how Moses could have been spending all his time offering legal judgments to the people if they hadn’t yet been given a law to govern their behavior and from out of which Moses offered his judgments. Yet chapter 18 falls two full chapters before Moses is recorded as giving the people the Law.

A similar sort of thing comes into place here. God’s instructions to Moses about preserving a jar of manna for future generations to see and remember what He had done for them seems to assume on the existence of the Tabernacle. After all, where else were the people going to place this jar before the Lord if they didn’t have a central altar used in worshiping Him? Perhaps God was telling them all of this in anticipation of their eventually having such a place, but His instructions seem to suggest such a place already exists.

Critical scholars will use apparent discrepancies like this to question the overall reliability of the text. After all, if the text was edited so badly as to have stories all out of their proper chronological sequence like this, how can we trust anything else it says? Yet such a conclusion is neither right nor necessary. Ancient writers very often organized their stories thematically without being nearly as concerned with proper chronological sequence as we are today and no one questioned the reliability of their presentations. They simply operated under a different set of assumptions than we do. Also, it may very well be that the people did indeed already have a central place of worshiping the Lord, of entering into His presence and we simply haven’t been told about it yet because Moses didn’t consider that a detail worth mentioning.

In the bigger picture, though, while we should definitely ask and seek to answer challenging and even critical questions about the text like that, the danger they pose is that our attention gets all focused on them to the exclusion of what the main point of any given text actually is. Getting all wrapped up in minutiae like that can easily keep us from missing what God really intended for us to take away from a particular passage. In this case, the point here is that God is giving the people a means of remembering what He had done for them. Why would He go out of His way to do that?

Because the people were incredibly forgetful. As soon as something amazing and miraculous God had done for them was out of their immediate field of vision, they forgot all about it and focused entirely on whatever was currently in front of them. If it happened to be a challenge of some kind, it was the biggest, scariest, most impossible-to-overcome challenge they had ever faced, they were probably going to die because of it, and it would be better if they just went back to Egypt. Think about it. No sooner had they marched out of Egypt in victory formation than they cried and wailed because Egypt’s army was pursuing them. No sooner had they walked across the Red Sea on the dry seabed than they started to complain they were going to die of dehydration. Just days after God miraculously provided water for them, they were sure as the world they were all going to starve to death in the desert, bringing us to this very story. The people forgot constantly.

By putting this jar of manna where they could regularly see it, they were going to have a constant reminder of His faithfulness and provision. He was able and willing to meet their needs, whatever those needs happened to be. Of course, this reminder wouldn’t do them much good if they didn’t pay any attention to it, but at least it was there. God was trying. He was still providing them with everything they needed. They only had to receive what He was giving and stay committed to doing what He said.

The same is true for us. We are still a forgetful people. Think how many times you have been in a stressful situation you were sure was going to completely overwhelm and undo you, and instead of leaning into faith and an application of the character of Christ you ran straight into anxiety or fear or anger or hopelessness or something else that completely ignored God’s long and well-established record of helping His people in similarly difficult situations in the past; of His helping you in similarly difficult situations in your past. And just so we’re clear: You don’t have any rational basis for assuming that this time will be different and He’ll let you down.

When God has done something for you, mark that occasion. Create a reminder and put that reminder in a place where you will see it regularly. Let it serve to build your faith over time. Better even than that, spend more time studying the Scriptures, the best record of God’s faithfulness there is. Learn His character and then test it by relying on Him when you normally wouldn’t. This reliance takes the form of living out of the character of Christ even when that doesn’t seem to make sense as a way forward. It looks like staying engaged with the church when you’d rather be alone. It looks like selflessly serving others when you have your own issues that need to be addressed. It looks like following Jesus faithfully when your own path looks like it’ll get you there faster. Remember and trust. Remember to trust. He will not leave you hanging when you do.