This week’s midweek ecumenical Lent service is hosted by Living Hope. Tonight’s sermon explore’s Scripture’s promise that God is enough by focusing on the story of God providing manna for the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness.
The Scripture readings for this service are Psalm 145:14b-21 and Exodus 16:1-5, 11-21, 31, 35. I found helpful a sermon on the topic of manna from Charles Spurgeon, given on September 12, 1889.
Here’s the livestream and sermon podcast audio:
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Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
John D. Rockefeller, the first billionaire in the world, was supposedly asked “How much is enough?” How much money more do we need before we’ll be satisfied? His answer was, “Just a little bit more.”
That’s our temptation too, right? Over and over, we are told we don’t have enough, we need more. Watch any advertisement and it’ll tell you something you’re lacking, some way you’re not enough. Your closet might seem full, but you’re missing this fancy coat or pair of pants. Want to spend more time with your grandkids? Our pharmaceutical can help. Your cellphone might have been fine last year, but compared to this new one, it’s junk. You need this new superfood, or who knows what might happen. Subscribe to this service so you don’t miss out. Just a little more.
In our midweek Lenten services this year, we’re looking at five stories from the Bible to make the opposite case. The things of this world—money, success, fame, even our best spiritual practices and efforts—are never going to be enough. But God is enough. God provides.
This week’s story from Exodus 16 helps us define what “enough” is.
We’re jumping in the middle here, so to catch up, for the last four hundred years, God’s chosen people the Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt, forced to do hard labor for the Pharaoh. Finally, God sent Moses to rescue them. Moses argues with the Pharaoh for a while, God sends 10 plagues culminating with the angel of death killing the firstborn males of all the Egyptians but passing over the Israelites, until Pharaoh at last agrees to let God’s people go free.
God miraculously parts the red sea so they can cross, but when Pharaoh changes his mind God drowns his army. The people sing, they rejoice, and they start walking to the land God’s promised them.
And then we get to this story in Exodus 16. “On the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt,” the people start to grumble. They’re hungry. They don’t know long this journey is going to take, and after a month and a half, they’re already starting to forget how bad it was to be slaves in Egypt. Morale is low—an army marches on its stomach, right?
So they come to Moses and they whine: “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
God answers their complaints with a plan to provide for them. Every morning, God will make it rain down manna. What is manna? We’re not exactly sure. In fact, the word “manna” literally means “what is it?” But it’s tasty and it’s edible, so God says, “I’ll provide this each morning” and the people are told to go out and collect enough for the day. Along with the manna, there will be flocks of quail, so they’ll have some meat for dinner every day.
So the Israelite’s complaints are met, and they have food to eat every day for the next 40 years. God provides the manna right up until the first day they eat the produce of the promised land.
Tonight, as we think about what it means to have enough, I want to point out there are two purposes to the manna.
The first purpose is straightforward: God feeds God’s people. Every day, God provides them with nourishment for life.
In a little bit, we’re going to pray the Lord’s prayer together, including a petition asking God to provide us with daily bread, enough to live on. And when we pray for God to provide enough for us, we mean more than just food. Martin Luther says the “Daily Bread” of the Lord’s prayer is “everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house…money, property…good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”
Everything we need for life, everything we live on, is a gift from God. It may not rain down like manna, but everything you have comes from God. Yes, some of it’s due to our hard work, and we like to take some credit, but if our very lives come from God, then again, it’s all ultimately a gift from God.
The second point of the manna is to teach the people to trust God for the future. The Lord’s instructions are clear: “Each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.” (The one exception is that on Fridays, they shall gather enough for two days, since they can’t go out and do any work on the Sabbath.) But one day at a time.
And of course, just like us, the Israelites don’t listen. When they gather more than they need for one day, it breeds worms and becomes foul overnight. The lesson is clear: God provides enough for our need, not necessarily for our greed. Enough is what’s needed to live on, not some illusive goal of just a little bit more. They are to trust God for tomorrow, not rely on themselves.
Now, I am not saying it’s bad to plan ahead, save for retirement, that sort of thing. There are plenty of Scripture verses, especially in Proverbs, about how the wise person saves for the future and considers what to do before taking action.
But when is it enough? We are called to live in faith, trusting God to provide, rather than out of fear of running out.
I don’t mind saying this is the point where I got stuck yesterday working on this sermon. I have the same problem with this story that I have with stories of miraculous healings. Because yes, I have enough, God’s provided for me. Yes, that person was healed, but what about those who aren’t? What about the people in our world right now who don’t have enough to eat? How can I say God provides when others are right now starving?
And the only conclusion I can come to is that yes, God provides. And most often, God does that through people. We get to be part of the work God does. Our faith and trust in God need to make a difference in how we live.
We live in a sinful, broken world, a world where God’s will is often not done. But the Holy Spirit calls us to align our will with God’s will, and to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And perhaps that’s enough.
We get to be manna for other people, we get to help provide daily bread. How would it change the world—how would it change us?—if we trusted that what God gives us is enough for us and to share?
Having enough is more about trusting in God’s provision than about how much we have. And day by day, when God gives us more than enough, may we use it for God’s work, that our neighbors may have enough too, that we may reach the promised land together.
Let’s pray.
Good and gracious God, thank you for the gift of life. Thank you for the many ways you have blessed each of us. We ask today for you to give us this day our daily bread, and stir us to use the abundance we have for the good of others. Help us to trust that you are enough. Amen