Learning Each Day to Depend on God (Part 1) (Exodus 16)

It is obvious that we do not yet live in the Promised Land of the new heavens and earth — a land where the river of the water of life, bright as crystal is flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city with the tree of life on either side of the river with its twelve kinds of fruit — yielding its fruit each month with its leaves for the healing of the nations and no longer being there anything accursed.  A place where there will no longer be night or the chaos of the seas.  No, it is obvious that right now we who trust in Jesus Christ for our salvation are yet wandering in the wilderness where there is sickness, death, sin, chaos, and evil.  We do not wander in the wilderness under the wrath of God, as was the case for Israel during her forty year sojourn, because Jesus has died for our sins.  Yet since we continue to sin we know that God still tests and tries us — God still has a hard lesson for us to learn — a lesson about depending on Him.  So we are going to look at this passage where God tests Israel with manna, which in Hebrew means, “What is it?”  there is a positive side to learning each day to depend on God, and so we will revisit this passage next Sunday to explore that, but for now I want you to hear this text aware that we too live in the wilderness and we too do that which is wrong and fail to do good and asking God what hard lesson He might be trying to teach you.

New audio link.