Most of you, I think you know, Pastor Matthew is on vacation.
And just to reemphasize what Jim Franks mentioned last week, that's normal.
It might be new for our church, but it's normal for a pastor to be released to vacation.
He's enjoying his time with his family in Maryland for the next couple weeks.
And instead, we have Reverend Jeff Kreisel.
He's also a familiar face.
You've seen him a few times before.
And I think enough times that we can bestow on you the title Friend of Cheyenne Mountain.
So I'm going to do that today.
I bestow upon you the title Friend of Cheyenne Mountain.
And many of you have heard from Jeff before, and he's going to be preaching for us today.
His other title is RUF Campus Minister at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
So he's been ministering there for almost two years now?
Almost three years now, yeah, as the campus minister.
So that's a ministry that needs your prayers.
It's a ministry that's growing by leaps and bounds.
But there are a lot of cadets struggling with a lot of college things, normal and abnormal things.
And they have a campus minister in Jeff that needs your prayers.
He also has a sign-up sheet in the back where you can get on his email list and some swag, some reminders of RUF serving invisibly to us way down here in the south, but serving faithfully at the Air Force Academy.
So I'd like to invite Jeff Kreisel up to preach for us this morning.
Thanks, brother.
Hi, well, good morning.
My name is Jeff Kreisel.
I'm excited to be here again with you this morning, bringing God's Word to God's people.
This is the second year in a row where I've had the privilege of bringing God's Word to you on the first Sunday of the year.
So that's kind of a neat thing.
All right, so this morning we are going to return to the book of Exodus, and we're going to see what life looks like after justification.
Okay, we're going to see what life looks like after crossing the Red Sea, after crossing over from death to life.
And as we looked at last week, as I mentioned, life after justification does not get easier, right?
But it does get better.
It's a huge thing that we need to remember.
Our lives may become more difficult on the justification side of the sea, but our lives also become more joyful and more content and more satisfying and more purposeful.
After crossing the Red Sea, the first place that God leads the Israelites is into the wilderness.
He takes them into the wilderness.
It is a scary wilderness.
It's unpredictable.
It is a harsh wilderness.
It is a wilderness where their faith would be tested and stretched through a number of various trials.
He takes them into a wilderness that would appear barren and inhospitable.
But it's also a wilderness where God would continually meet their needs.
God takes them into a wilderness that would expose their doubts and their fears.
But it's also a wilderness where God would comfort and assure his people during the hardest of times.
God takes them into a wilderness in which God himself would sometimes seem absent and distant and removed.
But it's also a wilderness where God would walk with his people every step of the journey.
He takes them into a wilderness.
He takes them into a wilderness that would sometimes feel purposeless.
But it's also a wilderness where God has written purpose into every word of their sanctifying stories.
Are you familiar with this wilderness?
Have you walked through this wilderness?
Have you walked through the valley of the shadow of death?
If you have crossed over, if you have gone through those baptizing waters of the Red Sea,
and you are now on the justification side of salvation, I know that you have.
I am sure that you know that this wilderness often isn't pleasant.
I am also sure that there have been times during your wilderness wanderings,
maybe even this morning, that you have forgotten the purpose of the wilderness.
You have forgotten why God has placed you here.
And you have also probably, during some point in your wilderness wanderings,
you have forgotten where you are headed.
We're not going to forget this morning, we are going to remember where God is leading us.
So buckle up, because we are heading into the sanctifying wilderness of the Christian life this morning.
So I invite you all to please stand for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, and inspired word
that is sufficient for our salvation.
We'll be looking at Exodus 16, verses 1 through 4,
then we're going to bounce and we're going to look at 13 through 21.
They set out from Elam, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin,
which is between Elam and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month,
after they had departed from the land of Egypt.
And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
And the people of Israel said to them,
Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt,
when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full.
For you have brought us into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.
Then the Lord said to Moses,
Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you.
And the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day,
that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not.
In the evening, quail came up and covered the camp,
and in the morning dew lay around the camp.
And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine flake-like thing,
fine as frost on the ground.
When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another,
What is it?
For they did not know what it was.
And Moses said to them,
It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.
This is what the Lord has commanded.
Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can.
You shall each take an omer according to the number of persons that each of you has in his tent.
And the people of Israel did so.
They gathered some more, some less.
But when they measured it with an omer,
whoever gathered much had nothing left over,
and whoever gathered little had no lack.
Each of them gathered as much as he could eat.
And Moses said to them,
Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.
But they did not listen to Moses.
Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank.
And Moses was angry with them.
Morning by morning they gathered it,
each as much as he could eat.
But when the sun grew hot, it melted.
This is the word of our Lord.
Let me pray for us.
Heavenly Father,
you are the author and sustainer of our faith.
And we pray this morning
that you would show us what we do not see,
that you would teach us what we do not know,
that you would convict us where we need to be convicted,
and encourage us where we need to be encouraged.
We pray, Lord,
that you would use my finite words
for your infinite and holy purposes,
for our good and your glory.
In Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
You may be seated.
Amen.
No, I put a,
I put some cover on this.
Nice.
All right, so I want us to,
I want us to see that the wilderness
shows us three things in this passage.
The first thing the wilderness shows us
is that it exposes our fearfulness.
All right?
Our text begins two months
after the Israelites have crossed the Red Sea.
Okay?
After 400 years in Egypt,
in much of that time they were slaves to Pharaoh,
they were finally free.
They were finally under God's rule and reign
instead of Pharaoh.
They are now following God by day and by night
through this wilderness.
And they are headed to the promised land.
They are headed to a land
that is flowing with milk and honey.
They're headed to the land of Canaan.
The picture here is that it is essentially
like a paradise on earth
where God dwells and meets with his people.
He lives with them forever.
They're headed there.
They're headed to the promised land.
But they're not there yet.
They're in the wilderness.
And in the wilderness,
the Israelites have discovered
that God's decisive defeat of Pharaoh
has not solved all of their problems.
In fact, God's decisive defeat of Pharaoh
has introduced a new set of problems
and a new set of challenges.
Challenges that would expose their fear,
their most deep-rooted fears.
And these fears would cause them
to forget their redemption story.
They would start to long to return
to slavery in Egypt.
You see, like us, the Israelites,
they feared a whole lot of things.
Okay?
Our fears are not unique.
Okay?
They feared what we fear.
They feared failure.
They feared isolation.
They feared being alone.
They feared the unknown.
They feared being uncomfortable and insecure.
They feared being unproductive.
They feared a lack of purpose.
They feared feeling shame and guilt.
But more than anything else, like us,
they feared death.
The great enemy.
Not just their great enemy,
our great enemy.
Like the Israelites,
we fear death more than anything else.
And that is what they feared here in Exodus 16.
This is a universal condition.
All right?
It doesn't matter what you believe.
Everybody fears death.
I was reading last night
just kind of some strategies you can employ
to combat your fear of death.
And the number one thing
was to convince yourself
that death is a natural occurrence.
But how is that working out for these people?
They still fear it.
You can't avoid it.
You can't run away from the fear of death
because it isn't natural.
And we all know that it's not natural.
There's something wrong.
It is the great enemy.
We try to escape from it, though.
A few years ago,
I read a story of a guy
who built this beautiful playground
right next to a cemetery.
And it's an amazing park,
and nobody brought their kids
to play at this amazing playground.
And he was kind of stumped.
He was trying to figure out why it is
that no one was bringing their children
to play at this playground.
So he thought outside the box.
He's like, maybe it's the cemetery.
So he built a fence
to block people from seeing the cemetery.
He put the fence up.
And the next day,
the playground was just filled
with laughing children.
We wanted to block it out
because we're uncomfortable
with just being reminded
that death is in our future.
We don't like to grapple with death
and the questions surrounding death.
But we try all sorts of things.
Just look at what our culture does
to combat their fear of death.
People get plastic surgery, right,
late in their life
because they see the aging process,
and they want to combat that
because they know what aging brings.
A lot of people play video games
that are really horrific, right?
They make light of death.
They dumb it down.
They try to view death through a screen,
try to separate themselves from it
because they can't handle the reality of it.
Something that's new in our day and age
is that when a loved one dies,
we've started to have celebration
of life ceremonies
instead of mournful funerals
where we grieve the loss of our loved one
in a healthy way.
We don't want to touch death
with a 10-foot pole.
The same is true with the Israelites.
You see, the irony in Exodus 16
is that the same Israelites
who were so afraid of death
were redeemed.
They were delivered from death's grip
just two months earlier, right?
The Egyptians were about to kill them.
The Israelites were surrounded.
They had nowhere to run and hide.
Death was all but certain,
but then God saves them from death's grip,
and then the Egyptians perish in the sea instead.
The threat to their lives
had already been defeated.
You see the irony here?
It's an irony that is not unique to them.
This irony pervades our lives as well.
In the wilderness,
our greatest fears are exposed,
especially our fear of death.
The wilderness, it causes us to forget
that God has already delivered us
from death's grip.
In the wilderness,
we forget that Jesus already went through death
in order to defeat death
so that we wouldn't be afraid of death.
In the wilderness,
we forget that Jesus has already redeemed us.
We're free.
We don't have to be slaves of fear anymore.
In the wilderness,
the Israelites' fears were exposed.
They didn't know if they would survive this wilderness.
They didn't know if the God who delivered them from Egypt
would also meet their physical daily needs
here in this harsh wilderness.
And I'll be honest,
it's hard to,
you can't blame them, right?
They're in a really rough condition, right?
I have been to some Middle Eastern deserts in my time.
For many months,
I've lived in Iraq and Afghanistan
and Qatar and Kuwait.
And I can tell you all from my experience,
these deserts are not hospitable places, right?
They're dry.
They are hot.
The terrain is rocky and it's really rough.
It is not a hospitable place to be.
And the Israelites have been wandering
in this barren desert,
which is what wilderness is actually translated to mean
in Hebrew.
It means desert.
They've been wandering in this desert
for two months now
and they have many mouths to feed.
And they have very little food
and water and shelter
and they have enemies surrounding them still.
This is a fearful place to be, right?
Why would God do such a thing?
Why would he lead them here?
Why wouldn't God just skip the whole wilderness
wandering stage
and like teleport his people
from the Red Sea to the Promised Land?
Why wouldn't he just rapture them up?
There is purpose to the wilderness.
God purposefully led the Israelites
into the wilderness
in order to expose and defeat their fears
by strengthening their faith.
Okay?
He's going to expose and defeat their fear
by strengthening their faith
in the midst of the wilderness.
My friends,
while the wilderness is always painful,
it is always purposeful.
God understood that it would be easier
to get the Israelites out of Egypt
than to get Egypt out of the Israelites.
Right?
The Israelites have been in Egypt for 400 years.
They have adopted their idolatries.
They have adopted their idols.
They have adopted all of these sins.
God understood this.
And so he uses the wilderness
to sanctify them,
to rid them of these lifelong idolatries
that they had picked up
over the course of 400 years in Egypt.
You see,
while the Israelites were no longer
under the rule of Pharaoh,
they were still living as if they were.
They didn't really believe
that they were free.
They didn't really believe
that God was with them,
that God was for them,
that he loved them more
than they could fathom.
They didn't really believe
that they could live by faith
instead of by fear.
What about you?
Do you believe that God is with you
and that he loves you more
than you can fathom?
Truly, do you believe that?
If you do,
then why are you still living
like a slave to fear?
Do you believe that you are
who God says that you are?
Do you believe truly
that you are a beloved child of God?
If you do,
then why are you still living
like an orphan?
When Moses and Aaron
confronted Pharaoh
for the first time,
do you remember
what God told Moses
to say to Pharaoh?
He told him to say this.
He said,
Israel is my firstborn son,
and I say to you,
let my son go
that he may serve me.
These are family terms
that God is using.
He's describing himself
as their father,
and he is their child
because they were,
because of the covenant
that God made with Abraham.
The Israelites were
God's covenant adopted children.
God was their loving father,
and he was with them,
and he was for them,
and if God was for them,
who could be against them?
If God was with them,
what could they fear?
Listen,
in order to get Egypt
out of you,
in order to be free from fear,
in order to be who you are,
you have to remember
who God says that you are.
You have to remember
who God says that you are,
and you aren't a slave,
and you aren't an orphan.
You're a child of God.
Truly, you are.
A few years ago,
I came across a story
of a young girl
who was adopted
by this very loving
Christian family,
and the home
that she came from
was really broken,
and this poor girl
was abused,
both physically
and emotionally,
and she had deep
external
and internal
scars and wounds.
Right?
And so,
moving into a home
with a loving family
was not easy for her
because she carried Egypt
into that home,
and it also wasn't easy
for her new parents.
Although she was legally
their daughter,
this girl did not treat
her new parents
as her parents.
Instead,
she was cold towards them,
and she was full of fear
whenever they were around,
fearing that they would
do the same
that her previous parents
did to her.
Well,
over the course
of the next year,
this young girl
was loved on
by her parents,
and her parents
met her daily needs.
And over time,
her heart began
to soften.
It began to warm
towards her new parents
until one day,
after multiple failed
attempts to tie her shoe,
she walks over
to her father,
and for the first time
in her life,
she says,
Daddy,
will you help me
tie my shoe?
And he has tears
streaking down his face,
and he says,
Yes,
I would love to.
You see,
in this moment,
what was legally true
had become practically true.
She was already
their daughter,
but she didn't fully
understand or believe it,
but now it had become
practically true.
That truth had been
driven into her heart.
It took a year
in the wilderness
for her to realize
that she was no longer
a slave to fear,
that she was no longer
an orphan,
but she was a daughter
who was deeply loved.
According to J.I. Packer,
the revelation
to the believer
that God is their father
is in a sense
the climax
of the entire Bible.
I'm going to say
that one again.
The revelation
to the believer
that God is their father
is in a sense
the climax
of the entire Bible.
When you understand
and firmly believe
that God is your loving father,
that changes everything.
Right?
It changes everything.
Being able to cry out,
Abba, Father,
is at the heart
of Christianity.
And it is the truth
that must fight your fear
in the wilderness.
The second thing
the wilderness shows us
is that it addresses
our forgetfulness.
Our problem
is like the Israelites.
We are a very forgetful people.
With the Israelites,
God was visibly with them.
He was visibly leading them
by day and night
through the wilderness.
They had just witnessed
God perform
ten miraculous plagues
to deliver them
from slavery in Egypt.
They got to see that
with their own eyes.
As we saw last week
in Exodus 14,
the Israelites just walked
through the Red Sea
on dry ground.
But when hunger struck,
they forgot
their redemption story.
It only took two months
for spiritual amnesia
to kick in.
And they start to grumble
and complain.
And they start to long
to return to Egypt
of all places.
And like I said last week,
they start to rewrite history.
They keep doing this.
And they're going to do it
over and over again
throughout the remainder
of their time
in the wilderness.
They rewrite history.
Look at verse 3.
It says,
they said,
back in Egypt,
we had meat pots.
We had meat and bread.
We had water.
We had shelter.
We had everything
that we could have needed
and then some.
Which is not true.
Right?
They say,
what have you done
bringing us out here
into the wilderness?
Back then,
back there,
we had everything we needed.
But here,
we're barely surviving.
And that's how
the wilderness feels sometimes.
It feels like
we're barely surviving.
It feels like
we're holding on
by a thread.
But the good news
of the gospel
is that that thread
that we hold onto,
it's indestructible.
Right?
It won't let us go.
Their conditions
in the wilderness
were very rough.
I will conceive
that point.
Okay?
But they're acting
as if the God
who was with them
in Egypt
was not with them now.
I was wondering,
like,
how could they not
trust God
after God
just delivered them?
The amazing thing
about Exodus 16
is that even though
the Israelites
were grumbling
and complaining
and longing
to go back
to slavery in Egypt,
God still gets down
and ties their shoes.
He knew their physical needs
and so He meets
their physical needs.
God knew
that their fragile faith
needed a daily
divine reminder
of their redemptive story.
They needed to be reminded
every single day
of God's faithfulness
towards them.
And so He sends bread
from heaven
every single day.
You see,
the bread wasn't only
to feed them,
it was to remind them
of who they were
and where they were headed.
I love this.
This is often overlooked.
God doesn't just give them
enough bread
to survive the wilderness.
He gives them
plenty.
He gives them
an abundance of bread.
In verse 18,
it says,
each of them gathered
as much as He could eat.
Their stomachs
were full
people,
which was a rare experience,
a rare thing
in the world
back then and today.
They were feasting
in the wilderness.
This was like
an all-you-can-eat buffet.
God was not
stingy.
And God also,
He wasn't just giving them
like this buffet
of tasteless,
stale bread,
like the bare minimum.
He was giving them bread
that tasted like honey,
which was the delicacy
of the day.
He was giving them
bread that tasted
like heaven.
And you see
what God is doing here.
He's giving them
this honey bread feast
in order to give them
a taste,
a foretaste
of what they will
one day experience,
what they will enjoy.
He's giving them
a foretaste
of the place
where they were headed,
and that is to a place
flowing with milk
and honey.
He's giving them
a taste of paradise
in the wilderness.
Listen,
to survive
the wilderness,
you have to remember
where you are headed,
that you are headed
towards the promised land.
You have to remember
that life,
this life,
isn't the promised land.
You have to remember
that your dream job
isn't the promised land,
that your dream vacation
isn't the promised land,
that successful children
isn't the promised land,
that retirement
isn't the promised land.
Right?
We have to remember
that this world
is not the promised land.
This world,
my friends,
is a spiritual wilderness
where we get to taste
heaven now,
but it's not yet
been fully consummated.
It is a painful wilderness,
yet it is a purposeful wilderness.
And thankfully,
God knows exactly
what He is doing
in this wilderness.
And so we can trust Him
throughout it.
He has placed us
in this wilderness
to sanctify our souls,
to free us from fear,
to instill in us
a dependence on Him,
and to prepare our hearts
for the real promised land.
There's a story
about Michelangelo.
I don't know how true it is,
but it's a fun story.
He was asked about
the difficulties
that he faced
while sculpting
his masterpiece,
David.
And supposedly,
Michelangelo replied,
you just chip away
the stone
that doesn't look like David.
I love this
because that's what
the wilderness is for us.
In the wilderness,
our fears,
our struggles,
our idolatries,
our deepest sins
are being chipped away
by God
to reveal
this beautiful
masterpiece of faith.
In the wilderness,
God is chipping away
the parts of you
that don't look like Jesus.
Do you trust God
in the wilderness?
Truly.
The Israelites
did not trust God
in the wilderness,
which is why
they begin to hoard
the manna
that God sends
from heaven.
They start to hoard it.
Instead of gathering
enough food
for one day
as God commanded,
they gathered food
for multiple days
because their physical fear
trumped their spiritual faith.
The Israelites
suffered from what I like
to call spiritual amnesia.
They were quick
to forget
their redemption story.
They were quick
to forget
the Passover lamb
who was sacrificed
as their substitute
and whose blood
sheltered them
from God's judgment.
They were quick
to forget
the baptismal waters
of the Red Sea
that cleansed them.
They were quick
to forget
who they were
as children of God.
We are no different.
My favorite
Adam Sandler
and Drew Barrymore
movie is
50 First Dates.
These two have been
in a slew
of movies together.
50 First Dates
is my favorite.
In the movie,
Lucy,
played by Drew Barrymore,
she gets in a bad
car crash
and she has,
she causes
short-term memory loss
and as a result,
every day
that she wakes up,
she thinks
is the same day
that she got
in the car crash.
Right?
And her family
and friends,
they weren't really
helping the situation.
They come up
with this elaborate plan
to make her think
that every day
was, in fact,
the same day
as her car crashed
because the few times
that they told her
what happened,
she freaked out
and she had a panic attack
and they didn't want
to deal with that.
She was unhappy
so they wanted
to kind of keep her
in that little bubble,
that little lie
that they had created
for her.
And their plan
was working great.
Right?
It was working fine
for month after month
until this guy
named Henry Roth
comes around.
He's played by Adam Sandler
and he falls in love
with Lucy.
And Henry wasn't content
with a lie
that was being fed
to Lucy
over and over
and over again.
And so Henry,
he makes Lucy
this video.
He calls it
Good Morning Lucy.
Right?
It's her Good Morning Lucy video.
And every morning
she was to watch
this video
to set her memory free.
In the video,
she saw pictures
of her car crash.
She saw what happened
to her.
And then she saw
like cat scans
of her damaged brain.
And then she saw clips
of her friends
and they were telling her
like it's going to be okay
and we're going to walk
with you through this.
And then the video ends
with like the most
profound thing.
She watches
her own wedding ceremony.
And then she looks
down at her hand.
She sees a ring.
And she's reminded,
I am married.
And then she walks
out of her room
and she goes up the stairs
and she meets
her husband
for the first time
every single day.
My friends,
you have to meet
Jesus every single day
because we are so forgetful.
You serve a God
who is not content
with the lies
that the world
is feeding you.
And so he graciously
inspired a book.
It's like our
good morning
Christian book
that we are to read
every day
to set our memories
free.
We are to be reminded
of who we are,
who God is,
and where we're headed.
He's given us
a book
that it tells us.
All right?
You need to be reminded
of your redemption
story every day.
You need to be reminded
of Genesis 3,
the event that caused
your spiritual amnesia
that explains
all of the
bad in the world.
All right?
You need to remember
that you were married
to a Savior
who despite
your many flaws
chose to set
his love on you.
That's the greatest
news you'll ever hear.
The third thing
the wilderness shows us
is that it strengthens
our faithfulness.
In order to survive
the wilderness,
we have to remember
our redemption story.
Right?
And to help us remember,
God has graciously
given us
a taste of heaven
now
in the midst
of the wilderness.
I'm going to give you
three things
that God has given
to us
to get through
the wilderness.
First,
he gives us
a Christian family.
Did you notice
how the Israelites
gathered manna
every morning?
They were to gather
bread as a family,
as a community.
They didn't go out
into the wilderness
alone.
They went together
to find manna
and to feast
on this bread.
They didn't go
as individuals.
They went together
as a family.
And we are
to do the same.
You and I,
we cannot survive
the wilderness alone.
You can try
all you want,
but it's not going
to work.
Okay?
You can't survive
this wilderness alone.
You need this family
that God has graciously
given to us.
And my friends,
this family
is a taste
of heaven now.
This morning,
we're going to celebrate
the Lord's Supper.
In this meal,
it's a family meal.
You don't take it
as an individual.
We take it corporately.
We take it together
because it is
a family meal.
We take it together
in faith.
The second thing
that God gives us
is the Sabbath.
Since God made us,
he knows what is
best for us.
He knows
better than we do.
He knows that we
have a limited bandwidth.
He knows that we
can't go forever.
He knows that we
need to slow down
and take a deep breath
and rest.
He knows that we
need a day each week
to fix our eyes
on him.
In Exodus 16,
God set aside
the Sabbath.
It wasn't to be
a day of labor.
It was to be
a day of rest
for the Israelites,
and it is the same
for us.
The Sabbath,
it may not make
economic sense,
but it makes
divine sense,
and that's where
true wisdom lies.
Wisdom is believing
and trusting that
God knows what's
best for you.
Listen,
we are wired
for worship,
worship,
and God gave us
a day each week
for worship
to remember
who God is,
to remember
who we are,
and to remember
where we're headed.
The Sabbath
is a gift from God.
It is a taste
of heaven.
The rest that we
experience
each Sabbath,
each Sunday,
it is a taste
of heaven
in the wilderness.
the third thing
God gives us
is bread,
and he gives us
an abundance
of bread.
He gives us
the one bread
that actually
satisfies our hunger.
Get this,
the word manna,
it literally means
what is it,
or what is this?
That's what they
named the bread
because they had
no idea what it was
or where it came from,
but they still feasted
on this bread
in faith
to survive
the wilderness.
Similarly,
after Jesus
calmed the storm
in Mark 14,
do you remember
what the disciples
said to one another?
Who is this
that even the winds
and the seas
obey him?
In Luke 5,
after Jesus heals
the paralyzed man,
do you remember
what the Pharisees
said to one another?
Who is this?
Who can forgive sins
but God alone?
You see,
the Pharisees
and the disciples,
they didn't fully
understand
who Jesus was.
The answer
to this question,
who is this?
It comes from
a very unlikely person
in Matthew 27.
After Jesus
was crucified
and the curtain
and the temple
was torn in two
and the barrier
that separated God
from his people
was removed,
the earth shook
and the centurion
who nailed Jesus
to the cross
looks over
at his friends
and says,
truly,
this was
the Son of God.
It clicked for him.
Right?
Listen,
do you see the connection
between the manna
that came down
from heaven
in Exodus 16
and Jesus Christ?
We read from John 6
earlier.
They're the same thing.
Right?
Jesus says
in John 6,
35,
I am the bread
of life.
Whoever comes
to me
shall not hunger.
You see,
the manna
that came down
from heaven
and satisfied
the fearful
and forgetful
Israelites
is the same bread
that comes down
from heaven
to feed
fearful
and forgetful
us.
And we don't
just get a taste
of it.
Right?
We get the
fullest
and final
revelation
of God himself
and Jesus Christ.
Listen,
when one of my kids
is hungry,
they don't look
at their report cards
to satisfy
their hunger.
They don't look
at their bank accounts
or their Instagram feeds.
They come to me
and they say,
hey,
dad,
I'm hungry.
Can you give me
something to eat?
They go to the right
source to satisfy
their hunger.
Likewise,
we are God's children
and we have to go
to the right source
to satisfy
our soul's
deepest hunger
because it's the only
place where we'll
actually find
satisfaction.
We are to be
a people
who,
like in
John 6,
say,
give us this bread
always.
We're to be
a people
who pray,
give us this
day
our daily bread.
In other words,
give me this
day,
Jesus.
And tomorrow,
give me
Jesus.
And the next
day,
give me
Jesus.
And next week,
give me
Jesus.
Next month,
give me
Jesus.
Next year,
give me
Jesus.
And give me
Jesus every
single day
until it's
my last
day.
Because on
that day,
I won't
just get
a taste.
We're
going to
feast.
Brothers and
sisters,
this year,
I pray that
you remember
this life-changing
truth.
Even in the
wilderness,
God is with
you.
He is for
you.
He loves
you.
He knows
what he is
doing.
And his
mercies are
new every
single morning.
Amen.
And let me
pray for
us.
Heavenly
Father,
we thank
you for
this paradigm
that we see
of our own
salvation in
Exodus 16.
That as
Christians,
we have
crossed over
to the
justification
side of
the sea,
the
sanctification
side,
and we
are walking
and wandering.
Sometimes it
feels through
a wilderness
that is harsh
and difficult
and painful.
But we
know that
you are
with us,
that you're
for us,
and that
you will
not abandon
us.
We pray,
Lord,
that you
would press
these truths
into our
heart,
that we
would remember
who we
are,
that we
are children
of God,
and that
this truth
will change
the way
that we
view ourselves,
view others,
and view
this entire
creation that
you have
given to
us.
We pray
that you
would change
us,
form us,
chip away
the parts
of us that
don't look
like Jesus.
And it's
through his
name we
pray.
Amen.