Manna - Losing Interest in the Promises

By: Dr. Robert Petterson

Feb 28, 2010

If Mrs. Moses had a cookbook, it probably had a section entitled 101 Ways to Fix Manna. At first, the Israelites relished it as the food of heaven. But the prospect of 40 years of Manna, for three meals a day, got old fast. Sadly, God’s people still weary of God’s menu for a nutritional spiritual life. But it is a dangerous game to run after exotic religious experiences to spice up our bored lives.

Sermon Text:

[Text: Exodus 16]

Have you ever eaten whatisit?

This gourmet food was first discovered in the Sinai Desert. It came with the morning dew. When the moisture evaporated under the rising sun, thin flakes like white frost appeared. These delicate honey wafers melted in the mouth like butter. It was the world’s most nutritious food, packed with everything a body needs for health and high energy.

When the Israelites first discovered it in the desert sands, they cried out, “Manna?” which in Hebrew means “What is it?” God gave this ragtag rabble of ex-slaves a glorious vision. But standing between Egypt and their Promised Land was the Sinai, the most desolate string of deserts on planet earth. The odds were impossible that 3.6 million people could survive a 40-year journey that required the equivalent of 160 railroad boxcars of food and 1,080 tanker cars of water every day.

Manna was his provision for the vision, appearing supernaturally every morning for 40 years. At first they couldn’t eat enough whatisit. But when it became breakfast, lunch, and dinner 24/7, 30 days a month, 360 days a year for 40 straight years, this delectable delight turned into daily drudgery. Three servings of whatisit a day for 40 years add up to 43,200 straight manna meals.

If Mrs. Moses had a cookbook, there must have been a section entitled 1001 Recipes for Manna. Instead of asking, “What’s for dinner?” they rolled their eyes and asked, “How did you fix it? They boiled, baked, broiled, barbequed, breaded, and buttered it. They ate it cold, hot, raw, sliced, diced, sautéed and puréed. They turned it into manicotti, mannaroni pizza, McManna burgers, bamanna bread, bamanna pie, and bamanna splits. You name it, they tried it. But it’s impossible to create enough variety in 43,200 manna meals. No wonder dinner guests hardly ever said their hostess, “More manna, please.”

The old saying is cliché but true: “Variety is the spice of life.” The Roman philosopher Valerius Publius wrote, “No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety.” The Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch said it more strongly: “Sameness is the mother of disgust…”

Maybe that’s why predictability is the devil’s playground. In the very beginning, Adam and Eve became bored with a steady diet of God’s food. So the Serpent tempted them to spice up their lives with forbidden fruit. A line in the novel The Fight Club, asks this provocative question: “Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justifiable?” St. Paul reminds us that we are just as susceptible to boredom when it comes to God’s food:

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Timothy 4:3)

In an age of 700 cable channels, fast food stores on every corner, and a veritable smorgasbord of seductions, religions, entertainments, and moral options to spice up boring postmodern lives, God has given us steady diet for our Exodus. We may ask, “What is it?” Jesus answers,

“I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven which a person may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:48-51)

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “If life were predictable it would cease to be life.” But Jesus is anything but predictable. Unlike manna, we can describe our Lord in the words of Lamentations 3:23: “For his mercies are new every morning.” Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But his sameness brings spice with life. When we are distracted by eye candy, and tempted to binge on junk food philosophy with empty calorie morality, we have to grab hold of our seventh Exodus principle:

Christ is sufficient nourishment for the whole journey.

Adam and Eve lived in a lush forest of fruit trees providing an endless smorgasbord of good things to eat. There was only one forbidden fruit. God said, “In the day you eat it, you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)

When they put that forbidden fruit into their mouths, they reversed everything. Where there was once a paradise of good options with only one bad choice, there is now a wilderness of bad options with only one good choice. Where there was only one tree bearing bad fruit, there is now only one tree bearing good fruit. Where only one tree brought death, now only one tree brings life. The bread of heaven was nailed to that tree. The world says, “Whatisit?” But we know that the one who hung there is the food who alone gives and sustains our life.

When we first tasted his grace, it was amazing. We feasted on him like those ancient Israelites first gorged themselves on manna. But many of us have grown bored, going into nearby forests to feed on the forbidden fruits of strange doctrines, unholy alliances, mindless entertainments, materialistic pursuits, self-serving pleasures, bitter resentments, godless conflicts, and other substitutes for heaven’s bread. Like our ancient fore-fathers in the Sinai Desert, it’s so easy to slip away from our Lord’s Table. Today I call you back to the Table with 3 truths from the Exodus:

1. Starving people need food from heaven.

Remember, the principle we learned early on in this series: the road to the Promised Land always passes through the desert. God could have taken his people on a softer route, south across the Nile Delta and up the Mediterranean coastline. The Exodus would have taken less than a week. But these ragtag slaves would have been devoured by Canaanite giants. So God took them on a long, hard route to forge a disorganized mob into a unified nation, cowards into warriors, and spiritual pigmies into giants filled with the presence and power of their Lord.

How does the desert do its work? Remember our last episode of Exodus. The Jews were insatiably thirsty after their desert trek from the Red Sea to Marah. When they got there, they found undrinkable water. In the desert God makes them agonizingly thirsty. Now, after several weeks at the oasis of Elim, they are crossing another desert. In Exodus 16:3 they wail, “If only we had died by the LORD’S hand in Egypt. There we sat around pots of meat and had all the food we wanted. But you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” In the desert God also makes his people ravenously hungry.

Look again at verse three. Sometimes, when God puts us out on the desert we wish we could go back to Egypt. We remember the food while forgetting the bondage. Those Jews recall the Nile River where they were slaves for 400 years. The Nile turned the North African desert into a garden where people ate and drank their fill. No one had to depend on God for food or drink. The Nile was their sustainer and ultimately their god. They worshipped creation rather than the Creator. When people are satisfied by the stuff of creation they forget their Creator. That’s why Jesus said in Matthew 19:24, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Do you see why God’s first plague was turning the Nile into blood, making it undrinkable? He was declaring,

“I AM the Creator. I AM alone the giver and taker of life. Your future is not determined by creation or the stuff it gives you. I AM alone creation’s Master. With effortless command, I turn off the faucet. Without water, you will die of thirst and hunger.”

God loves us best by taking away the stuff we depend on most. We find ourselves stripped of money, family, friends, and health. The Nile has turned to blood. The Red Sea is impassable. The waters at Marah are bitter. The desert after Elim offers no food. It is during those times that God reminds us that nothing in creation can save us. The same Nile that quenched our thirst also birthed a proud civilization that enslaved and worked us to death. The same Nile that gave us pots full of meat was also the river where our babies were drowned. It suddenly dawns on us that things we get from creation exact a horribly-high cost for us and our children. Though the Nile may temporarily feed our bodies, it leaves our souls agonizingly thirsty and ravenously hungry.

Thank God for deserts that wake us up to reality. In the 6th chapter of St. John’s gospel, Jesus leaves the crowds and heads across the Sea of Galilee. A cry goes up, and they leave everything behind in a mad dash to find him on the other side. The truth is, Jesus was enticing them into a desert. By the time they found him, it was late afternoon and they were famished. All they had was a little boy’s few fishes and loaves. There Jesus miraculously turned that little lunch into a meal for 20,000 people.

Jesus is setting them up for something bigger than a miracle. It is close to Passover, and their mind is on the Exodus. So Jesus reminds them about the miracle of manna in the desert. He tells them that the manna didn’t keep their ancestors from ultimately dying (Nor will this meal of fishes and loaves). But he says in John 6:51, “I am the bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever.”

Then in verse 53 that he drops the bombshell: “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and rink his blood, you will have no life in you.” It was at that point that Jesus looses most of his disciples. Maybe they thought that he was telling them literally to eat his body. But he responds in verse 63, “The Spirit gives life and the flesh counts for nothing.” He is saying that we must spiritually feed on him. Even that was too much. Only his original twelve disciples remain.

It is at the point of feeding on Jesus that true disciples are separated from nominal believers. Remember the desert reduces us to thirst and hunger. To the thirsty he says, “Drink my blood.” To the hungry he says, “Eat my flesh.” Nominal believers say, “I might follow you for some fishes and loaves to feed my body, and some water turned into wine to quench my thirst, and for miracles that bring me prosperity, healing, and enjoyment. As long as you give me the things of creation, I’ll be there with you.” But Jesus is calling disciples to something more radical. He is calling us to die to the things of creation, and find our food in the things of heaven. He is calling us to feed on the Creator. Only those who hunger and thirst for righteousness ever long for soul food.

2. Beware of picking at your food.

Exodus 16:35 reminds us, “The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.” Again, that’s 42,300 straight manna meals. Fast forward several years to Numbers 11:4: “The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing.” Again they wanted to go back to Egypt. Look at verse five: “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and fish.” You have to be desperate to want a blue plate special like that! Notice two things: 1) the deception. They say that the food of Egypt costs nothing. The truth is, it cost them everything—their freedom, dignity, wasted lives, and children. 2) The attraction. God gives one food—manna. The place of bondage offers a tempting variety. Notice there are six items mentioned in this Egyptian smorgasbord. In Hebrew numerology, six is the number of man. Egypt is just another installment of Babylon; another world system that offers to feed you, if only you will become its slave. Its number is 666. But God is number 1. He offers one item to feed your soul and quench your thirst: His Only Begotten Son.

The Israelites cry out in verse six, “But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” Some of us have lost the appetite for Jesus. We are continually attracted to the food of Egypt because we have swallowed the deception that it will cost us nothing. The truth is, it will cost us everything in this world, and eternity to boot. God heard those complainers in the 11th chapter of Numbers. Sometimes the worst thing God can ever do is to answer our prayers. He sends a wind that blows a massive migration of quail off course and into the desert. By the millions they fall and are clubbed to death by Israelites starved for meat. But even as they opened their mouths to devour the meat, they were eating death. The quail were carrying a deadly disease. Verse 34 says, “There they buried the people who had craved other food.” How many saints go to an early grave because of their lusts for the pleasures of Egypt? Worse than that, how many Christians wither up and die spiritually because they turn away from Jesus to pursue junk food theology, empty calorie pleasures, and eye candy rather than soul food? Don’t pick at the bread of heaven. Feast on it with gusto, remembering a verse from this an old hymn: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.”

3. Be able to spot the telltale signs of spiritual boredom.

When they first discovered manna in Exodus 16 they were beside themselves with joy. Some thirty years and 32, 400 manna meals later, Numbers 11:6 says that they had lost their appetite. Last summer, Joyce and I went on a 30 day raw food died. By the end of that month I was ready to kill for a grilled piece of meat. Raw food may be good for you, but it kills the appetite. Feeding on Jesus for years doesn’t make the appetite for the world go away. It will tempt us until the day we are released from our sinful body of flesh. Come back to Exodus 16 and look with me at what happens when they first find whatisit in the desert. In it we see three types of people who lose their appetite for heaven’s bread:

1) The overfed and underworked.

God commanded the people to gather only enough for each day. They were to eat enough to exercise it off, and then go out and get a fresh batch of whatisit the next morning. Verse 20 says that some of them got greedy and grabbed way more than they needed. There are a lot of Christians like that. They grab all of Jesus they can. They attend all kinds of Bible studies, spend long hours in prayer, listen to CDs, attend seminars, and stuff themselves with religious goodies. They become fat babies in the pew instead of lean warriors in the world. The bread of heaven cannot be hoarded. Verse 20 says that the next morning the hoarded manna was “full of maggots and began to smell.” There is a stench in the church when we stuff ourselves with Christ but never take him out into the world through evangelism and works of mercy. After a while we get fat and lethargic and boredom sets in.

2) Overworked and underfed.

This is the other extreme. These are the starved in verses 4&5. They have trekked across the desert without food. They are in desperate need of manna yet to be discovered. Some of God’s people are trekking energetically through life, involved in all kinds of activities—even good works that benefit others. But though these activists do the work of Jesus, they don’t feed on him. They haven’t yet discovered manna in the desert. Working in their own strength, they wear out and burn out.

Later, in verse 17 we read that others only gather a little manna. There are believers who spend a little time feeding on Jesus in prayer or a few minutes digesting his word. We read in verses 21-23 that they were allowed to gather a double portion on the day before the Sabbath so that they wouldn’t have to work on the Lord’s Day. Some people come only on the Sabbath Day to get all their “Jesus feeding” for the week. They want a double portion on Sunday they can live on the other six days of the week. They live vicariously off others who are feeding on Jesus. They stand quietly and watch passively while the praise team or choir shouts to the Lord. They feed off the passion of the pastor’s sermon, and then leave never to feed themselves out of the same Bible. But you will never be fed watching others eat. You will never be filled with his power and presence. Instead, you will become spiritually emaciated and fall in weariness by the wayside.

3) Malnourished but discontent

We see the third group of God’s people in the 11th Chapter of Numbers. Bored with Jesus, they crave the meat they had in Egypt. So God gives them what they want. Millions of quail fall out of the sky, piling up around them—more meat than they ever imagined. This bored generation of Americans is like those ancient Israelites. We invent new ways to entertain ourselves to death: 700 cable channels, movies on demand, Internet, Cell phones, IPods, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, magazines, books, sports around the clock, cruises, clubs, casinos, and 24-hour restaurants, sports teams to keep our kids going 24/7 and churches that churn out activities. We are up to our neck in quail. We feast on it 24/7. But it’s full of empty calories. Worse than that, it carries deadly disease which has brought a plague on our culture and weakened a church infected with it.

What caused them to become enamored with the flesh pots of Egypt that they had left behind? Notice carefully the key phrase in the 11th chapter of Numbers. Verse one: “Now the people complained…” Again and again you read those words that describe their attitude: complain, grumble, criticize, wail, and whine. Look again at their complaint in verse six: “But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna.” Beware of a critical spirit: finding fault with your life, family, job, and church. Watch out when you begin to obsess on the negatives in your life. Beware of the spirit of always trying to fix others or yourself. A lack of gratitude and contentment with what God has given you will lead to the flesh pots of Egypt and a plague.

What do those complaining Israelites need to do? They need to do what we need to do today: come back to the Table with a thankful attitude. The ancients called it the Eucharist from the ancient Greek word for thanksgiving. We need to begin to feed again on Jesus. Maybe we need to declare a fast from quail. Some of us need to turn off our televisions, put away our cell phones and cut back on our activities. We need to get back to the simple lifestyle which has time to feed on Jesus. We need to discover again, his mercies that are new every morning. Then we will find in him the strength to cross our deserts to the Promise Land he has prepared for us!

Copyright 2008, All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced without permission from Dr. Robert Petterson, Pastor Rob Hamilton or Covenant Presbyterian Church of Naples.