MOVE AGAIN: HUNGER PAINS

We are in our series, Move Again, working through the book of Exodus, and we are looking at the Israelites’ journey as they move out of slavery, through the wilderness, and into the promised land.

And now we find the Israelites in the wilderness. They are free from slavery, they have left Egypt, and they are being led by their God.

The wilderness is the point, between slavery, and the fulfilment of God’s promises.

Exodus 16: 1-5

The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death. 4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”

In Exodus 16, we are barely a month out of Egypt and the people are once again grumbling against Moses and Aaron and God.

Exodus 16 carries the story further and shows that this muttering is linked, at several levels, to overt defiance of the living God.

But how were the Israelites rebelling against God? Surely they were just hungry and thirsty and afraid of what might happen to them in the wilderness. Remember, there are approximately 2.5 million men, women and children.

Food and water were two of the most important things to sustain life in the wilderness.

Firstly, they had no water. Without water in those days, their children especially, and the weak were extremely vulnerable to the rigours of desert life. Secondly, they lacked food. They were thirsty and they were hungry. Two very natural, human experiences.

The hunger pains were real!

God isn’t unaware of the realities facing His people. He isn’t unaware of what it means to be human, of what the realities facing the Israelites were.

To describe this in imagery more familiar to us, consider your fridge. Each night when you go to bed your fridge is empty. Your freezer is empty. Your cupboards are empty. When you wake up, they are still empty.

You seek out your neighbours, but their house is also empty. The grocery stores, online stores, and petrol stations are empty. There is not a single Nandos meal, Seattle coffee or box of Kellogs to be found. Each night when you go to bed, all the needed resources for tomorrow are gone. As you lay in bed with your stomach already rumbling, you have nothing left.

In the wilderness, there is a lack in the present and there is fear about the future. The Israelites seemingly have nothing left to survive. There is a gap between what God had promised the Israelites and what they could see in front of them.

Past (Slavery) Future Promises (Eternity)

The Wilderness

It is in the wilderness that God does the deepest work in His people.

Today, he wants you to know who He is. His character should shape and transform our lives. How we respond to our circumstances, how we respond to the wilderness should be shaped and determined by who God is.

What does he want us to know as we journey through the wilderness?

1. HE IS OUR PROMISE IN OUR PAIN

Why were the Israelites grumbling? When they first crossed the red sea they were singing and praising God. But now, they are grumbling, they are complaining and rebelling against Moses and Aaron.

Pain can make us forget the promises of God.

When they were back in Egypt they had food and water! They practically lived next to the stewpot in Egypt. They had all the bread they wanted. They could eat bread until they were fat, that is, at least in their memory.

Because of the pain facing them, no food, no water, they looked back at the past, longing to go back to Egypt. They haven’t experienced drought or famine yet but the mere thought thereof makes them fearful, anxious and as bitter as the water they left behind.

Because of the pain they were experiencing, they forgot the promises of God. We must be careful not to forget his promises amidst our pain.

The Israelites were looking through rose-tinted glasses. There is a psychological phenomenon called euphoric recall. In this state, people recall specific memories with excessive fondness that can trigger a body’s biochemical reaction. Negative aspects of the past vanish while the positives are embellished.

The Israelites were longing for the pot of stew, but they forgot the chains of slavery. The enemy wants to keep us looking back! He wants to keep us comfortable and content but enslaved to his will and our own passions and vices.

Through the wilderness, God is reminding us of His promises. He had made a covenant promise with Abraham, and he was fulfilling His promise through Moses. From the time of their complaints to the time of God’s provision, His promises had not changed. He had not changed.

In the wilderness, He is still faithful to his promises, and in the wilderness, He is still a faithful provider.

2. HE IS OUR PROVIDER IN OUR PAIN

So how did God provide for the Israelites in the wilderness? He provided Manna every day.

So what is it? That is it. Manna basically means, “what is it?”.

What is it that you need provision for? What is it that you need to let go of in order to take hold of the promises of God?

He has given us EVERYTHING for life and godliness.

Through the manna and the quail, He is teaching His people about who He is and that He is a provider. It’s not about the bread, it’s not about the hunger pains, it’s about who your Father in Heaven is.

If he isn’t your provider, then someone or something else is, and the reality is that that thing will not sustain you. God’s plan in the wilderness is to teach his people about his providence by providing daily bread to sustain life.

He wants them, and us, to know who the provider is!

Because he is the perfect provider, he even provides us with ways to follow Him. The Lord gives instructions to the Israelites, not for his benefit or to show his authority, but for their own good.

Exodus 16:17-18

17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18 And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.

He’s promising two things: provision and rest.

Where does our provision come from? From the hands of the provider. Where does true rest come from? From the hands of the provider.

3. IN THE PAIN HE IS OUR PROVISION

For God’s chosen people the wilderness is a place of testing, radical encounters, and renewal.

This narrative of Exodus points towards one who is the greatest provision of them all, who will satisfy all hunger and thirst. And all of scripture points toward Jesus.

In Deuteronomy 8:3, Moses tells God’s people,

“He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

We are not just physical beings, we are spiritual people. We need spiritual food for our souls that will sustain us through every season.

And just as Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness, and it took forty days to travel to Mount Sinai and the Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness, Jesus was tempted for forty days in the wilderness, yet redeemed the wilderness for all mankind.

And when Jesus is experiencing hunger pains, when he experienced devastating thirst, Satan tries to tempt Him.

But Jesus knows who His provider is, He knows the promises he can rest in and he knows his provision.

Matthew 4: 2-4

And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Jesus is quoting Moses from Deuteronomy 8 when He confronts Satan who is tempting Him to make bread in order to provide for Himself in the wilderness. Even Jesus in the wilderness determines to rely upon the provision of the Lord rather than seeking it by His own means, thus showing His trust in the Lord and illustrating this principle: the Lord provides.

And the Lord has provided, through Jesus. Jesus is our provision. He is the bread of life.

John 6:26, “26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

God gives us two pictures of provision in the wilderness, bread that never spoils, perishes, or fades, and living water in a dry and barren land and Jesus is the embodiment of both.

The bread that Israel ate was manna, which was a picture of Christ, the Bread of Life. Christ is also the Water of Life, and the rock is a picture of Him.

1 Corinthians 10: 1-4

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and .that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

Jesus is the rock that was hit, because of the grumbling and doubt of the people. He is the rock of Horeb.

Christ would stand in our place, the place of the accused, and bear judgment for the sins of His people. The rod is a symbol of divine judgement and just as the rock was smitten and their thirst was satisfied, Christ was smitten and God’s wrath for our sins was satisfied.

In the same way, by the smiting of the rock at Horeb, water flowed forth, just as the Holy Spirit flows forth from Christ to nourish and equip His church. And so, in the Old Testament, we see this beautiful picture of God’s grace in the salvation of His people, for He stands in our place so that he satisfies the penalty for sin and death in every way.

Jesus was crucified, and nothing short of believing that He died in your place and bore your sins on that Cross will save you. The smitten rock is a picture of the death of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is our daily bread and living water. He is both the provider and the provision. Today, will you come to him for daily bread? For he is the ultimate satisfaction for hungry and thirsty people.

Blog written by Michael Hedenskog who is one of the pastors in our Life Changers story