Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Exodus 16:15-31
Pastor: Pastor Horton
Sermon Date:  August 11, 2024

Feast or famine.  How often have you heard that phrase?  You either have a rich abundance of something or you are without.  It’s a phrase that’s been around quite a while and popular with farmers who see their fields either bear a bumper crop or a drought which may eliminate their produce altogether.  The origin of “feast or famine” may actually go back to the story of Jospeh and the seven good years followed by the seven bad years in, of all places, Egypt.

But we’ll save Joseph for a different day.  During these Sundays in August our Old Testament readings direct our attention to different figures of faith.  Last week was Elisha and his servant.  Before us today we have an account from the life and times of Moses.  Moses is much more than Charleton Heston parting the Red Sea.  Moses is an individual whose life often seemed to be a feast or a famine.  There were incredible highs and incredible lows.  If you, dear believer, are in a phase of life right now where you are not sure of your direction, take heart and consider Moses!  On the one hand, he was born to Israelite slaves in the land of Egypt and was to be executed as a baby had God not saved him.  On the other, he was raised instead by the Pharaoh’s daughter and educated in the royal courts of that world power.  He killed an Egyptian and hid the body and ran away to Midian (over in what’s now Saudi Arabia), and yet he would at one point be the administrator of justice over the people of Israel.  A lowly shepherd would one day be with God, the great I AM, upon Mt. Sinai, and witness tremendous miracle after miracle.  A man afraid of his (as he put it) “slow and clumsy” speech would be God’s inspired author of the opening five books of the Bible and of Psalm 90.  You could say that the life of Moses would be both feast and famine as he was Learning to Lead God’s People.

This moment in our reading would be no exception.  Perhaps as many as a few million people had left Egyptian bondage and were traveling…through a desert…and needed to eat.  If your family is packing for a weekend vacation you already know how full your car gets with the cooler for drinks, a few bags of snacks, and maybe a treat-related tradition (like a certain ice cream shop you must always stop at because it’s tradition).  These comforts didn’t exist in the desert wilderness.  The Israelites only had what they could carry out of Egypt.  Certainly not transport anything by airconditioned SUV – and there were massive numbers of people who had to eat with no Costco available.  Imagine about a month of desert hiking since leaving Egypt.  They were able to take all that gold with them, but you can’t eat that for your daily meals.  This could have been not feast, but famine and death.

A miraculous lesson was in store for God’s people.  They also had a need: they had to learn how to be led by God.  God wanted them to know that he would give them life in his all-powerful hand.  It is safe to say that the wandering children of Israel had a glass half-empty kind of attitude.  We know that during their time in the desert they routinely grumbled at the goodness of God.

We hear them clamor and complain earlier in this chapter, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat around pots of meat and ate as much food as we wanted, but now you have brought us out into this wilderness to have this whole community die of hunger.”  Sinful humans did what sinful humans do: they embellished their victimhood.  I don’t even know what “pots of meat” would look like.  Maybe Madison’s Bratfest had pots of meat or some kind of pig roast (I apologize if you are a vegetarian).  Out of sight and out of mind were the realities of their former Egyptian slavery: the beatings, the hard labor in the brickyards, oh and the countless number of little children thrown into the Nile River by Pharaoh’s soldiers.  How soon they forgot.  And yet complaining is all too easy, isn’t it?  But remember their complaints lodged with Moses, were ultimately complaints with God’s leading of his people.

What may surprise you is that into this realm of grumbling, God acts in grace.  He showers love upon the ungrateful humans.  This was to be a lesson both for Moses and also for the people.  Verse 4, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Watch what I will do.  I will rain down bread from heaven for you, and the people will go out each day and gather enough for that day.’”  We call this bread manna, literally meaning in Hebrew, “What is it?”  This wasn’t something found in that region but was miraculous, versatile in cooking, and a consistent blessing for the Israelites.  It was there daily for these two million people (give or take).  Each was to pick up off the ground a set amount per person as each household needed.  Drag your feet in the morning – and it would melt away.  Try to cheat the system by saving some for the next day – and the extra would go bad and become inedible.  An exception was made: that on the sixth day extra manna was to be saved for the seventh day – so that there could be true rest for the people on the Sabbath Day as they worship God.  This was a daily miracle.  No crop failures.  God never took a day off.  And best of all, in spite of all that grumbling: no punishment.  This manna was blessing (along with the gifted quail) and made for a daily feast purely given from the hand of God.

All of this paints quite a picture for us, doesn’t it?  That’s God’s blessings are in fact daily, deliberate, in timely and appropriate amounts as he sees fit, and that he is faithful and maintains our life.  Just like with Moses and the Israelites, God’s regular blessings remind us that he is always watching over us.  And that God’s grace to us – like the manna in the wilderness – that arrives totally free.  This would be an important lesson for both the leader and the ones being led.

We forget that.  There are times we clamor about what we think God should be doing and the type of giving he should be provide to us.  There are times we’re looking right past the daily feast in front of us and yell “oh no, what a famine!”  Sound silly?  Have you ever had to beg for daily bread with your pantry of baked goods and jams and chips.  Are you malnourished with your fridge full of meats and cheeses and veggies?  Have you ever looked into a full closet of clothes and said “Ugh, I have nothing to wear?”  Have you ever complained about the doctor or the dentist or the pharmacy bill and looked right past the blessings God is able to provide us through those means?  Maybe sometimes we are more glass half-empty than half-full people than we’d like to believe.

How about when it comes to spiritual matters?  Are you content with God’s leadership.  Moses and the people both had to come to terms with God’s way being higher than our ways and that his way is a good way that provides life.  We still are downright foolish when we question his leadership.  Have you ever thought “how come when I sit here and pray for something once God doesn’t jump into action for me and give me everything I want and delusionally demand?  What’s wrong with him?  How come life isn’t perfect for me?”  This world is sinful and so are we.  It can not be perfect and neither can we.  Grumbling about God and grasping instead at our wants is a lot like hustling over to our stash of sins only to find what we hope to horde to contain (as it was for the greedy ones of the Israelites) smelly spoil, magots, and decay.  Sin brings us nothing but spiritual famine and final death.

Dear believer, feast instead on the manna God gives you from heaven.  Feast instead on God’s Word for there you will be given truth about Jesus.  Feast instead on salvation through Christ alone.  Feast on the life he richly provides you.  God’s Word spreads a table full of truth in front of us through the gospel.  God sets the table through Old Testament prophecy concerning all that the promised Savior would do.  Jesus is that main course whose perfect life and innocent death on the cross forgave our sins.  Knowing that, feeds the hunger we had in our souls by nature and gives us life.  His teachings are now like all the different dishes at a giant feast.  For “The kingdom of God is like” this delicious delicacy over here and “the love of the Father is like that” rich and wonderful comfort food over there – his teachings and his words are what our hearts want to consume.  He nourishes our faith and gives us contentment with him.

How did Jesus say it in our gospel lesson today?  “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” “Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”  Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”  “Here is life!” Jesus proclaims.  “It comes through me!  I am the manna for your soul!”  Even if you or I should ever go physically hungry, we still have Jesus.  We have him who is our manna, and we have satisfaction with him for this life and for the heavenly rest yet to come in eternity.

Dear friends, feast on the truths God gives to you in his Word.  Share the riches of your life-giving Savior – he wants to be shared with others.  Rejoice in God’s constant blessings of both body and soul.  All our clamoring in the world will come to an end, and as true contentment with Christ is served to you.  Find rest today and forever in Jesus.  Amen.