Bread and Water

Wandering: book of Exodus / Exodus 16–17

God’s grace is available event when we can’t pay attention to anything else. There is grace in our grumbling.

There is a cost to not paying attention

When we aren’t paying attention we only see what we don’t have instead of what’s provided for us.

Most importantly, when we stop paying attention, we begin to see God as the One responsible for everything we are missing.

Grumbling and grace

Definition: Grumbling is the act of moving forward by walking backwards. It guarantees you will trip somewhere.

So if you are dissatisfied with the way things are, grumbling will only continue to close the curtains for you.

Christ offers us grace in the grumbling of the memory of an imagined meal

Exodus 16:2–3 ESV

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 out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

God continually shows mercy by entering into your frame of reference.

Christ offers us grace while we are gathering frantically.

Exodus 16:26–30 ESV

Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.”

On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.

Grumbling is trying to find certainty in uncertain situations.

God continually shows mercy by entering into your frame of reference.

Beholding if God showing He is the one certainty in our lives, is the act of choosing grace over grumbling.

Exodus 16:10–11 ESV

And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord said to Moses,

To behold is an invitation to wake up to new ways of living. It is an invitation to see God for who He is. To trust Him for who He is in our lives.

Exodus 16:6 ESV

So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

The Lord shows the grumbling Israelites who He is.

and offers them life in the desert

God shows up with kindness when the Israelites weren’t even really paying attention.

John 4:13–14 ESV

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Jesus is offering that which does not change and that which does not sour. He says we don’t have to keep looking or searching, it is found in Christ Himself. We are able to rest in Him.

“Bishop Augustine sought words of wisdom to offer his deeply shaken congregation, some of them refugees from Rome. He responded to the question he knew they were all asking: How could our God allow this to happen? Could a Christian empire truly fall? Augustine said to them

“God does not raise up citadels of stone and marble for us; outside of this world he raises up citadels of the Holy Spirit for us, citadels of love which could never collapse, which will for ever stand in glory when this world has been reduced to ashes. … Rome has collapsed and your hearts are outraged by this. Rome was built by men like yourself. Since when did you believe that men had the power to build things that are eternal? Your souls, filled with the light of the Holy Spirit, will not perish.””

Beholding is the act of trusting Christ over all the other directions that we look to. Look to Christ who is mercifully there is uncertainty.