Grace and peace to you through Jesus Christ who taught us to pray to our heavenly Father asking him to provide us each day with our daily bread. Amen.

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." ⁶ So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, "In the evening you will know that it was the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, ⁷ and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?" ⁸ Moses also said, "You will know that it was the LORD when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD." ⁹ Then Moses told Aaron, "Say to the entire Israelite community, 'Come before the LORD, for he has heard your grumbling.'" ¹⁰ While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud. ¹¹ The LORD said to Moses, ¹² "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, 'At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.'" ¹³ That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. ¹⁴ When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. ¹⁵ When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, "It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. ¹⁶ This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.'" ¹⁷ The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. ¹⁸ And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed. ³¹ The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.

How many of you have ever eaten soap? I’m sure you didn’t one day just decide to take a bar of soap and eat it. More than likely, you did it because your parents wanted to teach you a lesson about using filthy language.

God never used eating soap to teach anybody in the Bible a lesson, but he has used eating and drinking numerous times in Scripture to teach lessons to his people. He used the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge to teach Adam and Eve about obedience and reverence. Jesus changed water into wine as his first miracle to prove his miraculous power. He ate fish in his disciples’ presence on Easter evening to prove he wasn’t a ghost.

This week in our Tasty Treats VBS we used food and drink to teach lessons to the children. They learned the Bible stories and sang songs about food. They made all of their crafts using food like making stained glass cookies out of cookie dough and Jolly Ranchers or servant shoes out of peanut shaped cookies and strips of gum. They ate unleavened bread and desert quail from our morning devotions which were designed around a cooking show theme. They learned how to make homemade butter and ice cream. They ate Ferarro’s pizza and homemade trail mix. And they watched Mr. Schulz from Shoreland blow up eggs and watermelon.

The overall lesson we learned during the week is that our heavenly Father takes care of us. He gives us each day our "daily bread." He has especially given us his Son as the Bread and Water of eternal life. This morning we see how God takes care of his children today by examining how he took care of his Children of Israel in the desert. When the Israelites ask, "what is it," there is a lesson behind the answer. God gives an answer that will hopefully give us a different view of the "daily bread" of life.

The Israelites had been traveling for over a month after their miraculous escape from Egypt. The desert of Sin was an arid wasteland. It is no surprise that whatever food supplies they had brought with them from Egypt were used up. Again the people grumbled and complained.

It is a standing rule in my house that if a child whines or cries for something, she will not get it, whatever it is. God is certainly more generous than I am. Despite their grumbling God provides food – with a new food that had never been seen before. In the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" In the Hebrew they said "Man hu," – "Manna" – "what is it?" Although they didn’t know exactly what it was, they knew what it tasted like. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. Ultimately, it didn’t matter what it was, as long as it did the job. It filled their hungry bellies.

God told them: "Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer (about 2 quarts) for each person you have in your tent." The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. He who gathered much didn’t’ have too much, and he who gathered little didn’t have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed. So for 40 years, day-by-day, God provided the Israelites with a morning meal that lasted the whole day. The Israelites were able to cook this food, boil it, grind it, much like we are able to do a variety of things with potatoes. They could have cream of manna, boiled manna, manna a la carte, fried manna – you name it, they had it. There wasn’t a great variety, and it didn’t even really have a name, but that didn’t matter. It was enough to sustain two million people for 40 years - and that’s what it was for.

When Jesus taught us to pray the Lord’s Prayer, he didn’t have us ask for a year’s supply of meat and potatoes, a season’s supply of fish, or even a winter’s worth of wheat. All he said we should pray is, "give us this day our daily bread." There’s nothing fancy about bread. Like manna, it’s white and kind of tasteless, but it is very versatile, and most importantly, it gets the job done. It feeds us. That’s the main point Jesus was getting at. By telling us to pray for daily bread, he was saying to us, "just pray for enough to get by."

Yet as humans we have a hard time doing this. We say, "give us this day our daily bread," but in reality we live the prayer, "Lord, please give me a weekly butter burger, waffle cone and onion rings. On Sundays, I would like a smorgasbord of meat and salads. And I would also like to have Italian and Mexican at least once every other week." We love to talk about our favorite foods and places to eat and plan our schedules around where we can feed our faces. We need to beware of manna and remember what it’s for – daily nourishment. That’s it.

After the Israelites complained, God gave them their daily bread. But he didn’t just give it to them to feed them. 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." God provided this food as a test – to see how they would react. God doesn’t only test us in seeing how we handle hardships, but he also tests us in seeing how we handle blessings and success.

With this food, God gave special instructions. "Take an omer for each person you have in your tent. No one is to keep any of it until morning. 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."

There were basically two tests involved in these instructions. The first test was to gather enough only for one day. Every day, when the Israelite went to bed, he would have nothing in his tent to eat. Even worse was that he was living in the middle of a desert region. He had to trust that God would really rain down bread from heaven the next day. That’s where the test came.

The second test came at the end of every week. On Friday, the Israelites had to collect two days worth of manna. Then, on the Sabbath God told the Israelites that they were to collect nothing. That way they could just relax and worship their Lord on Saturday. The test for the Israelites was whether they would take time out from their collecting and just enjoy a day off to worship the Lord.

Unfortunately, the Israelites failed miserably in both tests. In greed and a lack of trust and maybe just laziness, they disobeyed the "one day’s worth" rule by trying to keep a part of it until morning. As a result, their saved food became spoiled and full of maggots.

A temptation for us, like the Israelites, is to try to preserve our daily manna – when God tells us to use it for today. I think of people who are hyper-paranoid about their possessions. They spend hours manicuring their lawns and waxing their vehicles. They spend their days working on their golf game or shopping for just the right accent pieces for their home. They are afraid to go out on a limb with their offerings or giving to the Christian organizations because they are saving for a rainy day. We can try to protect our manna from the decay of this world, but sooner or later, the maggots and stench come.

The test then comes in how you respond. Do you cry about decayed manna? Do you get depressed over the gray hairs you’re finding? Do you get angry over the fact that your brand new carpet has been ruined? Did you cry this week when your craft broke or you didn’t get a piece of pizza? Or do you accept the fact that what you have today is bound to decay? We fail this test every time we cry about something that’s continually decaying.

Even when God gave them a day off to worship on the Sabbath, "nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none." You would think that after God had their manna keep an extra day, they would relax like they were told to do. But they refused. Instead, they looked at this Sabbath time as an opportunity to stockpile more manna for the rest of the week. After all the LORD had done for them, they failed the test.

The sad thing is that we have plenty of manna stocked up already. We don’t have empty freezers like the Israelites do. We have no reason to go looking for manna on the Sabbath. Still, with all of our blessings, we can’t help but think to ourselves on Sunday morning, "I could be getting a lot done today. I could make double time at work. I could be painting the bathroom." We think it is an extra hassle to run children back and forth to Vacation Bible School. We feel like a Sunday morning worshiping God in his church is infringing on our weekend plans. We fidget in our pew when the service goes a little long because we are anxious to get back to our lives. We act as if having one five-minute devotion per day is just impossible to schedule because we’re just too busy. God gives us freedom to plan as a test. When we choose other activities or TV or sleep or work ahead of him, we fail the test. We fail miserably.

This manna was also a sign of God’s free and faithful grace. How? First, because the Israelites didn’t deserve it. The LORD says, "I heard your grumbling, and this is what I am going to do." Instead of punishing them, he provided for them. Instead of forsaking them and leaving them tto provide for themselves, he gave them a daily reminder that he was close to them, always watching over them. He even showed his presence visibly to them in the cloud of glory that hovered over the camp. God’s grace to us – like the manna in the wilderness – is totally free.

It is also faithful. For forty years, God didn’t miss a morning when the dew lifted from the grass and there was bread on the ground. Can you picture the morning routine in the camp of Israel? Two million people scattered over the desert before breakfast picking up their food for the day! What a marvelous sign of God’s faithfulness!

If you had been an Israelite in the wilderness, you daily lived with evidence of God’s grace and presence. Every day you picked up you food on the ground, from God’s hand to yours. Every day you hunted the quail that came into the camp. You saw God’s glory in the cloud, hovering over the camp. How could you not believe when you had God so close to you?

But dear friends, we have more than our daily bread to convince us that God is gracious and faithful to us. We have Jesus. This same LORD who faithfully provided the manna to the Israelites, faithfully provided us with a much greater Manna 1500 years later - in the person of Jesus Christ. God prepared a wonderful table of forgiveness for us. Jesus declared in John 6, "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." When we speak of Jesus we don’t have to ask, "What is this?" We know what it is. It is salvation in the flesh; forgiveness in the Son of God; love in his sacrifice. It is nourishment for our souls.

Daily manna is a sign of God’s grace. Even when you complain, God still feeds you. Even when you misuse his gifts, God still gives them. Even when you earn hell with your attitude, God still wants to give you heaven. Why? Not because you deserve it! But because our God is a gracious God. He likes giving people not just physical things, but more importantly giving forgiveness, holiness, and eternal salvation. That was the ultimate purpose behind the manna – to testify to the faithfulness of the LORD.

Manna isn’t just about nourishment. It isn’t just about how two million people were kept fed for 40 years – amazing as that may be. It’s about how faithful our LORD is – how He constantly gives us the Bread of Life – in spite of how many times we fail the tests. That’s where the true miracle of the manna is – and that’s what we learned this week in VBS. Amen.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)