If you would turn to the sixth
chapter of the Gospel of John, John chapter 6, beginning at
verse 25. When they found him, and who
is this that found him? Those who had eaten the loaves
and the fishes the day before on the other side of the lake. They asked him, Rabbi, when did
you get here? Jesus answered, I tell you the
truth, you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous
signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do
not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to
eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him, God
the Father has set his seal of approval. Then they asked him,
what must we do to do the works God requires? Jesus answered,
the work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent. So they
asked him, what miraculous sign will you give that we may see
it and believe you? What will you do? Our fathers,
our forefathers, ate the manna in the desert. As it is written,
he gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus said to them, 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.
But as I told you, you have seen me, and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives to
me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive
away. For I have come down from heaven
not to do my will, but to do the will of Him who sent me.
And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none
of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last
day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the
Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will
raise him up at the last day. And the Jews began to grumble
about him, because he said, I am the bread that came down from
heaven. They said, Is this not Jesus,
the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he
now say, I came down from heaven? Stop grumbling among yourselves,
Jesus answered. No one can come to me unless
the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up
at the last day. It is written in the prophets,
they shall all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to the Father
and learns from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father
except the one who is from God. Only He has seen the Father.
I tell you the truth, he who believes have everlasting life.
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 man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came
down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread,
He will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which
I give for the life of the world." Would you open your Bibles now
to Exodus chapter 16. The Jews to whom the promises were given,
to whom the Lord sent the prophets, and with whom he made a covenant,
were just like you and me. They were human beings born in
sin. And even though they had many
demonstrations of the grace of God, they were prone to wondering,
prone to grumbling, prone to unbelief. It seems that no matter
how much the Lord did in their behalf, it did not take long
after each demonstration of His power and grace that they were
once again in unbelief, once again complaining about the hardness
of the way, acting as though God would somehow abandon them. Here in Exodus chapter 16, we
have the account where the Jews complained that they didn't have
food to eat. And so God began providing them
with bread from heaven. And every morning, six days out
of the week, when they would wake up, there would be a white
powdery substance from which they could make bread. And it
must have been quite some bread. Because whatever this substance
was, and we do not know, and as a little side issue, We call
it manna, but the word manna is simply Hebrew for, what is
this? Because the first morning the
Jews woke up and they saw all that white stuff on the ground
and they said, what is this? They said, manna. And so they
called it that for the rest of their journey. But for those
roughly 40 years, six days out of the week, what is this fell
on the ground. And you know, they never did
learn what it was. I assume it was not a natural
substance because whatever it was, was enough to nourish a
man. And so far as I know, there is
not a single food on the earth naturally occurring, which a
person could make their entire diet out of it. And it would
sustain them and nourish them for 40 years. So this is something miraculous
God did, six days out of the week, for roughly 40 years. He sent them, what is it, from
heaven. And this is a picture to us,
a demonstration to us of Christ, because as we read in John chapter
6, the Lord Jesus says, I am that bread which came down from
heaven. None of the stories in the Old
Testament are told to us simply to satisfy our historical curiosity
about what went on in days gone by. None of them were given to
us merely to demonstrate God's miraculous powers. They do demonstrate that, many
of the stories do, but that's not their endgame. Every one
of these stories is told to us in order to reveal Christ, the
essential mysterious miracle of God. That one who came down
from heaven as the bread of life, whose body would be given as
bread, in the likeness of bread, to give life and sustain life
in God's people. Now, the Jews had already had
several notable experiences by which they were taught, or should
have been taught, who Christ is, what he came to do, and it
should have taught them that God will supply all their needs
from now on. After all, they were in Egypt,
Because one of the original sons of Jacob, Joseph, had been sent
there ahead of them, ahead of the rest of them, and God had
elevated him to a position second only to Pharaoh, and he was in
charge of all the grain of Egypt. And when Jacob's other 11 sons
became hungry in a time of famine, they went down to Egypt to buy
grain, and lo and behold, there's their brother Joseph in charge
of that huge pile of Egyptian grain. They didn't know who he
was when they first saw him, but that didn't matter, did it?
He knew who they were, and that's all that mattered. When they
showed up, he immediately recognized them as the ones who had sold
him into slavery, who had turned their back on him out of jealousy,
and yet their actions had not proven to be disastrous, but
rather they had been used by God, even their sinful actions
used by God, to install Joseph there in Egypt, and put him in
charge of all the riches of Egypt that he may give it to his brothers. And when they realized who it
was they were talking to, that it was Joseph, their brother,
who many years before they had betrayed, they were filled with
fear. And Joseph said, Don't be afraid.
Yeah, I remember what you did, but I bear you no grudge. This
was done so that God would send me ahead for your salvation. There's a picture of Christ,
who came into this world and was rejected not only by the
Jews, He was rejected by everybody. Everybody! turned their back
on Him. Everyone was jealous of the glory
that God gave to Him, and they put Him to death. And yet, even
in this, they were playing into the hands of God, doing exactly
what He determined, that He be sent ahead of us, as it were,
for our salvation, and He is now in charge of all the blessings
of God. They had that picture given to
them. But there arose a Pharaoh that didn't know Joseph, and
you know something? I get the impression the Jews kind of forgot
about him too. And this Pharaoh had no regard
for Joseph and put the Jews under slavery. And they were made to
work. And I don't know how long it
was from Joseph to this Pharaoh, and I don't know how long it
was that they had had to serve as slaves in the land of Egypt.
All I know is that at 40 years old, Moses saw his people being abused
as slaves and he killed one of the Egyptian taskmasters and
then ran for his life. And it would be another 40 years
before God sent Moses back to Egypt in order to bring them out of
Egypt. And when Moses came back, he and his brother Aaron told
the Jews of what God had said, and the Jews got all excited
about it. And it says they bowed their
head and worshipped God at the news that Moses had been sent
to deliver them. But when news reached Pharaoh
that God was going to deliver the people, Pharaoh said, essentially,
over my dead body. And God kind of answered, I can't
arrange that. But nonetheless, Pharaoh said,
no, they're not leaving. In fact, their talk has just
proven they're lazy. They're not working hard enough.
And so he increased their labors. And under increased labors, what
did the Jews do? They forgot what was told them,
that they would be delivered, and they began to grumble. And
they essentially said, Moses, better you had never showed up.
All you did, you built up our hopes. And now our hopes have
been dashed by increased labors. They began to grumble. And so
God says to Moses, I'm going to do more. This isn't the end.
And God began to visit Pharaoh with plagues and visit all of
Egypt with plagues. And finally, they come to that
final plague, the plague on the firstborn in which God kills
the firstborn out of everyone in every household, man and beast
alike. However, for those who heard,
and this would be only the Jews so far as I know, who heard that
they could sacrifice a lamb and put his blood on the doorpost
and across the top of the door, that when God came through, he
would pass over them. And many years later, Paul wrote,
Christ, our Passover, is sacrifice for us. So there, they have another
demonstration of the power of God in Christ to deliver. Because
God comes through Egypt in wrath. And you know something? The Jews
were no better than the Egyptians. And the wrath of God that fell
upon the Egyptians, actually, God says, I'm going to come through
Egypt and kill the firstborn. He didn't say, I'm just going
to kill the firstborn of the Egyptians. If he just said, I'm
going to kill the firstborn of the Egyptians, there would have
been no need for a Passover lamb, because that would have meant
that the Jews were already safe. But judgment was passed on the
land of Egypt and everyone in it, and that included the Jews.
But here was this substitutionary sacrifice in that lamb. And there
they were given testimony. that even in judgment God would
preserve them through the offering of a substitute. And so they
go out of the land of Egypt, they march out, and they don't
just march out with their tail between their legs, they march
out defiantly. They march out having been enriched
by the Egyptians around them. Think of that. God not only brings
the Egyptian nation to its knees with those plagues, He works
in their hearts to be well disposed towards the Egyptians, and those
who just recently had been using them as slaves, says, here, as
you go out here, I got some gold pots you can have. And here,
here's this necklace, I don't need it anymore, you can have
that. And the Jews went out of Egypt wealthy. And they walk around for a few
days, and they come up against the Red Sea. Now remember, this
is all within a fairly short period of time. God given mighty
displays of His power to save them, and they come up to the
ocean there, or the sea. And then here comes Pharaoh's
army behind them, because Pharaoh's changed his mind. Isn't it something
the works of God no more convince the unbelievers than they do
believers? These miraculous works. No sooner does the sting of losing
his son subside just a little bit, Pharaoh comes after the
Jews. And so there's the Jews caught
between a rock and a hard place, almost literally. The sea on
one side, Pharaoh's army on the other. And what do they do? They started to complain all
over again. They've already run out of faith, and it's just been
a few days. And a cry goes out, and Moses
says, why don't you all just stand still and see the salvation
of God? And God, who had gone before
them in a column of cloud in the day, in a column of fire
by night, He puts Himself between the Jews
and the Egyptians. Oh, what a picture of our mediator,
Christ Jesus. And it's interesting, we get
the impression that when he did so, on one side he's light and
on the other side he's darkness. And do you know to the elect
of God, Christ is light and to the unbelieving, he is darkness.
He who is salvation to you and me is destruction to the rest
of the world. He who is a revelation of God to those of us that believe
is darkness and mystery and foreboding to everyone else. And so for
the whole night, God stands between the Jews and the Egyptians, and
the Egyptians with all their horsemen and chariots and armed
soldiers can't get at the Jews. And God sends a wind and opens
up the Red Sea before them, and they go across it on dry ground,
not in the mud, dry ground, and they get to the other side. And
when they get to the other side, God moves. And yet, they started to worry
again. Because they saw Pharaoh coming in, in that very channel
they had walked through. Here comes Pharaoh. Now how many
instances of God's miraculous power had these people had? And
why should they doubt for a minute? But you know, isn't that just
like us? We see problems much more clearly
than we see God's gracious solution. We see judgment much easier than
we see salvation. We see danger much more easily
than we see safety. And here comes Egypt, excuse
me, well, all of Egypt's military, all those chariots coming right
through that same water they just walked through. You think
it would have occurred to them Wow, it was a miraculous thing
that we got through there. And here comes the Egyptian army. God must have something up his
sleeve, for lack of a better way to put it, because certainly
he would not open up that sea miraculously to give us a way
of escape and then allow the Egyptians to use the same way
of escape to destroy us. You know, that's how you and
I should think. We should always have it in our hearts and minds
that whatever is going on, God has made a way of escape for
us. That's how we ought to think,
but it's not how we normally think. And they began to complain and
get worried. And God, who opened up the sea to make a way of safety
for the Jews, closed it in again on the Egyptians, and they all
drowned. The way that was safety for the
Jews was destruction for the Egyptians. God had told them,
this is the last time you're ever going to see them. But they
didn't believe Him. But you know something? That
didn't change. God's Word did it. That was the last time they
ever saw Him. And so God had, through many
demonstrations of His mighty power, brought them out of Egypt
and cut them off. from Egypt and cut Egypt off
from them. They were safe. And they go off
walking. Heading to the promised land.
The land God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The land they
had heard about for hundreds of years now, because it's been
400 and some years since God had spoken to Abraham. But in
just a few days, they start to get hungry. And they began to
say things, you know, better we should have stayed in Egypt
when we could sit around our flesh pots. In other words, our
pots of stew, our pots of good food. And man,
we had leeks and onions. We even had nice spicy things
to put in there and make it taste good. How soon they forget all
that God has done and begin to grumble as though the God who
brought them this far will not take them the rest of the way.
Brothers and sisters, isn't unbelief a terrible, dogged thing with
us that just will not leave us alone? And is it not to our shame
that we listen more to the voice of unbelief than we do the voice
of faith? If it's not true of you, I'll
confess to you it's true of me. True of me. How are we going
to keep believing? If all of these wonderful experiences
that the Jews had had to this point could not keep them from
unbelief, could not keep them from grumbling
and complaining against God, what's to keep you and me? Well, God still had more to do. You see, salvation is not a singular
experience. When people say something like,
well, I got saved, they're generally speaking of only one particular
point in the work of God's salvation. And that's that time when God
made them spiritually alive, and they were able to understand
the gospel for the first time, and they called upon the name
of the Lord, and God saved them. But brethren, long before that
experience ever happened, God had been working on salvation.
And even though that experience, many of us here have had that
experience, God's not done yet. He that began a good work in
you will continue it until the day of Christ. He will bring
it to perfection until the day of Christ. And this thing that God has begun
in us, He's not finished with. And this thing God had begun
among the Jews, He wasn't done. So what does He say when they
begin to complain about food? He says to Moses, you tell them
this, here's what I'm going to do. Every morning there's going
to be bread from heaven. And every day they are going
to go out and gather what in the Hebrew is the word omer.
In my margin, it says it amounts to about two quarts. And they
are to gather that much for each person in their household every
day. On the sixth day, they're supposed
to gather twice that much because it will not fall on the seventh
day and they will not have to collect it on the seventh day.
So make sure on the sixth day, everybody gets a double portion
and cooks it on the sixth day. And then on the seventh day,
well, after they've done eaten the sixth day, half of it will
be left already prepared for the seventh day. And indeed,
that's what God did. And as I said, for 40 years,
six days out of the week, the bread fell from heaven, and that
bread is Christ. Now, what is the lesson that
you and I should learn from this heavenly manna? The first thing is that we need
Christ and we need Him continually. That there is not an experience
that you have had to this date which will carry you through
to the end of your life. The Jews had had some great experiences
in the power of God to deliver them from their enemies and redeem
them from the hand of Pharaoh. Not one of them was, to that
point, had been able to keep them for more than three days.
Before they were in themselves already cranky, grumbling, and
complaining. They were already full of unbelief. Three days, that's all it took. And so what did God do in response? He gave them a daily supply. of what they need. A daily supply
of Christ. And brethren, if you don't get
anything else out of this message, get this, you need Christ every
day. You cannot live off of past experiences
with Christ. We may enjoy looking upon those
experiences, we may find some encouragement off of them, but
yesterday's grace will not meet today's difficulties. Yesterday's
Christ will not guide us today. If we are to survive the day
without unbelief, we must have a supply of Christ given to us
fresh for the day. And if you say, yeah, but there
was one day out of the week they didn't get a fresh supply, well,
that was simply because on that day they had another picture
of Christ to think upon. That wonderful Sabbath day, which
is a picture of Christ, our Sabbath, They rested on that day, and
you and I rest in Christ. And so they were given another
token of Christ on each seventh day. But throughout those six
days, Christ fresh every morning. We come once a week like this,
and we get a dose of Christ as it were. in the preaching of
the gospel. And yet I tell you this, tomorrow
morning, what you hear today, what you experience today of
the grace of God, will not be good enough for you. Tomorrow
morning, God is going to have to provide you with Christ again,
and again, and again. And you will find this in your
experience, that if you neglect the things of Christ, it will
not be long that unbelief, will become stronger than faith in
your experience. That is, your flesh will begin
to take the dominant thought processes of your life, and you'll
begin to think more and more after the flesh. And I'll tell
you, I'm not surprised that we begin to grumble and complain
when we've spent our time thinking along the ways of the flesh,
because that's all the flesh knows how to do is grumble and
complain. We need every day to seek the
Lord, every day to call upon His name, every day to live in
the knowledge, the conscious remembrance of the fact we need
Christ and that Christ is all we need. We need fresh supplies
of the Son of God given to us from heaven, sent by God. Now would you look with me at
Exodus chapter 16, verse 31. It says the people of Israel
called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed
and tasted like wafers made with honey. We have shown that we need Christ,
the heavenly true manna, the true bread that comes down from
heaven. Let's take these points about him. First of all, Christ
is that bread that came down from heaven. God gave the Jews
bread from heaven for 40 years, but they ate that bread and died. It was only a symbol, and symbols
have never saved anybody. Symbols have never accomplished
anything of eternal consequences. They can't. Only the reality
came. Christ is that bread that comes
down from heaven. He came down from the Father.
For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. Jesus Christ did not come down
of His own will. He came down by the will of His
Father. He did not come down to do His
own will, but to do the will of His Father. What does this
say to us about the Father? How gracious He is to His people.
We think of how gracious God was to give bread from heaven
to that grumbling, complaining, murmuring group of rebels called
the Jews coming out of Egypt. Oh, how patient He was with them.
He endured their bad manners, said one of the New Testament
writers, for all those years. And He endures it out of us,
brothers and sisters. He endures it out of us and daily sends
us that manna from heaven. Jesus Christ. Even if we are not careful to
go out and collect it up, such is the nature of this true bread
from heaven, that it sustains us anyway. Oh, in our experiences
we may have our ups and downs, but you know something? For all
the ups and downs of our experience, of our feelings, of our enjoyment
of God's salvation, there is no up and down to His salvation.
Do you realize that when the Jews came out of Egypt, all robust
in their faith, full of excitement of what lay
ahead, how safe they were. And then a few days later when
they're there at the Red Sea, stricken with fear, grumbling and complaining. Were
they any less safe? They weren't enjoying their salvation
very much, but they were just as saved then as they were when
they first marched out of Egypt. And you can come to any point
in your life, and you can say, on that day, I was strong in
the faith. Boy, on that day, I was weak
in the faith. In fact, it's hard to detect any kind of faith in
me at all that day. And there's days like that all
in between. And we have our ups and downs, but here's the miracle
of God's grace. All our ups and downs in those
experiences do not translate to ups and downs in our salvation. Do you remember when you first
believed? And how it seemed that faith so filled up your minds
and it drove everything out. And it seemed to you as though
Christ was in the air itself that you breathed. And you felt so safe. And you
were. Well, maybe today is one of those
days you don't feel it at all. Maybe life has fallen in on you.
That happens. Or maybe it's just your constitution,
the way you are, your emotional makeup. It's got its ups and
downs. The ups and downs seem to come
without cause or reason. They come and they go, and you're
in a time when you're down and you don't feel anything. Maybe you have nursed and nurtured
some sin, as David called it, regarding
iniquity in his heart. And you won't give it up. You
say, oh, a believer wouldn't do that. Oh, yes, they will. Yes, they
will. Now, God will win in the end,
They can extend the struggle out if they want. But maybe you're
under the hand of God's discipline, His loving discipline, and He's
hidden His face from you for now. But I want to tell you something,
to the comfort of your heart, you are no less saved right now
than you were the first moment you called out to Christ for
His salvation. You may feel you're on the precipice
of hell, and you might be, but you're still safe. Because God's
grace does not know ups and downs. He does not say one day, I love
that guy a lot, and the next day, well, we'll see. He's not
fickle like you and me. I am the Lord, I change not,
therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. You sons of the
ups and downs, you sons of the believing right on the heels
of some magnificent experience, but just a day or so later you
are down in the pits. You change, He says, but I don't.
So you're always safe. Christ comes down from heaven
and brings all of heaven's goodness, all of heaven's power, all of
heaven's authority with Him. Secondly, Christ comes down and
for all of our studying of Him, we still don't know what He is.
Like that manna that fell from heaven, they opened the flap
of their tent the next morning and they said, what is this?
What is this? The disciples, how many times
when our Lord would reveal Himself in His great power, they'd say,
what manna of man is this? Say, oh, I want to understand
Christ. That's good. I'm glad you want to. But don't
frustrate yourself, you're never going to. That is, if I understand,
you mean master the knowledge of Christ. Paul, I suppose there's
nobody in all the world that knew Christ any better than Paul
did, that had any more intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus
Christ than did the Apostle Paul. And yet he says to the Philippians,
and this was written, I believe, near the end of his life, he
says, that I may know Him. He still wanted to know Christ.
Paul, don't you know Christ? Yeah, I want to know Him better.
I want to know Him more deeply. I want to know Him more intimately.
I want more of Christ. God help you if you ever come
to the point that you see Christ and there is not... What is this?
What manner of man is this? What manner of Savior is this?
What manner of Redeemer? He is God's heavenly, what is
this? How can we even begin to conceive of God and man joined
together in one person? I don't know how that can be.
I know that it is, but I don't know how. Everybody tries to explain how
it is that God and man can be joined together in one person. Does damage to his humanity or
to his divinity, one or the other. What is it? What is this one
who came down from heaven? Those who actually saw him face
to face, most of them were so befuddled by him, they couldn't
receive him. Some saw this heavenly man to
fall from heaven and they were so overwhelmed with him that
they became angry. They became angry because they
thought they already had a pantry full of bread. What need did
they have of this so-called bread from heaven? They said, don't
tell me that I must go out and gather this. I have that. The biggest obstruction to receiving
Christ is having something else. Just count on it. And the struggle
that people go through when God begins to work in their hearts
and call them to himself, that struggle is always over this. Letting
go of what they already have, that they may lay hold of that
which they truly need. Most people try to hold on to
Christ and other things at the same time. But in order to do
so, they must lay hold of a Christ who does not exist. Because the
Christ who exists will not let you lay hold of Him while you
hold on to something else. What is it, they said? Well,
even though they could not and did not, so far as I know, ever
learn the true essence of what that manna is, they did know
some of its characteristic. It was white like coriander.
I don't know what coriander is like. That doesn't tell me much
when I read that, but I see the word white. So I assume that
coriander must be pretty white stuff. Here's the issue, it's
white. White is always a symbol of purity.
What would you expect from one who came down from heaven? Our
Lord Jesus Christ came into this world and he had no sin. Why
did he have no sin? Adam wasn't his father. Why do
we have sin? Because Adam is our Father. We
got it from Him. It infected the whole race. But
Jesus Christ comes as a new Adam, a second Adam. And though He's
born of a woman, He's not born from a man. He's the Son of God. And He comes into this world
without that blemish of Adam's sin upon Him, without that nature
of Adam within Him. And therefore, there was never
a blot upon Him of actual transgression on His part. He did no sin, He desired no
sin, in Him there is no sin. White, pure, spotless before
God. And that's what you and I who
are spotted all over, we definitely need that which is pure, don't
we? It says he's white like coriander,
and that satisfies him in the sight of God. But look here,
he tasted like wafers made with honey. This whatever it was, it not
only looked beautiful, it not only contained within it everything
needful for the health of the body, it tasted good too. Taste and see. that the Lord
is gracious. I read this, and you know what
I thought of right away, and I don't know that I say it right in Dutch,
but it was stroopwafel, something like that. Those little wafers
they make, and there's syrup on the inside of them, or honey
or something like that. And if that's not the right Dutch
word, I apologize to all you Dutch people, you can correct
me later on. But whatever they call that,
I love it. I can't imagine anyone ever saying that again. You could get me a dozen today
and a dozen tomorrow. You could get it for me. I could
eat it every day, I think. That's our Lord Jesus. Imagine
the best you could ever imagine eating, the sweetest, the most
nourishing. That's our Lord Jesus. There's
nothing lacking in Him. There's nothing the soul needs
that's not in Christ. We have through the knowledge
of Him everything we need for life and godliness. He is full
nourishment, but He's not some bitter pill that we take. You
know, a lot of people take supplements.
I probably should, but I'm not very good at anything that involves
a routine. But a lot of people take a lot of supplements.
You know what I've noticed about all those pills? I've never tasted
one of them that tasted good. You take them because you have
to, or you feel you should, or it'll do you some good. But you
don't chew them up, do you? Our dog's got to have some medicine. And you can't give a dog a pill.
You put that pill in his mouth and he's right back out. So we've
got to wrap it in peanut butter or cheese or something like that
because dogs gulp. They never do taste the pill.
Well, the Lord Jesus Christ is not like some food supplement
that, yeah, it's got what you need in it, but it's a bitter
pill to take. Christ is not a bitter pill to take. Christ is sweet.
Everything about Him is good. He's got what you need, and it's
good and a wonderful experience to receive Him. I can understand why the world
is not interested in Christ, because the Christ that's presented
to the world is a Christ who is not sweet to the taste. He's
the Christ that evidently came to take away every kind of enjoyment
there is. Not this Christ. He came to bring
enjoyments that none but the believer can know. He is sweet
to the mouth. Secondly, He's a daily provision. He comes all the time. It is not that on that day in
which we called upon the name of the Lord that God came and
dumped a huge shipment upon us and that's it and He leaves until
we die or He comes back. Every day, fresh supplies of
Christ. And in verse 35 of Exodus, we
read this, the Israelites ate manna 40 years until they came
to the land that was settled. They ate manna until they reached
the border of Canaan. Now, why did it stop when they
got to Canaan? Because Canaan was another picture
of Christ, the land of rest. And God already had other symbols
of Christ's presence and provision for them there. But here's the
point. From time they crossed the Red
Sea, a symbol of our redemption, until the time they entered the
land of promise, a symbol of our eternal rest,
there was manna. And for all the ups and downs
of the experiences of the Jews during that 40 years, the manna
never failed to come. And so it is with us. Fresh supplies
of Christ every day. One more point to make from what
our Lord said. This manna is not just Christ,
His person. He said, this bread is my flesh. which I will give." Brethren,
it's not just fresh Christ every day on which we live, it's fresh
Christ and Him crucified on which we live. What is the sustaining
truth to the child of God? Christ and Him crucified. We
don't just begin there, we feed on that the rest of our lives.
It is our manna from heaven. Christ crucified. Christ bearing our sins and putting
them away and raising again to rule for us. If you've never
seen that manna, never eaten that manna, may God send it to
you today. And may he feed you for the remainder
of your life until he takes you into the very presence of Christ
who is our life.