He travels once again to Exodus
chapter 16. Exodus chapter 16. Let's read verse 4. Then said the Lord
unto Moses, I will rain bread from heaven for you, and the
people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day that
I may prove them whether they will walk in my law or no. We know tonight that the manna
pictured the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the true bread. In John
chapter six and verse 32, he said, Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my father
giveth you the true bread from heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the bread of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
word, the word. Remember in John chapter one
and verse one, in the beginning was the word and the word was
with God and the word was God. And then in verse 14 of that
chapter, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And
we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the father
full of grace and truth. Lord Jesus Christ is a living
word. How do we make ourselves known
to someone else? We do so by our words, we speak. And God has made himself known
by his word, that is, the eternal word of God. In more than one
place, he told the Jews and also his disciples, he that has seen
me has seen the Father. If you had known the Father,
you would have known me. He's one with the Father and
with God the Holy Spirit. the living word, in the beginning
was the word. He's also the written word, the
Lord Jesus Christ, the written word was given to reveal the
living word. And this manna pictures the word,
the living word, and also the written word. And tonight we're
going to look at it, the manna, as a type or as a picture Not
of the living word, we'll do that maybe next Wednesday, but
tonight the written word, the Bible, the scriptures, the manna
is a type or can serve as a type of God's written word, the bread
of life, the bread of life. There are five things I want
to point out to us from this chapter which picture The Bible,
picture the word of God that is given concerning the manna. The first thing we see, and we
read verse four, the manna was supernaturally given by God. The Lord said unto Moses, I will
reign bread from heaven. The Bible, that which you have
in your hand, on your lap tonight, has been given unto us, given
unto you supernaturally by God. It's called many times the miracle
book. And it's called the miracle book
not because it contains so many miracles recorded that God has
worked. It does have those, but the Bible
itself, the book itself is a miracle. It can only be explained. by
believing and knowing that it is supernaturally, that is from
God, given unto man. The apostle Paul, he declared,
all scripture is given by inspiration of God. That is from Genesis
1 to the end of Revelation 22. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God and is profitable, he says. It's all profitable for
several reasons that he mentions there. But then Peter, the Apostle
Peter in his letter, second letter, he tells us what is meant by
inspiration. Paul said, all scripture is given
by inspiration of God. But what does that mean? What
does it mean when we read that this book was given by inspiration
of God? Well, as I said, Peter puts it
like this, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of
man. Man didn't just sit down one
day and say, well, I think I'm going to write a book. I think
I'm going to write the book of Habakkuk. No, it didn't work
like that. The prophecy in old time did
not come by the will of man, but now listen, holy men, sanctified
men, men set apart by the Spirit of God for this work, this work
of writing the scripture. For the prophecy came not in
old time by the will of man, but holy men, sanctified men
of God spoke as they were, here it is, moved by the Holy Ghost. That's what inspiration means. It means that they were moved
as they were writing, they were moved to use the very words which
they used. And yet, because it is inspired
of God, we know that the various authors, and there was a number
of them, I was counting up this afternoon, There was at least
eight men who authored the letters and the Gospels in the New Testament,
and more than that in the Old Testament, men who wrote the
Word of God. And it was written over a space
of 1,500 years. It was written primarily in two
languages, but part of it was written in a third language.
And many of these men didn't know each other. They certainly
were not contemporary with one another. And yet they were able
to write this book being inspired of God so that it contains and
it is the word of God. As a divine author. Yes, it has
human authors. We say that Paul wrote Romans,
that's true, but we could also say that God, the Holy Spirit
wrote Romans because Paul was inspired of God. Look in verse
15 here in our text, Exodus 16. And when the children of Israel
saw it, they said one to another, it is manna. Do you have a marginal
reading there? They said it is manna. You look
in your margin, and what did they say? What is this? What
is this? They'd never seen it before.
It was something that was new, something that was, there was
just something different about it. What is it? They'd never
seen anything like this before, like the manna, and there's no
book The making of books, as I think Solomon said, there's
no end. There's no end. Kevin, you take
books from one library to another library, and you know they're
just books, and they leave them on the shelves for so long, and
then they discord them. I mean, there's just no end.
How many millions, if not billions, of books have been written, but
there's no book like this book? This book, and it's still the
most sold book in the world, as far as I know. It's still
the most sold book of all the books in the world, and has been. There was a famous infidel by
the name of Voltaire. I believe he lived in the 1800s,
I think, maybe the 1700s, but he predicted when he was living
that the Bible would be a forgotten book in so many years. And whenever
those years was up, they were actually storing printed Bibles
in the room where he had made that prediction. No, this is
a miracle book. What is it? It's a book that
was given supernaturally by God, different from every other book.
And it's a living book in many ways. I know you, just about everyone
here, I think I know fairly well, and some of us have been reading
the scriptures for a long time. And by God's grace, we want to
continue reading. But you can study this book for
a lifetime and then one day read something and think, has that
been there all this time? God will open up your eyes to
something that you've passed over or that's made an impression
on you. And it never grows old, not the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a miracle book from beginning
to end. So that's the first thing I see
that the manna typifies or is a type of the written word of
God. What is it? When they saw the manor, what
is it? What is this book? What is this book that we have
in our hands? Well, it's a book that God has
given us supernaturally by divine inspiration. so that in the original
manuscripts, and I understand we don't have any of those, we
have copies, but in the original manuscripts, there would be no
errors whatsoever. It is the inerrant, inspired,
infallible word of God, a miracle book, the manna. The second thing
I want to mention is if you look down in verse 31, Exodus 16 and verse 31. The manna was white. Verse 31. And the house of Israel called
the name thereof manna, and it was like coriander seed, white. White. And the taste of it was
like wafers made with honey. Now, I point this out to us.
It was white. Because in the scriptures, white
is used to symbolize purity. As an example, in Revelation
19 in verse 8, we read, and to her, the Lamb's wife, and to
her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean
and white. For the fine linen is the righteousness
of saints. The manna pictures the word of
God in that it was white, it was pure. And this book that
we have is pure. It's pure. For instance, in Psalm
12, the psalmist said, the words of the Lord are pure words. As
silver, it's like silver, he said, tried in a furnace of earth,
purified seven times. They put the silver in the furnace
and heat it up to a certain degree, you know, and take off that which
was no good, and then they'd heat it up again, and there'd
be more impurities taken out. Heat it up again, seven times,
and you know in the scripture, seven is a number that's used
for completeness, for perfection. And that's what the psalmist
said, the words of the Lord are pure words as silver. Tried in a furnace of earth,
purified seven times. And then in Psalm 19, in verse
eight, the psalmist said, the statutes of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is
pure, enlightening the eyes. And in Psalm 119, 140, thy word
is very pure. It's very pure, therefore, Thy
servant loveth it. David, remember, he was a man
after God's own heart, wasn't he? And I'm sure there was many
reasons that is recorded of him, but one reason, no doubt, was
because he loved the Word of God, the written Word of God. It's pure, it was white. It is,
as I said, the inerrant Word of God. Number three, the manna
was small and round. Look back in verse 14. And when the dew that lay was
gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a
small round thing, as small as a hoarfrost on the ground. The manna, it was small and it
was round. And that also made picture to
us the written word of God. Now, I'm sure that most of us
have seen, maybe have, what used to be called a family Bible.
A family Bible, it was about this big, you know, and it was
big, not because it had any more of the Bible, any more of the
word of God in it, but it was printed or, It was, yes, it was printed so
that people could use it as a kind of a register. They would register
marriages and births and deaths. And some of them would have a
dictionary in it. Some would have a concordance.
This Bible that I use here has a concordance in it. It has a
dictionary in it. But I have a Bible and it's full,
it's complete. and I can put it in my pocket.
It's small. And when you realize what is
contained here, when you think of all the books, for instance,
medical books, if there was a library that had medical books, you know,
and they'd have a book on the brain and on the heart and on
the, I mean, you'd just have book after book after book, fill
up a shelf of books, and here we have The Bible, the word of
God, in this sense, is small enough that we carry it in our
hands. And I want to say this, too. I hadn't planned on saying
this, but I like the fact that people, you people, you carry
a Bible. You bring a Bible. I'm never
gonna get used to someone setting out there and pull out their
phone and follow with me in the scripture. Now, I'm old-fashioned,
I know that. I'm not up-to-date. But I just
want us all to have our own Bible, you know, so we can not only
hear the word, but see the word for ourselves. And there's just
something about it. When I announce a passage of
scripture and I'm standing here in front of you and I see all
of you take your Bible and start looking, I hear those leaves
turning. And that's good. Now, I don't want to offend anyone
that uses their phone, but I'm just saying personally, I love
the fact that we have a Bible in our hands. You know, some
of my pastor friends, they use a tablet or an iPad for their
notes. And some of my family gave me
an iPad last year for Christmas. And they asked me, when are you
going to start using that in the pulpit? That's not going
to happen. That's just not going to happen.
Number one, I'm afraid that thing will shut off. And I'll be lost
up here without my notes. No. But that's a new generation. Some of you, that's you. That
Bible on the phone or on your iPad, I'm not being critical
of those who do it, but my rathers, that's what I'm talking about
tonight. My rathers is we have, and I'm pointing out the fact
that we have all that God intended, or all that God knows that we
need to know about God, we have it here. And God is infinite. Think about that. God is infinite,
and eternity itself will not last long enough for us to learn
everything about God. And yet we have all that we need
to know about God right now here in this book. It's small. All
we need to know about Christ is right here. All we need to
know about salvation. All we need to know about ourselves
and our need of Christ. It's all here in a relatively
small volume. And then the fact it was round.
I thought about this. It was not only white, pure,
small, but round. And the thought came to me that
when a man and woman marry, most often there's a ring exchanged. Now the ring is round and you
can't tell where it begins and where it ends. And that's a picture,
isn't it? It's a picture of love. Till death do we part. That's
what we're saying when we say our marriage vows and we exchange
rings to death. And the Bible is round in the
sense that it tells of a greater love than ever man and woman
have ever had. It speaks of God's love for His
people. It's an eternal love. And it
is a love that will never end. Even, you know, I said, till
death do us part. That's what we say in that marriage
vow. We're going to be married to
one another till death do us part. But this love that's presented
to us in this book, even physical death, There is no parting of
this love. There's no separation from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. The Bible has one message, and
that is the Lord Jesus Christ. In John chapter 5, our Savior
said to some Jews who were lost and on their way to hell. He
said, search the scriptures, for in them you think you have
eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. And when
we read the word of God, we look for Christ. He accused those
lawyers, charged them, I should say. for taking away the key
of knowledge. They wouldn't enter in themselves
and they hindered others who were entering. And men take away
the key of knowledge when they take Christ out of this book. And they don't look for Christ
and preach Christ. They have something else on their
agenda. You know, this book is a hymn
book, right? Hymn, that is the Lord Jesus
Christ. I've been reading through the
Gospel of Luke the last few days, and I've seen this, I think,
more than once, this phrase. He went throughout every city
and village preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom
of God, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ. He went throughout
every city and village. How many cities and villages
were there in Palestine? Hundreds, I would imagine. In every city he taught, in their
synagogues he taught and he healed people, cast out demons. And
yet, as John said at the close of his gospel, he said, and there
are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they should
be written, every one, if everything that the Lord Jesus Christ did
when he was here in the flesh, teaching and healing and casting
out demons, If everything had been written, John said, I suppose, I suppose, he said,
that even the world itself could not contain the books that should
be written. How large a book could have been
written? John said, I don't suppose even the world could contain
a book. And yet, we have all that we need, all for our faith,
what we ought to believe, for our practice, how we are to live.
We have it all right here in a relatively small volume. All right, let's look at this
fourth. The manna was to be gathered every day. Notice that in verse
four. Then said the Lord unto Moses,
behold, I will bring bread from heaven for you and the people
shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, every day. This teaches us that we are to
feed on God's written word. The Lord Jesus, when he was tempted
by Satan, remember Satan said, if you be the son of God, command
this stone to be made bread. And he repeated or quoted, it
is written that man must not live by bread alone, but by every
word of God. And our bodies, we recognize
our bodies need replenishing food to have energy to work and
to live and to move this physical body. We have to eat. And the same thing is true about
our spiritual soul. We need food. And the food that
God has given us is his written word, the manna, to be gathered
every day. Some people, they eat a big meal
on Sunday, they come on Sunday morning, they eat a big meal,
go home, and I hope it's nobody here in our congregation, but
then they don't eat again until the next Sunday. You couldn't do that physically.
You'd lose all your weight and all your muscle and everything.
No, we need to eat every day. They had to gather at the manor
every day. And they gathered it in the morning,
it says, too. And that's important. There's
three things I'd point out, three lessons for us here. Number one,
it was gathered every day, just as we need physical food for
our bodies each day. We need spiritual food. Number
two, it was gathered in the morning. Be good if we can start our day
with God's word. And third, it was gathered by
bending down. It wasn't like picking oranges
off a tree. No, they had to bend down to
it. And that reminds us of prayer.
Prayer as we read. There's a member of our church,
a man, who told me this several years ago. He said, I learned
when the Lord first saved me, whenever I opened this book,
I always repeat this same prayer that David prayed. It's recorded
in Psalm 119. Open, this is his prayer, open
thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law,
out of thy gospel, thy book. Well fifth, the manna was to
be eaten. It wasn't just to be looked at.
In fact, if you went out in the morning and you saw it, you were
to gather it because if it lay there, it would, it would disintegrate. It was to be eaten. It wasn't
to be just looked at and admired. You know, we can learn about
the Bible itself and we are filled with admiration when we think
about this book that we have, how great it is, but it's not
just to be admired. Many, well, several years ago,
some of you will remember, I used to go up to Wichita Falls and
preach in a home, and then they rented a place to meet up there. That's a long drive, let me tell
you that. That's a long way up there. And
when you get to Wichita Falls, you see a sign saying it's 300
more miles to Amarillo. My, Texas is a big state. Anyway. She told me this story, the lady
that her and her husband would have in their house. We met in
their house many times, but she told me this story one time when
I was up there. There was a very wealthy woman.
You know, Wichita Falls was an old place. A lot of people got
rich up there at one time. And this lady was a very wealthy
person and she collected Bibles. She had a very good collection
of Bibles, rare Bibles I'm talking about, rare Bibles. And I think
eventually she donated that collection to SMU. But anyway, she opened
up her house for people to come in and just kind of look at the
Bibles. Well, my friend saw one Bible
there and she told the lady, she said, well, you've got a
Britches Bible. Britches. Because she recognized
it. One of the early translations
into English, I forget which one it was, but in Genesis 3
where it says in our translation, the one we use rather, God made
coats of skins and clothed them, it says God made britches for
them. But this is my point. The lady,
when my friend told her, I see you have a britches Bible here,
she said, honey, I don't read them. I just collect them. And you know that's sad, isn't
it? A lot of people, that's all they do. They just collect a
Bible. They wouldn't dare live in a house without one. But the
Bible is not to be just displayed many times in many homes, and
that's good. People have a Bible out on the
coffee table or wherever in the front room. That's great. But it's not just to be displayed,
is it? It's to be read. And not only
read, but to be used, as the scripture said, to be doers of
the word. James said, not hearers only,
but doers of the word. God's given us his word to feed
us. When the psalmist said, he maketh
me to lie down in green pastures. You know, this is what he was
talking about here. Here's the green pastures. And
when you see a sheep lying down, What does that tell you? Well,
that tells you he's been eating, right? He's been eating, and
I think I'm right about this. A sheep has three stomachs, and
when they're lying down after they've grazed in the morning
maybe, and now they're lying down, they regurgitate from one
stomach, and they chew that food again. And that's the way we
should read the Word of God, isn't it? It's not just reading,
but thinking, meditating upon the Word. May the Lord bless
His Word to each one of us here tonight. Okay, Bill. All right, let's stand and let's
turn to number 176. Break thou the bread of life, dear Lord,
to me.