Exodus 16:2–15

August 5 2012 Sermon b

²And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, ³and 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." ⁴Then the LORD said to Moses, "Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. ⁵On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily." ⁶So 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, ⁷and in the morning you shall see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against the LORD. For what are we, that you grumble against us?" ⁸And Moses said, "When the LORD gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the LORD has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the LORD." ⁹Then Moses said to Aaron, "Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, 'Come near before the LORD, for he has heard your grumbling.'" ¹⁰And 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. ¹¹ And the LORD said to Moses, ¹²"I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, 'At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.'" ¹³In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. ¹⁴And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. ¹⁵When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.

Here we go again. Another story about an obscure little tribe of people in the ancient Middle East that was not much more than a blip on the radar of time and would have been long forgotten if it had not somehow made its way into the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. This is now the tenth Sunday in a row that we have had sermons from the Old Testament, and we might begin to wonder what practical application can we make in our modern world of these lessons in ancient history.

Indeed, what practical use is the Old Testament to a modern people living very much in the New Testament era? Often when we read or study the Old Testament, when we take classes on it in school, or have Bible studies in church on the Old Testament, we read it as a book of history. We learn about Abraham and Isaac, the Exodus, the wars, the conquests, the kings, the exile, and a lot of historical facts. We see it as the story of how God foretold the coming of Christ, and what he did to bring Christ into the world. And certainly all that is there, but if that's all it is, then now that Christ has come the Old Testament is finished and has little practical importance for our everyday life or our faith in Christ.

However today in our Gospel reading Jesus gives us the key to understanding the Old Testament. Here Jesus himself interprets our Old Testament lesson in a completely new way showing us the real significance of it for us today. Jesus shows us that the meaning of the Old Testament is found in Christ himself. The history, the Israelite nation, the sacrifices, the priesthood, the temple all take on a new meaning with the life and death of Jesus.

You might say reading the Old Testament is like reading a good novel. As we read it we get to know the cast of characters, each with his own story, and a tangled web of plots that intertwine with each other, but we don't understand how they are all related to each other or what they mean until we get to the end of the book. It is the final chapter that opens our eyes and untangles all the twisted plots and makes sense out of the whole thing. In the case of the Old Testament, the life and work of Jesus Christ is the final chapter that untangles the meaning for us. Jesus himself says, "I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them." (Matthew 5:17). What does that mean? In our Gospel today Jesus says that the Father gave them the bread in the wilderness and that Jesus himself is the bread of life. He opens our eyes to see that it is Christ about whom we read in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. He is both the story and message of the Old Testament. Jesus says, "Moses wrote about me." (John 5:46). Paul says, "The [food laws, the sacrifices, the festivals of the Old Testament] are the shadow of things to come, but the substance is Christ." (Colossians 2:17). In other words, the Old Testament is about Christ! Christ is not hiding playing "Hide and go seek" with us. He is not scattered around here and there like the puzzle "Finding Waldo." Christ is not just in the picture, rather he is the picture. Luther says, "It follows powerfully and irrefutably that the God who led the people of Israel out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, who guided them in the wilderness and nourished them with heavenly bread, is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the virgin Mary, whom we call Christ our God and Lord." This October we will have a marvelous opportunity to learn this better when we have a Seminary professor here to teach us about Christ in the Old Testament.

In the same way, if the Old Testament is about Christ, then Christ's people, the church, are also in the Old Testament story. St. Paul says that the church is the true Israel. We are the spiritual descendents of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. We are the spiritual descendents of the Israelites wondering in the wilderness. These Hebrews we read about in the Old Testament are our family, because we have been grafted into their family tree by faith and joined to them through Baptism. Thus St. Paul says, "You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." We have become part of their family of God's chosen people.

So as we read about the Israelite people wandering in the wilderness on their way to the promised land, what we really are reading about is ourselves, wandering in the wilderness of this world on our way to the kingdom of heaven. When we read about the trials they went through, their difficulties in trying to follow God, their weakness of faith, their grumbling and complaining to God, their temptations and sins, and their struggles to live as the people of God in a wilderness, we learn about our trials, our weak faith, our daily struggle to be God's children in this wilderness of sin as we try to serve God and follow him on our way to the kingdom of heaven. The Old Testament now becomes our story. It is the story of our faith. The story of God's people living in this world struggling what it means to be Christians in a fallen world.

Now, with that understanding, let's look at the text. The Israelites had just crossed the Red Sea. We have all seen it in the movies and in Sunday School pictures: the plagues in Egypt, the death of the firstborn, and the parting of the Red Sea. It is an exciting story, a powerful story, a story with a happy ending. But we might wonder what happened next; after the excitement of the great deliverance from Egypt and the drowning of the Egyptian army. What did they do the next day when it was all over, and they went back to the normal routine of everyday life?

Well, that's what we have in our text today. The very next day when the miracles came to an end so did their faith in God. Now they are grumbling at Moses; and complaining about their called leader is to complain about God. They complained that God had delivered them and would have rather died in slavery in Egypt than to have been freed. They accused God of giving them a raw deal.

Moses wrote this down by God's instruction, not for their sake, but to teach us about ourselves. It shows us what it means to live out our day by day life as God's people. We see just how our faith is strong as long as things are going good for us—as long as we have a job, good income, money in the bank or a pension, and as long as we have friends, family, and health we don't have any trouble trusting God, but as soon as the good things end so does our faith. We start grumbling and complaining to God, perhaps even accusing him of our problems. Our prayers turn into complaints.

That is what life is like in this wilderness for the people of God. God has made a covenant with us, but how do we live as God's people in our everyday life in this world? How can we be followers of Christ in this sinful world? How can sinners live as children of God? That's what the children of Israel teach us. They were sinners just as we are. They had the same questions, doubts and struggles to live as God's children in this world. Their failures are our failures, their sins are our sins.

And sin they did on that first day of life in the wilderness. And so do we. They had just been "baptized", one might say, in the waters of the Red Sea. Coming up out of the font of Baptism, or away from the altar, or out the church door, we start bickering, complaining, and grumbling as if on cue. As if we didn't hear a word of the service. Our prayers turn into broken and garbled complaints rather than praises and thanksgivings of faith.

Nevertheless, God answered Moses and said that he would provide the bread they needed. "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." (Ps 103:8). In spite of our poor prayers and weak faith, God does not deal with us according to our sins. (Psalm 103:10). "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him." (Ps. 103:13). When we look at ourselves in the mirror of the Israelites we see how awful our behavior is; how improper our prayers are. We must ask, "Why does God still listen to us?" Answer: Because we are his children. We have been made his children by Jesus Christ. The source of God's grace throughout history, the source of his mercy toward Israel, is the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we became his children in Baptism. As a father loves his children even when they wound him and grieve his heart, so God loves still his children when they wound him.

Therefore, God heard their broken prayers and answered their false complaints. Verses 9 and 10 of our text: "Say to the whole congregation of the people, 'Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.' And they looked toward the wilderness and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud." They saw the glory of God, veiled, as it were, in a cloud. That was the pre-incarnate Christ. This is the tangible and local presence of the Son of God. This is the real presence of the preexistent Christ in Old Testament history, and that is the clue to understanding the Old Testament. And that is the clue to understanding God's presence with us today, as we too see the glory of the Lord, veiled, in the form of human flesh and blood, Jesus Christ. We see how the real presence of Christ led them out of Egypt and across the Red Sea and through the wilderness, just as it is the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of Holy Communion leads us through this wilderness of our fallen, sinful hearts.

God, then, sent them bread from heaven, the manna. The very next morning the ground was covered with it. And still they got it wrong. God gave them instructions on how to gather it. But they didn't follow his instructions. Not because they didn't understand them, but because they didn't care what God had to say. They ignored his instructions, his Word, because they wanted to do things their way. Much like us today. Right here in the church, we have his Word, we have his instructions, but we often chose to ignore what God has to say, so we can do what we want. We make decisions and go off in our own directions without ever asking the question, "What does God want us to do?"

And still, God had mercy on them and sent them bread. Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading today, "It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father 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...I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." (John 6:32-35).

Jesus is the bread from heaven; the bread of life; the true manna that feeds your souls in this wilderness. Christ is really present with us in this wilderness, and He feeds us manna, his own flesh and blood in Holy Communion. He is your true bread. The Old Testament indeed is all about Christ. It teaches us about ourselves and our struggle to be God's children in this world, and it shows us that in Christ, God is merciful and gracious. In spite of our weak faith, in spite of our wrong prayers, in spite of our grumbling and complaining, and even in spite of our sinful nature and rebellion, God remains as a Father who is faithful to his children. He sends us his Son, the true bread which we eat every time we come to the altar and eat the true body of Christ.

That is what this Old Testament pericope—indeed the entire Scripture—is all about: God's steadfast love and faithfulness to those whom he has made his children through faith in Jesus Christ. How do we live as God's children in this sinful world? By confessing our sins and then receiving His forgiveness in the Holy Sacrament where Jesus is present in flesh and blood to nourish and strengthen us. Amen.