LEARNING TO LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME
EXODUS 16
INTRODUCTION:
God has always been long-suffering with His people. He has demonstrated His ability to deal patiently with their murmurings, discontents, and unhappiness. His dealing with the people of Israel on their journey toward Mt.Sinai is a good example of this. God responded to their fresh outbreak of grumbling by attempting to teach them one of the great lessons of life – you must learn to live life one day at a time.
The whole event that surrounded the giving of manna from heaven has as its ultimate purpose teaching the lesson about living life one day at a time. It is God demonstrating to His people that He is trustworthy and that divine providences always work for the good of His people. It is a demonstration of His sufficiency for every situation that we may face in life.
You are already familiar with this story. They had been on the journey for about a month and a half. The six weeks of travel had used up the food reserves they brought with them when they left Egypt. They are now out in the rugged desert of Sin which is between Elim and Sinai and their food runs out. They begin to complain all over again against Moses and the Lord: “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around the pots of meat and ate all of the food that we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” God heard these words of discontent from His people, but He didn’t respond with a denunciation. Instead He took actions that were designed to teach them that when you are the people of God, you live life one day at a time. He gave them instructions about the provision of “bread from heaven.” He promised them that it would appear every morning and they could go out and gather up this provided food. It was to appear every morning for six days of the week, but on the seventh day – the Sabbath – it would not be there. So, it would be necessary for them on the sixth day to gather enough for two days. And then it happened just as God had promised to them. They would wake up in the morning before the dew had dried, and there would be this strange food substance all around them. They would go out and gather it and it became the bases for their diet over the next forty years. God did this to teach them one of the most strategic lessons about life – you live it one day at a time. In order to live it successfully one day at a time, there are at least three things that you must do.
I. BY LEARNING THE LESSON OF DEPENDENCE.
God designed this method of provision for their physical need in such a way that they would develop dependence upon Him. He wanted them to know that His heart was to provide what ever was necessary so that His will could be accomplished for them. So, He designed it so that their food came on a daily bases. It was there every morning when they awakened. He was teaching them the lesson of dependence.
1. Dependence upon Him for each need.
It so happened that on this occasion the need was for food. On other occasions there would be other needs. In the very next chapter the need will be for water. Later the need will be for military victory. Later the need will be something else. But each day brings it own peculiar need. God designs His provisions so that we become aware that we can depend upon Him to meet every need of life.
Now, a distinction should be made between our needs and our wants. The provision that God gave them might not have satisfied all of the preferences of the people of Israel. Some of them preferred their favorite dishes that they had known back in Egypt, but God’s provision did meet the basic need of their life. He provided a manna that was sweet and tasty. It was also nourishing and satisfying. He prepared enough of it so that Israelite could have all of their physical desires satisfied each day.
Have you learned this lesson? Have you learned that you can indeed trust God to meet your needs? Have you learned that He is faithful in meeting the needs of His people in a timely manner?
2. Provision for each day.
It is true that God met their need, but He met it in a way that would demonstrate to them something basic about the way He relates to His people. He did not give the provision to them in a weekly allocation. The allocation was made daily.
Actually, some of the people had to learn this lesson the hard way! On the first day that they went out to gather the manna from the ground, they were fearful that it would not be there the next morning. So instead of gathering just their daily allocation, they gathered enough for two days. They were embarrassed the next morning when they woke up and found that the manna that they had gathered for the second day had begun to rot and already had maggots in it. It was giving off a terribly offensive odor. And to their greater embarrassment there was all around them on the ground an ample provision for the second day. They had to learn that God provides for His people on a daily basis.
You may remember that Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He has not promised to give us bread for next week today. He has promised to meet our needs day by day. If you are going to learn to live life one day at a time, you must learn the lesson of dependence. You have to look to God in simple child like trust. He will meet your needs day by day.
Jesus emphasized this truth in the famous Sermon on the Mount. He spoke about being anxious about clothing to wear, food to eat, and something to drink. He discouraged anxiety about what might happen tomorrow. He summed up the whole passage by saying, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own”
(Matt. 6:34). It does have enough trouble for itself, but God measures out just what you need to make it through the trouble of that day. He gives enough food, clothing, and basic provisions for life for each day.
What a lesson to learn! You learn the lesson of dependence!
II. BY LEARNING THE LESSON OF DILIGENCE.
There is a second lesson that is essential. If you are to learn to live life one day at a time, it is true that without any involvement on the part of the people of Israel, God put the food on he ground all around them every morning. It was tasty, attractive, and nourishing. But, God left something for them to do. He did not deliver it in a pot already boiled, sitting on the table ready to be served. Instead, He required of them daily diligence in appropriating what He had provided. The lesson of diligence is an important lesson.
1. As an act of cooperation with God.
What God actually did was entered in with an agreement with His people concerning the meeting of their daily needs. He entered into a partnership with them. He would provide the food where it would be accessible to them, but they must gather it and prepare it. God had a part to do and they had a part to do. It was a cooperative effort.
2. It is an act of obedience.
The word of instruction to the people was very clear: “Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.” I assume that the father in the family was responsible for taking leadership in this matter. Since they were still on a journey moving from place to place some days, the first responsibility in the morning was to gather the manna that had come during the night. He would lead the family in the gathering of an omer, which was about two quarts, for each person in the family. If when they returned to their tent and measured the gathering, they found they had gathered too much, they were to share it with someone who had not gathered quite enough. There was to be no hoarding or selfishly protecting the provisions that God had given, but rather they were to be received with gratitude, but each father was responsible for leading his family in gathering what God had scattered around for them. It because a simple act of obedience for the father to get up in the morning and lead the family in gathering the heavenly bread.
There are some who would prefer to change God’s plan. There are some who would prefer for God to just bring it to the front door like a delivery pizza boy. They want it warm, pre-prepared, and ready to serve. They don’t want to be responsible for anything. God doesn’t meet our needs in that way. Instead God meets our needs as we obediently do the things that He has instructed us to do.
Now God doesn’t send us out around the block gathering up manna each morning to make sure that the needs of our family will be met for the day. Instead God tells us to get up and be at work on time. He tells us to be a good employee in our place of employment. Indeed He tells us that if a man is not willing to work, he shouldn’t expect to eat. It is the law of His kingdom that we work cooperatively with God in providing for the material needs of our family. God gives help and strength and opportunity to work and we give ourselves to the task in obedience to Him. It is learning the lesson of diligence.
Instead of sitting beside the road of life lamenting what you don’t have get up and do what you can do. When you get up and do what you can do, then God will help you do what you can’t do. He becomes your partner in providing the needs of your family.
The lesson of diligence is an important lesson in learning to live one day at a time.
III. BY LEARNING THE LESSON OF DELIGHT.
The opposite of murmuring is gratitude. The opposite of grumbling is to be expressing praise to God and delighting in the Lord. Can you imagine the Hebrew family when they first begin to gather the manna on a daily bases. Every morning as the older members of the family brought in their containers full of manna, the family would scatter around in awe to see what God had provided.
If you think about it, what happened in this incident was a most remarkable provision on the part of God. It is estimated that they were two million, one hundred thousand of the Israelites at this point in their history. The Bible simply tells us that there were 600,000 grown men not counting the wives and the children. Someone has calculated as they attempted to put this into a modern setting, what would have been involved in providing breakfast for 2,100,000 strong people. If you gave them two eggs each, that would be 4,200,000 eggs, divided by 12 that equals 350,000 dozen eggs. Can you imagine how many chickens it would have taken to provide that many eggs each morning?
If you gave each of them two slices of bread for breakfast, again you have 4,200,000 slices of bread. If you put it into loaves with 24 slices in each loaf, this would come to 100,075,000 loaves of bread.
If you gave each of them an 8 oz. glass of milk for breakfast, that is 16,800,000 ounces of milk. Divided by 64 ounces this would come to 262,000,500 gallons of milk. If you gave each of them just a little bit of butter to put on their bread it probably would have required 131,000,250 pounds of butter. If you gave them just a little jelly to go on their bread it would have required 55,000,263 pound of jelly. That is just the breakfast menu for one day. You must multiply that by 2 other meals that were to be served during the day. You can begin to understand something of the momentous size of the feeding project that God was taking on. And yet, it worked each day as those Israelites worked in cooperation with God. What they needed to do was to respond to what God had done with delight.
1. Delight in the Lord.
What a faithful provider our God is! For forty long years God provided so abundantly for the Israelites that not one of them ever went to bed hungry. I am here to testify tonight that the Lowrie family over our years together as family has never gone a day without adequate food to eat. God is responsible for that. He has been faithful so we should delight in Him with love and devotion.
2. Delight in the day.
We should approach each day with wonder and delight that God has met our needs for another day. We should exclaim with the Psalmist, “This is the day that the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.” God has been faith in this day to provide exactly what we have needed. His providences have been kind toward us. His provisions have been generous toward us. This is the day that God has designed. So rejoice in Him.
There is never a day in which the child of God ought to be caught up in discontent and murmuring!
3. Delight in His provisions.
We should see whatever comes into our hands to provide our needs as coming from the hand of our God. Just as surely as the manna was God’s provision, so that which we enjoy in life is God’s provision. It was James who said, “Every good and perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights.” And they do! He is the source of every provision.
No one learned the lesson of living one day at a time better than the Apostle Paul. From the Roman prison he wrote to his friends in Philippi to say, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content what ever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well-fed or hungry. Whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” (Phil. 1:11-13). It is a wonderful thing to learn to live with contentment in the will of God. The secret of living a life like this is learning to live dependently, diligently, and delightfully. We must learn to depend upon the Lord, be diligent in our responsibilities with the Lord, and then delight ourselves in the Lord.
The writer of Hebrews added an admonition that harmonizes with this: “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?’” (Hebrews 13:5-7).
Oh, we must learn to live one day at a time. Allow God to be in this day all that He has promised to be and be delighted with that.
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