Lesson #19

EXODUS 16
Lesson #19
THE BREAD FROM HEAVEN AND THE SABBATH

• Memory Verse: John 6:32

• Now that the Israelites were living in freedom from bondage in Egypt, they were beginning to learn more about the God who freed them and provided for them.
• There are 7 experiences recorded in Exodus that parallel the Christian life. The number 7 in the Bible symbolizes God’s completion or perfection.
• We have already seen three of these experiences in chapter 15:
• #1 = The song of the redeemed.
• A new believer in Christ rejoices in praise to the Lord for his new birth experience.
• #2 = The bitter waters at Marah
• The believer learns that Christ, the healer, makes sweet the bitter experiences of life.
• #3 = The oasis at Elim
• The believer learns that there is sufficiency in God’s Word that produces fruitfulness in life.
• #4 = The wilderness of Sin
• This is the experience we see in chapter 16.
• Read 1 Cor 10:10-11
• Read Exo 16:1-21 (Experience #4)
• About 2 ½ months after leaving Egypt, the Israelites are hungry in the desert and begin to complain.
• The sin of murmuring:
• 1Cor 10:10 told us that when the Israelites murmured against Moses and against God, it was a sin. Why is this sin so destructive?
• The Israelites should have asked God to supply their needs. Instead they complained because He was not meeting them.
• Murmuring or complaining is a destructive sin:
• It destroys unity and faith within the group.
• It promotes rebellion in the group.
• It questions God’s wisdom in His choice of leadership.
• It promotes selfish pride that human wisdom is better than God’s wisdom.
• Israelites made murmuring or complaining a habitual sin pattern in their lives. The book of Numbers gives us 6 specific incidents of murmuring and the devastating results. This habitual sin kept them in the wilderness of unbelief for 40 years.
• The manna from heaven:
• What was manna?
• The word, manna, means = What is it?
• It is not like anything we have on earth for it came from heaven.
• It tasted like fresh, sweetened coriander seed.
• It had a yellow color.
• It contained all the nutrition that man would need to survive in the desert for 40 years.
• As soon as the Israelites entered into the promised land, God stopped sending the manna.
• What are the conditions that the people had to fulfill in order to have manna to eat?
• They must gather it every day, except for the 7th day. (26)
• They must gather twice as much on the 6th day. (5)
• They each must gather only as much as they could eat in a single day. (16)
• There was to be no leftover manna. (19)
• They had to gather it in the morning. (21)
• Why did God place such strict conditions on the gathering of the bread? (4)
• It was to teach the people obedience.
• It was to point out man’s sinful nature.
• Whenever there is a law, man’s sinful nature looks for a way to circumvent the law and then to rationalize his behavior.
• Man’s sinful nature then complains about the harshness of the law.
• It was to give us a spiritual message.
• What two things does the manna symbolize in the Christian life? How do we know?
• Read Joh 6:51
• This scripture identifies the manna as symbolic of Jesus Christ.
• Read Deu 8:3
• This scripture identifies the manna as symbolic of the Word of God.
• And, of course, Jesus is the Living Word of God.
• What is the spiritual message we should learn in the mana?
• Read Joh 6:49-51
• Because Jesus and the Word of God are symbolized by the manna, and because Jesus said that we should eat of Him and His Word. We can make some parallels to the gathering of the manna, where the eating of it refers to making it part of our lives by digesting it.

Manna in the Wilderness	Jesus and the Word of God
They must gather it every day except for the 7th day.	Believers should read the Word of God every day and at least once a week they should hear it in church.
They must gather twice as much on the 6th day.	Believers should attempt to get a little deeper in the Word one day a week.
They each must gather only as much as they could eat on a single day.	Reading the Word must be a personal commitment to satisfy the believer’s needs for that day.
There was to be no leftover manna.	The Word of God is living and fresh every day.
They had to gather the manna in the morning.	Generally, the best time to read the Word of God is in the morning.

• How did the Israelites respond to the manna?
• Read Num 11:6-8
• The people complained because it was always the same, day after day.
• Notice that they became so dissatisfied with the manna that they tried to change it by cooking it in different ways. It reminds me of a cook book I had that was called, “101 Ways to Cook Hamburger”. One thing I noticed in trying the 101 ways to cook hamburger was that it still tasted like hamburger! These people discovered that, too. No matter how hard they tried to change and disguise the manna, it was still manna.
• Read Psa 78:18-33
• How does this practice relate to us today?
• People today are just like the Israelites. They become dissatisfied with God’s Word. They try every way to change it to make it more palatable with their new modern versions of the Bible. They cut it up and grind it up. However, God has promised that there will always be a remnant who will value His living Word as He gave it originally.
• What did the people eat in the evening?
• The people ate quail in the evening.
• Because of their murmuring about the better quality of the food they used to eat in Egypt, God finally gave them an overabundance of quail that made them sick.
• Read Num 11:31-33
• Principle #1

: After giving a warning, God will permit a person’s lust to run its full course, but the person must bear the consequences of that lust. (Rom 1:21-32)

• What does the quail symbolize in the Christian life? How do we know?
• Read Heb 5:12-13
• The quail also symbolizes the Word of God. However, it specifically represents the depths of the Word of God.
• The depths of the Word come after one initially learns the surface meanings of the Word as exemplified by the gathering of the manna in the morning.

• Read Exo 16:22-31 The keeping of the Sabbath
• God’s Intent:
• The Israelites’ departure from Egypt began the period of law.
• God is gradually introducing them to the keeping of the law with the restrictions concerning the manna and the Sabbath.
• God marks the Sabbath by the fact that there is no manna on that day.
• The Israelites must gather double the amount the day before the Sabbath. Why?
• In the period of law, the Sabbath day was to be a day of rest when no work was to be done.
• It was not a day that God uniquely set aside for worship. The Jews were to worship God every day.
• God did not tell the Jews that the Sabbath was made for worship in the tabernacle, in the temple, in the synagogue, or in the church..
• How do we know God did not intend that the seventh day be a day strictly for worship?
• Read Mar 2:27
• Notice that Jesus did not say that the Sabbath was made for God.
• If God intended that man worship only on the Sabbath day, He would have said that day was made for God
• Then what did He mean when He said that day was made for man?
• God’s intention was to provide a day of rest from work for man’s well being
• It was a day that God uniquely set aside for “Rest”. We will see in a minute what that means.
• The purpose of the Sabbath:
• We have already learned that there was a whole Sabbatic system of which the 7th day was only a small part. (See lesson #12)
• God’s purpose for the Sabbatic System was to mark a people, the Jews, as his special people.
• The Sabbath day was given only to the Jews. Jesus repeated all the other of the ten commandments in the New Testament but He never insisted on a literal keeping of the Sabbath day.
• God’s purpose for the Sabbath had a bigger, deeper, more important meaning. It was to be a message to man by example..
• The message of the Sabbath
• The Sabbath was to provide a type or prefigure for the age of grace in which we now live.
• In creation, God worked 6 days, then He rested on the seventh day. Biblical history is marked by 7 ages and dispensations that we discussed in Lesson #15.
• Through a majority of history, man will try to work his way to God, but only when man rests in faith in Jesus Christ, does true peace come.
• The seventh age is the age of Messiah, when Christ will reign on earth for a thousand years.
• Therefore the Sabbath prefigures the Messianic Age.
• The Sabbath was to be a type or a prefigure of a spiritual “rest”.
• Read Heb 3:11-19
• Read Heb 4:1-11
• The promised land is used to illustrate God’s “rest” (Heb 3:19)
• However, there are two spiritual meanings concerning God’s “rest”.
• =1= The “rest” concerning the entrance into salvation. (Mat 11:28)
• =2= The “rest” concerning the blessings of the Christian life. (Mat 11:29)
• The Israelites were saved when they believed God and trusted Him to take them out of Egypt based on the blood of the lamb on the doorpost.
• Israelites could not enter the promised land of God’s blessings because they had no faith (They had unbelief). They led a meaningless existence wandering outside of the promises of God.
• The eternal “rest” of God in the New Testament is better than the temporary “rest” of entering into the promised land. Therefore, Jesus Christ is better than Joshua.
• It was the sin of unbelief that robbed the Israelites of God’s great blessings in the promised land.
• It is this same sin that robs the Christian of God’s blessings and victory in the Christian life.

• Read Exo 16:32-36
• Why did the Israelites have to keep a small part of the manna for the generations to come when, on a daily basis, it would never last overnight? (32)
• The small pot of manna was to be a testimony of God’s redemptive power.
• After they built the tabernacle, they put this small pot in the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies.
• The spiritual meaning of the manna that symbolizes Christ and His Word speaks of an eternal Savior and man’s eternal need to feed on His truth.
• The fact that the manna did not last more than 2 days, demonstrates to us that God preserved this small piece of manna miraculously so the people would never forget how God provided for them for 40 years in the wilderness.
• Summary:
• What principles do we learn from this chapter that relate to the Christian life?
• Christians need to spiritually eat and digest the Word of God daily.
• Christians must avoid the habitual sin of murmuring because it devastates faith.
• Christians should desire the meat of the Word of God and not the lusts of the world.
• Christians should seek to enter into deep truths of the Word of God so as to understand the depths of His secrets like that of the Sabbath Rest, that they might have greater faith.

HOMEWORK
EXODUS 17
This is a self-study. Please do not send homework answers to the teacher forcorrection.

• Application of Exo 16
• In which of the principles learned in this chapter and listed under the title, “Summary”, do you find lacking in your walk with the Lord?
• How do you plan to deepen your walk with the Lord?

• Preparation for Exo 17
• Read Exo 17:1-7 Water from the rock
• Of what is the rock a symbol? How do you know?
• What does the water symbolize? How do you know?
• What is the message of the water from the rock?
• Read Num 20:7-12
• What was Moses’ sin?
• Why was this sin so great that it kept him from leading the people into the promised land?
• Read Exo 17:8-16
• What is the significance of this battle?
• What Christian principles does this experience teach us?

• Memory verse: Revelation 21:6