Daily Bread
When the Children of Israel left Egypt on the night of the Passover, they carried some food with them to eat on their journey. You will remember that they had unleavened bread in their kneading troughs, and they also took their cattle with them.
But when they had been journeying about a month, their food supply got very low, and they wondered where they were going to get food enough to eat, for they were now in the wilderness, where there was no food. They forgot that the Lord had made a way for them in the sea, and sweetened the bitter waters, and they murmured against Moses for bringing them out of Egypt to die of hunger in the desert.
Many hundred years after this there was a great multitude of hungry people in a desert place, with nothing to eat. And Jesus said to His disciples, “Whence shall we buy bread, that they may eat? And this He said to prove them, for He Himself knew what He would do.”
Even so it was when He led His people into the wilderness where there was no food, and no place to buy any. He Himself know just how He was going to feed them; but because they could not see an abundance of food right before their eyes, they were afraid they were going to be left to starve.
Jesus has taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We are to ask for a supply for one day only, and to trust that God will send us just what we need when the right time comes.
When people have, like the rich fool, “much goods laid up for many years” they often forget who is the Giver, and that it all comes from God. So their great store becomes a curse instead of a blessing to them, and makes them forget God, instead of constantly reminding them of His goodness. They trust in what they can see, instead of in the One whom they cannot see, from whom comes everything that they can see.
Sometimes God lets people lose all that they have, or come to a place where they have nothing at all, so that they may be led to think of where it all comes from. This is what He wanted to teach the Children of Israel, that He is the Source of all things, the great Heavenly Father who provides daily bread for all His children.
And besides this, as they were traveling through the wilderness, over wild rocky country, it would have been very troublesome for them to have much to carry with them. God wanted to save them this trouble, and to have them as free from care as the birds and the animals that He feeds day by day.
Was it not much sweeter for them to have God daily spread a table of fresh bread in the wilderness, than to have to carry a lot of stale food with them?
When we come to a place of trial and difficulty, we may be quite sure that our Father in heaven is preparing some sweet surprise for us. So let us not grieve His loving heart by grumbling, but make Him glad by our loving trust in Him.
Forty years afterwards, when Moses reminded them of this time, he said, “He suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, . . . that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”
It is God’s Word that creates all the food in the world, and it was by this that the Israelites had all their lives been fed. Now God was going to give them an object lesson to teach them this; and He said, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you.”
A strange thing? O no; you have often eaten bread from heaven; indeed you have never eaten any that was not rained down from heaven. “For the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater.”
All their lives the Children of Israel had been eating bread from heaven without knowing it, and to teach them this God rained down bread direct, instead of working in the usual way, and causing the earth to bring it forth through the rain and snow that come down from heaven.
Moses said to the people when they murmured because they had no bread, “In the morning ye shall see the glory of the Lord.” And the Lord said, “In the morning ye shall be filled with bread.” So in giving them bread, God was showing them the glory.
“His glory to His children’s good,
His joy, His tender Fatherhood.”
Once when Paul was speaking to some heathen people who did not know the true God, He said that God “left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”
In His wonderful work of creating food for us by the power of His Word, through the yearly harvest, causing the earth to yield her increase, God is showing us His glory and, giving us a witness of Himself, and leaving without excuse those who do not know Him. Every meal that we have is a witness to us of the true God, and of the tender care of our loving Father and Creator.
Next week we will talk about the bread from heaven that God rained down for His people in the wilderness. Find out all that you can about it in your Bibles.