The Sufficiency of God in All Circumstances (2)
Heidelberg Catechism-Prayer • Sermon • Submitted
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They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and 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.”
Then 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. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” So 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, and 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?” And 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.”
Then 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.’ ” And 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. And the Lord said to Moses, “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.’ ”
In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. And 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. When 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. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’ ” And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.
On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’ ” So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.”
On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.
Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’ ” And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)
“The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Scripture: Exodus 16, Deuteronomy 8:1-10, James 1:17
Heidelberg Catechism: Lord’s Day 50-51
Sermon Title: The Sufficiency of God in All Circumstances
Review: Lord’s Day 45-Why, how, and what
-Most important requirement of thankfulness
-Pray from our hearts, acknowledging our every need, we pray because he listens
Lord’s Days 46 and 47-Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name
-Intimate relationship of Father and child, Jesus ushers in a renewed relationship
-God is not restricted to the laws and constructs of the world
-Knowing so to express God’s glory reminds us of our insignificance yet value
Lord’s Days 48 and 49-Your kingdom come,your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
-God’s kingdom has not come in its fullness, pray expectantly now and for future
-Shared my story as of way of seeing how we have choices to make, God still works through our choices away from his, yet he makes them into his will
-Our request to reject our will recognizes we are to say no to those things that are not glorifying and in fact obstructing our following of God, but also we request he transforms our wills to be in line with his
Lord’s Days 50 and 51-Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if you’re an outdoors person, or enjoy backpacking and adventuring into the wilderness, you might at some point come across the “law of three’s.” The standard law of three’s provides a guideline for avoiding risky and potentially fatal health problems. It states that one can go three minutes without air, three hours without shelter that maintains your core body temperature, three days without water, and three weeks without food. There are several adaptations and of course exceptions to those in both extreme and regular conditions, but generally these are our limits. We understand the importance of staying nourished and hydrated, getting all of the necessary vitamins and nutrients. Our bodies require a certain level of maintenance and care, they can’t sustain themselves, and for most if not all of us, the only time we even consider the limits are during extended fasts or in such a survival situation. The law of three’s helps lay out expectations in times of extreme need, however, it is much focused on what we can find and provide ourselves with. Tonight by way of the Catechism’s look at especially the fourth request, my hope is that we might see how a life rooted in the sufficiency of God might challenge the limitations of that law, and how we can get there.
I invite you as has been our practice to join me in the answers to the questions of Lord’s Days 50 and 51… I’ve already mentioned this term, the sufficiency of God, and it’s in both of the requests that we have just spoken. He alone is able to provide adequately and beyond for our daily bread, for “all of our physical needs,” as well as being able to cover our sins with the blood of Christ, the real and perfect atonement, the satisfaction of the debt created by sin providing the only way that we can receive grace. These are large theological topics and words jammed with meaning, and that’s why I venture to focus on just one tonight, the one that I believe might give us the most cause for looking at our lives, the sufficiency of God in all circumstances, give us today our daily bread.
We read this request in Scripture, and it often fits well as we give a prayer of thanks for a dinner meal with our families or as we gather as a congregation around the Lord’s table. We pray for our daily bread, what may be one of the most basic foods, and I think most of us see it as the Catechism authors do, functioning as asking God to truly “take care of all our physical needs.” This prayer is asking God to give us all that sustains us on a daily basis. We recognize that regular communication with God is important, and so when we pray “today” we do mean, take care of this very day. We trust that he will continue to provide as we have seen him in the past and know his character to be faithful as long as we shall live. But yet, the question for myself and before us tonight is to what extent do we trust God to take care of all our physical needs, and to what extent do we believe that neither our work and worry nor even God’s gift do any good without his blessing?
I invite you to turn with me to Deuteronomy 8, as we look at the first 10 verses, or just listen…
If we go back to what’s being summarized, we find ourselves in Exodus 16, where the Israelites have been in the desert for 6 weeks, and have begun to grumble to Moses and Aaron, “We had so much food in Egypt, are we just here to starve?” Maybe the law of three’s kicks in, they have gone through all the food that they left Egypt in haste with and they will not narrow down their flocks anymore; it’s practical for them to complain, isn’t it? We often give the Israelites a hard time, but how many of us in a similar situation, having left our cabinets full of food and clothes and toiletries behind maybe for a vacation; our supplies that we brought with are good for quite a while, but say you were to get stuck somewhere, no cell phone service, no one to find you, the supplies have dwindled, what is our reaction in that situation?
Maybe there are some of you who would continue in those circumstances to pray “Give us today our daily bread,” but I think most of us would honestly complain. The Israelites didn’t trust that God, the one who had brought them out of Egypt and had caused the Red Sea to be split before them, that God, their God was not being faithful to them in their minds; yet we hear those words, “man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” The Lord hears his people, even in complaints, and he gives his word that bread and quail are to come down from heaven each day, and they are to take enough for a day not keeping it until morning. But even then we read, “Some paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell.”
The Lord has been gracious, telling the people to gather what they need, and he tells them just enough for today, it will be there again in the morning. What results is not some being unable to finish their dinner and being punished for that, but some purposely took more than a day’s worth, their hearts and their minds questioned if they would really be able to get more and the punishment comes. That punishment isn’t like a loaf of bread which we bought from Food Basics or Wal-Mart that sits a few days too long in our cupboards in a bag that gets spots of mold, but this manna is probably on pieces of cloth or in baskets in the open air of their tents, and that smell of decomposition and the sound of flies is what wakes them up. Even the gifts of God do not do his people any good without his blessing.
The Israelites had cause for a renewed trust in God, a full reliance that he was sufficient, he was going to provide for their needs. The next 40 years were not pleasant though because these same people, receiving food every day without money, without work other than gathering, lost the trust, lost this sense of humility and dependence, but yet God continued. Deuteronomy 8 shows us that not only is God faithful in providing the bread and the meat, but Moses beckons them to look at the clothes they were wearing, shouldn’t they be worn out, torn, and disintegrating; and to look at their feet, the desert landscape, sun, and daily use, shouldn’t they be swelled up with blisters and not even able to walk out, yet God had blessed everything they had and was giving them more. These Old Testament promises of God are carried into what Jesus’ preaches and this prayer that he teaches to his disciples: God takes care of all our physical needs.
When we come to this prayer, and think about situations where daily provisions are needed, shelter is gone, food sources are depleted, and water is sparse, we can pray with hope that God will provide, that he is sufficient to give us what we need miraculously, whether that comes in the form of things created or in a supernatural way. The law of three’s is good, but we have a God who transcends the limitations of creation, and can provide and sustain us even when we’re at our limits. Most of us aren’t in that situation though, we aren’t in a barren wilderness where there is no food, little shelter, clothes are unavailable; in fact, we have houses, some larger than others, we have cabinets filled with food and drink, clothes and medicine, toiletries and cleaning products, and as hopeful as this prayer can be that God give us his gifts and his blessing, where do we, people of plenty, fit in to grasp the sufficiency of God?
We recognize God as the only one who can bless us, and that all we have, need and luxury, can only be acquired through his good blessing. We say with the writers of the Catechism, “you are the only source of everything good.” That’s cause for us to humble, to not take for granted the lives we live, the educational opportunities we have had, the work which we have been able to do to put food on the table, even if we’re the ones who have raised the livestock that becomes our protein or the fruits and vegetables which give us many vitamins and nutrients. We recognize that all those things come only from God, the great Creator; they are gifts of his grace, and as such we are to use them for his excellence.
We also pray this prayer in a desire to talk with God regularly. Give us today our daily bread. We recognize the bounty which God has given today, which he decides if it will be an increase or decrease. We have so much technology that sees trends in a variety of ways, we claim to be able to predict the weather and the outcome of business deals, but we can never be of absolute certainty as to what will happen tomorrow. That’s cause for being content with what we have today, and to remain with God day by day. He’s proven that he has been faithful and will be faithful, so we can come with hearts full of gladness that he has created this day, God has given us those we can be around and share his love with, and any material thing we have is a blessing for right now.
We, too, are reminded that we can ask for anything, but may our prayers be that God would bless what we have and what we need. Whether our thought for daily bread is the food on our tables, the family members we join with, the health of our bodies and minds, or the peace of the world, we unite with God’s people, not asking for luxuries or things to store up, but requesting God to give us what we need today and to bless those things. If he blesses in abundance, if we can have full shelves, full harvests, plenty of tools to do our work, the ability to think, may we be willing to trust and glorify him. What a comfort so many of us have to have plenty, but may we not forget where it is from, and that it could all be taken away and go to waste. Even when it may not seem like we are in great need, we need to pray this request because it is not our righteousness, not our providing for ourselves and our families; we are not self-sufficient as much as we may want to be. We recognize that God is behind all things, and that only if he provides and blesses may we truly live.
My goal isn’t that we go home tonight and toss our food away to show that we really depend on God for our physical hunger. It’s not that you go and quit your jobs, trusting that checks will come in to pay your bills. My goal and I think what Jesus intended was for us to really identify his Father, our Father, as the Giver of life, the provider and nurturer, and to identify the Holy Spirit as the Sustainer of life, the one who nourishes, not just in spiritual matters, but of all our work and worry. The Catechism says, “And so help us to give up our trust in creatures and to put trust in you alone.” That’s so hard for us! We want what we do here on earth to matter, to leave a legacy that others can see; we develop relationships and businesses, providing goods and services to become “trusted” names in our communities. But if our only hope is in those around us, in the fragile hands and minds that are as prone to making mistakes as we all are, then our trust for what we need isn’t in God alone.
It’s this radical dependence that says our God can get us past the law of three’s if he desires. Our God can both wipe everything off the face of the earth with one word, and our God can redeem all things with one word. Our God cares about us so much, that he is willing to give and to bless, and we aren’t to forget to ask for both of those actions. If we have little and struggle to make ends meet, we have a God who offers hope, who will provide for our physical needs, whether that’s by a miracle or by using the people and structures around us. If we have been given an abundance of resources and beyond necessity, may we look to God as the one who provided that, and not claim them as what our hands have done. We don’t need to waste what has been given to us by throwing our possessions out, but we do need to listen to God for how we can live and give when we have more than our daily bread. Whatever our situation, may our request in prayer and how we live our lives flow from the recognition that we find in the book of James, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down form the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” Our God is faithful, and he is sufficient to provide for all of our needs, may we not be ignorant, but rather be drawn in thanks and to reject the mentality that we can work out anything for ourselves without his blessing. Amen.