Exodus 16:22 – 35 “On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much food—two omers per person —and all the leaders of the congregation came and reported this to Moses. He told them, “This is what the LORD has said: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake, and boil what you want to boil. Then set aside whatever remains and keep it until morning.’”
So they set it aside until morning as Moses had commanded, and it did not smell or contain any maggots. “Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a Sabbath to the LORD. Today you will not find anything in the field. For six days you may gather, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, it will not be there.”
Yet on the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they did not find anything. Then the LORD said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep My commandments and instructions? Understand that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day He will give you bread for two days. On the seventh day, everyone must stay where he is; no one may leave his place.”
So the people rested on the seventh day.
Now the house of Israel called the bread manna. (“What is it?”) It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. Moses said, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Keep an omer of manna for the generations to come, so that they may see the bread I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” (An omer is approximately 2.0 dry quarts or 2.2 liters.) So Moses told Aaron, “Take a jar and fill it with an omer of manna. Then place it before the LORD to be preserved for the generations to come.” And Aaron placed it in front of the Testimony, to be preserved just as the LORD had commanded Moses.
The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land where they could settle; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.
Imagine trying to train roughly two million people in the ways of holiness! That’s the task that God has undertaken. Having delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, God now has to begin training them regarding regular days of rest and worship. Wisely, God starts by training His people to keep the Sabbath, that is to regularly and repeatedly keep one day per week as a day of “solemn rest.”
Remember that God is the Power who has just delivered the Israelites miraculously from the Egyptians. Ridiculous as it might seem, despite specific instructions from God, the some people fail to follow His clear instructions and trot out into the fields to gather manna on the Sabbath. Big surprise! No manna!
APPLICATION: Perhaps we read the story of the Israelites and feel a bit smug. After all, WE would certainly obey God, were we in their position. But is that assumption really true? How many times have we had quiet nudges from God to do something, only for us to question and argue, dragging our feet?
Several years ago when I was in surgery residency, we had a lady who had been admitted with abdominal pain, the cause of which had baffled our best specialists. Nothing that we had tried had really helped, and we finally had to give up and discharge her. I was in my apartment across the street from the hospital when I felt that God wanted me to dress up in my uniform and return to see this lady. Clearly, God wanted me to speak to this lady. I did NOT want to return to the hospital; I was tired after a night on call. Finally I got ready, grumbling all the time to the Lord that if He didn’t give me something to say, I was going to feel silly sitting there with my teeth in my mouth and nothing new for this lady! I was anything but a model of Christian obedience.
I returned to the hospital and began chatting with the patient. Within minutes, I had told her of the miraculous changes God had made in my life, and she had prayed for God to take over her life and to lead her and guide her. I discovered that the underlying cause of the abdominal pain was spiritual and emotional and not physical. Once we prayed, the lady was beaming and told me she felt free from the resentment she had carried for the first time in ten years. We prayed again, thanking God, and then I returned home. Ten minutes after I returned to my apartment, the patient’s relatives picked her up and took her to her home town more than an hour’s drive from the hospital.
There are two lessons to be learned from this passage. The second has to do with the Sabbath. The creation story in Genesis states that God rested on the seventh day. Now God is ordering the Israelites to rest every seventh day as a “solemn Sabbath,” in other words, a serious day of rest. In the last few years, many people who have done research on stress have verified the fact that scheduled periods of rest and relaxation are necessary to maintain one’s health. Nobody is designed to keep working 24/7.
When I was growing up on an Illinois farm, we had to care for our animals twice a day, including milking our cows. But Sundays we did chores and then got ready and went to church. Sunday afternoons were devoted to visiting friends and relatives or doing something fun and relaxing, keeping in mind that by 4 PM we needed to be home to start our evening chores. Unless it was absolutely impossible, my dad never did field work on a Sunday, trusting that the God who had called him to rest would handle the weather. Dad was right.
Are you allowing God to give you Sabbath rest, or are you driving yourself? Sometimes families become so wrapped up in kids’ sporting events or other activities that Sundays pass in a blur, leaving everyone exhausted by Monday morning. Why not ask God to help you discern what is really important and necessary and what activities might need to be put aside so that you have time for rest and rejuvenation?
PRAYER: Father God, help us to listen for your voice and to obey rather than arguing. Teach us how to truly enter into Sabbath rest so that we may be refreshed to serve you. In the mighty Name of King Jesus. Amen.
Burunche's Blog 
Leave a comment