What Is It?

Here's Dr. Michael Milton, he's not logical that you're talking about a man who's lived like a filthy sinner all of his life and now you tell me he's converted and by what? He goes to a meeting, he hears a preacher, he goes to a small group, he's moved by a scripture or a text from 1500 years ago, it's not logical man and I'd say, yes, that's right, it's not logical. But we are not dealing with the logic of man when we deal with God. We are dealing with that which is supernatural. This is faith for a living with Dr. Michael Milton, advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ through partnerships and initiatives that focus on communication, discipleship and education. Today Dr. Milton brings to us a message entitled, what is it? In the days of Moses, the Israelites would have died in the desert if God had not miraculously fed them with mana from heaven. Well today, every one of us in the world would die in our sins under the condemnation of God if he had not given us the true bread from heaven, his own son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible text will be focusing on today is from Exodus chapter 16 and John chapter 6, verses 32 through 37. Well right now let's rejoin Dr. Michael Milton with today's edition of Faith for Living. Other times in the journey of life when we are tempted to say and we have said, I'm sure, I can't go on another day. I can't go on another day with that most demanding boss. I can't go another mile in the journey with those unreasonable customers. Lord, I can't go another day living in this pain. And that can turn as we saw last week in the message of memory, that can create if not corrected and met with faith a legion on the soul, a spot which can metastasize. I remember my grandmother, she had a saying, an oft repeated saying, particularly when the calf got out of the pastor and she would have to run on a Sunday morning to get the calf in, sometimes calling me as a little boy to help her get the calf in. And then after it was all over, she would say, hold my, that's enough to make a preacher cuss. Well, I haven't done any cursing lately for many years. But I think about my grandmother's words every now and then when I sometimes say to myself, Lord, can I, can I go on another day with this? It manifests itself in various ways in this journey of life. And it can turn to murmuring. It can turn to a disloyal spirit that even the dog doesn't want to be around. And so what is God's response to that? What does he offer us? We saw in the passage, the first part of Exodus 16, he doesn't respond with judgment. He responds, actually, with an invitation to come closer to him and to see that he provides. He faithfully provides even when we are faithless. This truth is picked up also in the New Testament as it was quoted in Philippians. Probably a hymn or a creed that developed in the early church. He is faithful. He demonstrated his faithfulness to Israel, even in the midst of their faithlessness and their grumbling, and this is enough to make a preacher cuss. I can't go on one more day kind of response to their hunger in the wilderness by sending them a nice quail supper. And some very nice, shall we say, French pastry in the morning? Although when I read it, it sounds to me more like baklava, which is a more Mediterranean meal of wafers, and of course, it has nuts. There's no nuts mentioned in the Bible, but honey, honey and fine wafers. Because of you, a Greek heritage, or if you're from that family came from that part of the Mediterranean, know about it, or if you just happen like baklava, you know what I mean. Wafers, fine, white, quail in the evening, and pastry in the morning. But when they came to this promise of bread from heaven in the morning, they looked at it and it was, it says in the Bible, a frost-like thing, and that made me laugh when I read it. And their response, they said, what is it? And the answer we're told, the answer is manaa, what is it? That's right. The question is, what is it? The answer is, what is it? It's almost like Abbot and Castellas, who's on first, what's on second and so forth. What is it? Manaa, which means, what is it? So the answer to the question was like a good rabbinical scholar, it was a question. We don't know what it is. What is it? What is it? Manaa. They called it manaa, it was bread from heaven. But within this manaa, which was again, we see picked up by Jesus in the New Testament, and he identifies with the manaa, he says that I am the fulfillment of the manaa, in so many words, I am the personification of that manaa. And he reminds the Moses didn't feed, the Hebrew children God did with this manaa from heaven, this bread from heaven, and he said, I am the bread of life. And he says this to a people who are still in sin, and this both gets at the character of God and the character of the manaa, his provision. He is faithful when we are faithless, and he is so specifically in this text through this frost-light thing, what is it? So what are the features of that? There's three I want to bring to you this morning, there are others in the text that can be discovered. Of course, the unsearchable riches of Christ and the passage can actually be developed in a number of different ways because of the richness, not only the tasty richness of manaa, but the depth of meaning, what is it? What is it? You see, that's what you and I asked sometimes in our own lives, what is it? And the answer is still a question. And that leads us to the first feature of manaa. Manaa is mysterious, it's origins, well it's from heaven, that's all we know, and it appears on the ground, it's a mysterious provision of God for a people who have been wayward and who have not trusted in them, despite his many demonstrations of love, manaa is mysterious. Now this week I read in peer-reviewed journal articles, going all the way back to the 19th century, about the constitution, the physical constitution of manaa as it is supposed by a number of scholars. The problem I saw with all of the hypotheses was this, it didn't exhibit all of the attributes of manaa, maybe one or two. But this manaa came down, it had to be gathered, if you gathered too much, the remaining portion by the next morning will have ruined, would have spoiled, and it will have worms in it. Now I found some naturally occurring food like substances in that region, in that wilderness region, from these scholars, but it didn't exhibit that. Not only that, this manaa could not only be eaten as something sweet on its own, you could cook with it, you could bake it, you could turn it into bread. It had a variety of uses, not so with the gums and the various frost-like occurrences that are edible in nature, that could be found there now or in earlier years by a plant that maybe has disappeared now, but didn't have those features, you couldn't cook with it, it didn't have a consistency that would last, that could sustain, needing, and making it into bread. So what is it, I don't know, all I know is it feeds the Israelites. All I know is it comes from God. All I know is that it is so sweet, all I know is it is applied in so many ways, when my aunt Eva, who reared me, was dying, my wife was with me, she took care of my aunt Eva, and I went to talk with aunt Eva when it appeared that it could be days or weeks, and she told me something was bothering her. And I listened very carefully because she was speaking quietly, now many times I had gone to her bedside, got on my knees beside her bed and said, and Eva, I have a problem, I'm in a counseling situation, I can't figure this out, will you help me, will you give me wisdom? But this time she pulled me down beside her, and she says, I have something I don't understand. And I said, what is it, aunt Eva? This woman had, I never knew a time when I didn't know the name Jesus. She held me in her lap, and I heard her heartbeat as she read the Scriptures, and it was so real to me as a child, and she lived the faith. I never rebelled against her, though I was a prodigal, but not against her, because she was authentically the woman I knew. She said, there are passages I don't understand. And now she seemed to be saying, without saying the words, I'm at this place about to go home to be with the Lord. And I've studied the Bible all my life, and there are so many things I don't understand. And I said, I don't know that we ever will, but you're about to understand perfectly. People will ask me about text, or ask me about why did God allow this? What is it? Well, they want a response that will be neat and tidy, but sometimes the response we must give in this life is manner. To live in the tension of the mystery is also faith. To receive the promises of God in spite of the natural forces all around us, which are taunting and laughing at the promises. What is it, manner, mystery? But what we do know, what we do know is healing. What we do know is that to eat the bread will sustain you in the wilderness. What we do know is that the manner, the bread of life, is sweet. Jesus is sweet to the Spirit. He's sweet to His people. He is perfectly able to provide in every area of your life, if you call upon Him. There is provision enough for Him for today. You're saved once and forever through His glorious grace. And we go back and we get more manner. We can't just say I had an experience with God 20 years ago and I'm good to go. I walked the aisle when I was a child, now I'm fine. I was confirmed when I was 12, checked the box. The question is always how are things with you and the Lord Jesus Christ this morning? Now, manner is mystery. But we also see in the text that manner is miraculous. It comes down from heaven and it is available for a short period of time and you're able to receive it for your family, you're able to consume it, but then it goes bad. I say again, all of the studies that I've done and some have done HD dissertations, five years of study on it, the manner is completely different than any of the substance. It's because it is a miracle. There are many people who would like to classify Jesus as either a teacher or a great philosopher, a great rabbi. He was all of those things, but he was raised from the dead and he said it would happen. And there were those who saw him alive, who saw him crucified, and then during the 50 days before Pentecost saw the resurrected Christ over 500 at once, according to the Apostle Paul. The evidence and the testimony is overwhelming. What is it? He is the bread from heaven. It is miraculous. And somebody says, I'm a logical man, it's not logical to me. I would say to you, dear sir, that it is absolutely logical for an Almighty God who's in complete control of all things to do whatever He pleases. And if He pleases to rain down frost-like things from heaven, He may do so. That is logical if He is an Almighty being. It's simply not natural. It's a miracle. You say, well, it's not logical that God Himself should come and live and die as a man, crucified by those whom He created. That's not logical. I would say, no, it's not logical, but it absolutely defies logic. Paul and 1 Corinthians says, it's foolishness to the world, but it's the wisdom of God, it's a miracle. You say, it's not logical that you talk about a man who's lived like a filthy sinner all of his life. And now you tell me he's converted and by what? He goes to a meeting, he hears a preacher, he goes to a small group, he's moved by something by a scripture, a text from 1500 years ago, it's not logical man, and I'd say, yes, that's right. It's not logical, but we are not dealing with the logic of man when we deal with God. We are dealing with that which is supernatural. It is the miraculous grace and love of a creator for his creation, for you, and for me, it's not logical, it's miraculous. It's miraculous that I should be standing here, a prodigal, a filthy sinner saved by grace who wants blaspheme, the gospel, I preach to you today, it's not logical, but it is miraculous. Maybe that gives hope to just someone here today, maybe parents praying for a prodigal daughter or son, or maybe even a young person who's maybe a child of 12, 13, 14 years old, maybe a little girl or a little boy, and they're trying to figure out their mom and dad's faith and how it becomes their faith. It's a miracle. It's supernatural, it's bread from heaven. The last feature I want to talk to you about this morning is the feature that appears in the latter part of chapter 16, and particularly in verse 33, Moses says to Aaron, take a jar and put an omer of mana in it and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations. Here's the feature. Here's the last feature, the third feature of this mana for our lives and for our journey. It's not only a mystery and it's miraculous, all of which will help us and feed us and sustain us and give us hope it is a memorial. Now, what Moses commanded Aaron to do has been done in other parts of Scripture, not place an omer of the frost-like thing in a jar before the testimony of the Lord for future generations, but signs of God's presence have been memorialized. In Genesis, Genesis 9 is a rainbow, it's a memorial to the promise of God. It's a memorial to an incomparably difficult time in the world of destruction and then a promise of the world will not be destroyed by this flood water. And we have that memorial in our skies from time to time when we're blessed and we're able to see that memorial. What does the memorial do? It draws us back, it recalibrates us to a promise. It often appears when it has been raining and it's just a promise. It's a sign of its presence. There were many other memorials in the old, the Passover. These people had already had a memorial. The Passover was instituted as an everlasting memorial which we continue in the Lord's supper, where we are recalibrated back to the salvation of our souls in the Lord Jesus Christ. The salvation of the people in Israel, miraculously so. And so here he says, take an omur and an omur is probably an armful, that's the way to put it. Homer was the next measurement and that was a donkey-loaded fool. And that's the way it's kind of expressed. But this is an armful, what they would have picked up in the morning. And they didn't have the ark of the covenant yet, said, put it before the testimony. These would have been the sacred tablets, the Ten Commandments, put it in a jar and keep it. Well, we have it in the Word. It's forever here for you to come and see the law and the testimony. Come and see what God has done for you. I remember a number of years ago when I graduated at the University of Wales and we were gathering to vest, to robe up, and we walked out of that old square in Lampeter Wales, which is a sheep market town from the middle ages, and then with the magnificent university structure in the middle of the town. And we marched to the place of, they call it, the congregation, we call it a graduation. And we sang a song again, guide me old, our great Jehovah, to run through this barren land. I am weak, but thou art mighty old me with thy powerful hand in these words. Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more. And those Welsh voices all mailed, there were females there, but oh, you hear all the male voices, feed me till I want no more. You see, that's the national hymn of Wales. It is so because the hymn keeps popping up in her history, written by William Williams, when revival was going on in the 18th century. It pops up again in the 19th century, and then again in the early 20th century and the Welsh revivals of 1903 and 04. When God visited the mining towns and the great minor evangelist, Evan Roberts, voice roared through Kuhn Rhondah through the Rhondah Valley and through the other valleys and Wales. And I remembered that, because I thought, you know, just a few years ago as I was sick and dead on my journey, I experienced quite a dark night of the soul, and I wondered if there would ever be a time when I could minister again physically. Yes, it was enough to make a preacher cry, and he came to me across time and through his servants. And I guess I really wanted to say to you that the opportunity to break the bread of life with you is for me a what is it God meets our needs and so many mysterious, miraculous, wonderful ways that we will never forget. I'll always remember the difficulty and the trial, but I want to also remember the man I in the desert, and that man is the Lord Jesus Christ who walks today among us where you receive him, you take the man and consume him and be healed. Now a copy of Dr. Milton's teaching today is available at our website at faithforliving.org. That's faithforliving.org. Faithforliving with Dr. Michael Milton is an outreach ministry whose mission is to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ through trusted partnerships and initiatives that focus on communication, discipleship, and education. Dr. Milton is a James H. Ragsdale chair for missions and evangelism at Erskine Theological Seminary in due West, South Carolina whose mission is to prepare men and women for real world engagement in service to Christ and his church. Dr. Milton is also a Christian author of nearly two dozen books. He's also a musician who's released four musical compilations of original music. You'll find his books, music CDs, and many other resources at our website at faithforliving.org. Again that's faithforliving.org. Now to learn more about the ministry of faith for living and its partnership programs and discipleship, give us a call toll-free at 1-800-399-6028, that's 1-800-399-6028. Now until next time may you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ with a living faith and a faith for living.