Title When the Manna ceases (Joshua 5:9-12)
Contents
It has been exactly two years since we started pioneering, but his concerns are as follows. “I gave a prayer of gratitude and gratitude to God. God always listened to the preacher's brief proclamation from the altar. It was a heart-warming moment for all of us to know that God values people more than material things. For us, winter was the warmth we experienced through God's silent care, and the abundance of hugging each other... I still have debts and on the last day of every month I have to pray over the rent. But we do not forget the winter of our first year in the church. The church is not a place where people run and materialize. They confess that they are being kept by the invisible hand of God. Because God is living.”
Looking at the background of today's text, the manna that the Israelites began to eat when they left Egypt and arrived in the Wilderness of Sin (Ex 16:1-4) stopped falling from the day after they kept the Passover in Gilgal and ate the produce of the land of Canaan. In fact, during the past 40 years of living in the wilderness, God has provided food for the people without missing a single day. The manna is shaped like a cat seed belonging to the buttercup family, and it is white in color and tastes like sweets mixed with honey. Manna fell like dew at night, and at dawn he collected an ogel each and ate it that day. The meaning of manna contains both the material meaning of “what kind of rice cake is this” and the eventual meaning of “what is this?”.
For the Israelites, when the manna was cut off, it must have been as if their lives were cut off, and they must have been worried and anxious about how they would live now. Also, when we are anxious about whether God has forsaken us or whether God has left us when the manna ceased, God has already prepared the produce in the land. Therefore, when the manna ceases, the Lord will prepare it and I believe it will be a good opportunity to experience God's grace anew.
First, He is the God who prepares.
In Genesis 22, God commanded Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering, and he prepared a ram in the bush for Abraham and Isaac to sacrifice together. God never allows us to be tempted beyond what we can handle, and when we are tempted, He also prepares a way of escape. There is a family that has stopped dating these days. There are people who have a hard time because they stopped meeting. Have you been laid off from a job you thought you had for the rest of your life? There are people who have lost loved ones. There are people who feel as if the business that used to be good is going through difficulties and it seems as if the manna has ceased to exist.
However, it is clear that on the day the manna ceased, I believe that God had already prepared the produce in the land. Jacob took the birthright from his brother Esau and ran away. A crisis has come to the family that used to live happily with their parents. Jacob fled from Beersheba to Haran to escape his brother Esau, who was trying to kill his younger brother. The sun was setting in one place. Think of Jacob sleeping on a stone pillow. There must have been the pain of being alone and the anxiety of being chased. There must have been frustration as to how life would unfold in the future.
Then, in a dream, a ladder connected from earth to heaven, and he heard the voice of God. “I am with you, I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land.” “I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. ” Hearing this, Jacob woke up and confessed, “Surely the Lord is here, and I did not know.” This is Jacob's confession of faith, saying, “God has come first and was waiting for you.”
Jacob left his parents for the first time in his life, left his family, and left his hometown. If he experienced the pain as if the manna had ceased, Jacob believes that he has already experienced the new grace of God who has already come and is waiting for him to come and guarantee the future. Therefore, the cessation of manna is an opportunity of blessing to experience the wonderful grace of God that is being prepared.
Second, the cessation of manna is the fulfillment of God's providence.
If God continues to send manna to the people of Israel without much change, on the surface it seems very beneficial, but there is no development. This is because the people of Israel will be lazy and indolent to solve the problem of not working and eating, and they will lead their lives irresponsibly. Yesterday and today, we believe that God wants us humans to work hard in the world. It is God's will for us to work hard and receive the reward we deserve (1 Thessalonians 3:6-12). So, God sent manna in special circumstances, but he took manna in extraordinary circumstances. This is by no means a regression, it is just one of God's providential methods. This is because even after the manna ceased, Israel continued to be guided by God's daily providence.
One day, a fishing boat ran aground. There was only one survivor. The man was pushed by the waves and arrived on a small, deserted island. I was in a predicament and prayed earnestly to God to save me, and I watched every day to see if another boat could be seen. I built a clumsy hut and put some things I had retrieved from a stranded ship into it. One day while looking for something to eat, he saw a fire in his hut and smoke. The hut quickly turned to ashes. The worst has happened.
But it was an answer to prayer. The next morning, a ship approached. The man who was isolated on the island asked how he had come to rescue him. The captain replied: “We saw your smoke.” It felt like I was abandoned on the island by myself, but it seemed that the house I had barely built caught fire and lost everything, but God fulfilled God's providence in it. There was pain as if the manna had stopped, but God's deep guidance was there.
Now let me conclude. Do you have any pain as if the manna has stopped? Do you have the pain of being abandoned? Don't be discouraged when things don't go my way. The God who prepared it is with you. I believe that God's providence and guidance will be fulfilled even when the manna ceases to exist.