God Feeds the Children of Israel

(Exodus 16, 17a)

Do you ever grumble?

I see some of you hiding your faces. You want to skip over this part and go on to the real story!

But... just a minute. Think about it! Do you grumble? Many boys and girls will say things like, “Why do we have to have spinach for supper? I hate spinach!” or they’ll say, “Why do I have to take a bath? Why do I have to go to bed so early? Why? Why?”

Do you think God approves of grumbling? No, it is Satan, the devil, who makes us complain and be unhappy with that which God has given us. Try to remember that!

The children of Israel were on their way home. And they were grumbling! Can you believe that? God had just saved them from the mean King Pharaoh, and He was bringing them home at last. And... they were grumbling.

Why were they grumbling? It was because they had no food to eat. Because they had been away from Egypt for a long time, the food which they had taken with them was all gone. They didn’t know what to do.

“O Moses,” they cried, “why didn’t we just stay in Egypt? We had so much to eat there. We had as much bread and meat as we wanted when we were there, and now look! We’re just going to die of hunger here!”

Was that the right thing for them to do? Weren’t they grumbling against the Lord? Shouldn’t the people have prayed to God instead?

But... God was so good that He still listened to the people, even when they grumbled! He loved His people, just as your father and mother love you, even when you grumble. And He wanted to help them.

“I will send food to you,” God told the people. “I will send bread to you in the morning, and meat to you at night.”

“What?” you ask. “How could God send food to all those people?”

God did something special for them. Remember, we call it a miracle. Looking outside one morning, the people saw some things on the ground, some soft white puffs!

“What is this?” cried the people. They picked up some of it. The pieces were small and round. They were soft, white, and smelled good. Then someone tried to eat a piece. “How good this tastes!” he cried. “lust like bread with honey. It is so sweet and good. But where did it come from?”

“This is from God,” said Moses. “This is the bread which He is sending you.”

And it was. The people decided to call the food manna. Every morning the manna was on the ground. Every morning the children of Israel could take it and eat it. But they were to use it just the way God told them. They could take as much as they wanted, but they could not save any for the next day. It was to be used only on that day.

Some did not want to listen to God and go out every morning for their food. They saved their manna. They thought they would hide some for the next day.

But what happened? The next morning when they took their manna out to eat of it, the manna was full of worms! And how it stank! No one could eat that manna.

That was how God punished them for not listening to Him.

But then on the sixth day, God told the people to pick up extra manna. They must pick up enough manna for the Sabbath day, so that they would not have to go out on that day to gather the manna.

Maybe you are thinking, “But that’s not going to work! The worms will be in the manna, and it will stink, so that they cannot eat it.”

But did that happen? No, it didn’t. God kept the manna, so that everything that was picked up on the sixth day and saved for the Sabbath day stayed very good. It did not become wormy.

Again there were some who did not believe God. They did not gather enough manna for the Sabbath day. They decided they knew better than God did. They would go out and gather it on the Sabbath.

But could they? No, God did not send any manna on the Sabbath day, so the people who did not gather enough on the sixth day did not have any food.

Each morning the people ate manna. At night God sent them meat. He sent a kind of big bird, called a quail. These quails would fly over the big Red Sea and become so tired, that they flopped to the ground. Then the people could easily catch and kill them. Wasn’t this too a miracle? God sent them at the right time to the right place, and enough to feed all the people.

In this way God fed the people in the wilderness with everything they could have wanted. He fed them bread. He fed them meat. But they still grumbled, and that because they didn’t have water!

Did they pray? Did they ask God to forgive their grumbling? No, they grumbled even more. “Moses, Moses! Give us water, or we will die!”

Again Moses cried to the Lord. “What should I do with these people? They are so angry, and they are ready to kill me.”

And again God helped His people. Again He gave them just what they needed. God told Moses to take his rod, the rod with which he had done so many miracles, and go to a certain rock. Then Moses was to hit the rock with the rod.

Did you ever hit a large rock with a big stick? What happened? Probably nothing happened, right?

But God made another miracle happen. Moses hit the rock with the rod and out came water, cold, clear, tasty water. How the people drank and drank, until they could drink no more.

We don’t read if the people gave thanks to God for their food and water. I hope WE always do. Let us never forget to give thanks to God for the meals which He gives us, even in restaurants and when with other people. God MUST be thanked for His mercy in remembering us with food!

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