Overcome When God Provides Series

We Overcome When God Provides

Exodus 16:1-18

Introduction

When you come to a place where the answer is unclear, the options are exhausted, and the next step is obscured by impossibilities, then watch for the provision of God.

This is the predicament of the children of Israel. They watched God visit 10 plages upon Egypt. They escaped slavery, walked through the Red Sea. They observed as bitter waters were made drinkable. About a month into their journey they were getting hungry and had no food to eat. The answer is unclear, the options are exhausted, the next steps are obscured by impossibilities.

This is a food crisis that becomes a faith crisis.

Exodus 16:1-3 Then the whole community of Israel set out from Elim and journeyed into the wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Mount Sinai. They arrived there on the fifteenth day of the second month, one month after leaving the land of Egypt. 2 There, too, the whole community of Israel complained about Moses and Aaron. 3 “If only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.”

Terence Fretheim: “How common it is among the people of God that a crisis, whether of daily need or physical suffering, occasions a crisis of faith. Material and spiritual well-being are more closely linked than we often care to admit.” Bruggeman: This story of manna is not for all of life. It is for life in those zones of bereftness when the problem is not self-sufficiency but despair, need, and anxiety.

1 John 5:4 “…For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.”

How do we overcome when face the obstacles and roadblocks that seem to have no answer at all? Grumbling and complaining won’t help at all. But help is available to those who need the strength to overcome!

1. Read The Word

Exodus 16:4-5 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Look, I’m going to rain down food from heaven for you. Each day the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day. I will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they will gather food, and when they prepare it, there will be twice as much as usual.”

Whenever Moses is at the edge of the journey with no answers, God speaks. God assures food is going to rain down from heaven. Everyone will have what they need. There will be instructions.

All of us have a Word from the Lord available to us.

Psalm 119:81 I am worn out waiting for your rescue, but I have put my hope in your word.

Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.

Psalm 119:133 Guide my steps by your word, so I will not be overcome by evil.

Big Question: In the moment of trial, when it counts the most, will we be guided by a Word from the Lord?

Spurgeon: "Be not idlers with the Word of God—search it. Get up early in the morning to read your Bible if you cannot do it at other times. Steal from your sleep a happy hour to read the Scriptures. Diligently and earnestly seek the Lord, for He has said, "They that seek Me early shall find Me.""

2. Remember the Lord

Exodus 16:6-8 So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “By evening you will realize it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt. In the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaints, which are against him, not against us. What have we done that you should complain about us?”

Then Moses added, “The Lord will give you meat to eat in the evening and bread to satisfy you in the morning, for he has heard all your complaints against him. What have we done? Yes, your complaints are against the Lord, not against us.”

Instead of remembering the food and shelter when they were slaves in Egypt, they should remember the God who rescued them from a terrible existence. We tend to forget that God has carried us through all of our struggles. You have survived 100% of the worst days of your life!

Hebrews 10:35 So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you!

When we remember the Lord’s blessings, we will forget to complain! They were complaining about Moses and Aaron, but Moses said they were complaining about God.