Funny Things Happen on the Way to the Promised Land
Exodus 16:1-5
March 13, 2005
It was the late Bronze Age, about 1,500 years or so before Jesus, and the people of Israel were coming to the end of 400 years of slavery in Egypt. Their ancestors had come to Egypt during a severe drought and famine, and were at first welcomed and given a share of the land on which to live.
But things happen. New kings came along. The Israelites fell out of favor with the ruling classes. Their old friends in the seats of power died off. They were finally made slaves.
The Egyptians were able to take away their freedom, but they were not able to extinguish the Israelite sense of being a special people set apart by God for great things. The Egyptians were not able to squelch the Israelite’s monotheistic faith, and their trust that God would one day notice their trouble, hear their prayers, and bring them deliverance.
God indeed did raise up for them a deliverer. His name was Moses. Moses was sent to the King of Egypt with the demand that his people be freed. It took a while. God had to visit Egypt with a plague or two…ten to be exact: water turned to blood, frogs, gnats, flies, diseased livestock, boils, thunder and hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of all firstborn. But finally, the king got the message and allowed the Children of Israel to go free.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Promised Land. The Israelites, despite their outward confidence in God, displayed a nagging tendency to forget what had brought them that far. They forgot that the cornerstone of their faith was believing in the promises of God and trusting that his word was good. They forgot that God had never left their ancestors even in the hardest of times. They forgot that God was always one to be counted on when the going got tough. Even though they were the products of God’s great works in the past, they displayed a conspicuous lack of faith in the future.
It happened like this. They had been gone about a month and a half and were slowly but steadily making their way toward the land that had been promised to them by God so many years before. The supplies which they had brought with them began to run low and they began to complain to Moses because they were hungry. They wondered why they had been brought out into the desert to die out there. They said that even though they had been slaves in Egypt, at least they had food to eat. They were one giant “Back to Egypt Committee,” willing to accept slavery if that meant full bellies.
But God heard their complaining. God told Moses what was going to take place. Now as often happens in the Old Testament, there are two side-by-side accounts of this. This was such an important announcement, and so long remembered by the people, that it was told twice. The accounts are slightly different, but the message is the same.
Exodus 16:4 says, “…I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.” Verse says, “On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.”
So every morning, there was a dew covering the ground. When it lifted, it left this flaky substance all around. Exodus 16:15 says that when they saw it they asked, “What is it?” The word for “what is it?“ is roughly translated as “manna.” We still don’t know what it was: maybe it was some sort of honey-like sap that oozes from trees or maybe it was something else. What we do know is that is was given in response to the people’s complaining, and it provided for them the sustenance to keep going.
But they still weren’t satisfied. They still kept complaining. So God provided them quail each evening. So they had bread in the morning and meat in the evening. God proved trustworthy. He wouldn’t abandon them.
This is the final sermon in the series of the Seven Deadly Sins. We’ve done this during the season of Lent for a reason. We have been reminded of the depths of the sin in which we live, in order to be more able to rejoice at the salvation that comes with the empty tomb. It is true that we are an Easter people,. We define ourselves by the resurrection, but the road to Easter runs through Lent. In Lent, we are reminded that sin is a reality. It is a condition of every man, woman, and child.
I had someone not too long ago…it wasn’t any of you, so you don’t have to be looking around trying to figure out who it was…but I had someone not too long ago tell me that his eight year old daughter wasn’t a sinner because she wasn’t old enough to sin. I then asked her some questions: had she ever disobeyed her parents? Had she ever said a bad word? Had she ever hit her sister? Had she ever cheated on a test in school? Had she ever called someone a bad name? Did she always think about how Jesus wants her to act?
The point is that we are all sinners, regardless of our age. The Bible is clear on that point. The Apostle Paul says, “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”(Romans 3:23). Define sin anyway you want: missing the mark, deliberate disobedience, mistakes, just being human…anyway you cut it, we don’t measure up to God’s intention for our lives. So we are sinners, but we are never beyond the reach of a gracious God who goes to extra-ordinary lengths to save us from those sins. That is what Easter is all about. But first we have to make our way through Lent. To understand Easter, we have to understand Lent. To understand salvation, we have to understand sin. And that’s why we’ve been going through the seven deadly sins.
The final topic in this series is gluttony. On first glance, you might think that this incident from the wilderness experience of the Children of Israel is anything but gluttony. All they wanted to do, you might say, was eat. There is nothing wrong with being concerned about your physical well-being. There is nothing wrong with wanting to provide food for your family. There is nothing wrong with looking out for tomorrow. You might wonder how a simple request for food gets translated into gluttony. After all, we are living in the days of all-you-can-eat fish frys. We like to stop off at the Old Country Buffet and pig out until we can’t move. We go to the movies and stop at the concession stand to first buy a barrel of buttered popcorn and a bucket of coke. We like wedding receptions mostly because of all the free food. I make it a point to get down to Terre Haute at least once a semester to take Matthew out to dinner and then breakfast the next morning. He costs me half a fortune because he is a world class eater We all like to eat. Often, we eat too much, even to the point of gluttony.
On our cruise last summer we would get up late, have a full buffet breakfast around 11, lunch around 3, and four course dinner at 6:30. Throughout the day there was free soft-serve ice cream whenever we wanted it. Twenty-four hour pizza and an always-open deli counter helped tide us over until the midnight buffet. Somehow I have trouble seeing how the Israelites’ request for a little food to eat even comes close to gluttony.
But you see, I think that there is a whole lot more to gluttony than simply eating too much, or wanting to eat too much. Gluttony is, in a very real way, a statement you make to God that you don’t trust him to take care of the future. It is like saying, “I have to pack it in today, because I don’t know whether or not there will be enough for tomorrow.” The Children of Israel were pretty demanding people, and they were demanding that God do something NOW. Forget all of the things that had happened. “God,” they wanted to know, “what can you do for us now?” Yes it is true that God was good to us yesterday, and he has been good to us today. But can we trust him to be good to us tomorrow?
Gluttony is, according to Maxie Dunnam, (“The Workbook on the 7 Deadly Sins“ Maxie Dunnam and Kimberly Reisman Dunnam. Nashville: The Upper Room. Page 160) “the mad pursuit of bodily pleasures that never completely satisfy.“ There’s more to it than eating. You can be a glutton for tobacco, or alcohol, or sex, or power. It’s about self-indulgence. It’s about the drive to obtain things that we think will make us happy. The gluttony of the Children of Israel came to the forefront regarding their overarching and all-encompassing need for food. They cared about nothing except their own perceived need for breakfast and dinner.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul would tackle this issue head on when he would write to the Philippians about the enemies of Christ. They are, he said in Philippians 3:17-21, destined to destruction. Their god is the belly and their minds are set on earthly things. In other words, gluttony has become their god. They bow in worship before their appetites. They praise conspicuous consumption.
Throughout this series of sermons, I have been using Maxie Dunnam as a resource. There are times when he has a wonderful way of putting together just the right sentence, just the right turn of words, just the right phrase, just the right thought to illustrate the point. When he talks about glutton, he boils it down to this. He says that gluttony is trying to feed the soul with the body’s food. It’s a misplaced hunger. Remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:6 he said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. In the next chapter, he said, Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Funny things happen on the way to the Promised Land, don’t they. We tend to forget what is really important. We tend to stop trusting God. We forget our past and begin to doubt our future. Our fear of what may happen tomorrow can some times turn us into gluttons because we’re not sure that what we want will be available when we want it. So we stock up. We load up. We hoard all that we can get.
It has to do with more than just food. There is an inner hunger that we try to fill in all sorts of ways, through food, drink, tobacco, sex, drugs, power, or conspicuous consumption. What we really need is the peace that passes all understanding. What we really need is the confidence born of knowing that God, who has brought us so far, will not abandon us in the future. What we need is to find meaning of life in things other than those that we stuff into our bodies. That meaning is found in the One who truly can fill us, God through Christ Jesus.
Gluttony is in its essence, a failure or a refusal to trust God in everything. As we come closer to the end of the Lenten journey, this sin as well as all the others that afflict us, can be laid at the foot of the cross of Christ. It is there at the foot of the cross where we find the truth that fills us. At the foot of the cross, we don’t have to worry or wonder where our nourishment comes from because we discover once again that it comes from Immanuel, God-with-us, the great I AM.
Even though they didn’t realize it all the time, the Children of Israel were not left alone; they were not left to their own devices; they were not left to fend for themselves. God was with them: fighting for them, feeding them, caring for them, leading them, and preparing a home for them. That has never changed. And never will.
