Good evening. If you got your bibles, you would turn to Exodus chapter 16. Exodus chapter 16. That's where we'll be in just a few moments. I'm a little bit hoarse tonight.

I've been having some allergies. I don't know about any of you guys. So if I get to where I can't speak anymore or I pass out up here, in case you have my permission, just stand up, prop me up beside the pulpit, and just sing on. So may get out of here early if that if that's the case. So well, I appreciate your presence, this evening.

Appreciate, all the thought and intention and your participation, and the worship this morning is encouraging to me, and thankful we get to continue that on, this evening. I wanna start by talking about meals. Meals are central to our daily life, and I mean, I base our whole day off breakfast, lunch, and dinner, most of us probably. But one of the quickest ways to mess up your daily eating schedule is to go traveling. Traveling so, you know, usually, when we get to the destination, there's good food on the other end.

Abby and I are gonna go on our first trip together in four years to Maine here in a couple weeks. I can't wait to just cover myself in, you know, melted butter and eat lobster tail until I throw up. Can't wait for that. But in between, when you're traveling somewhere, where do you normally stop being? If you're me, usually the gas station.

Right? Traveling and eating is usually bad. You're usually in a McDonald's or somewhere that's not good for you. Anybody have your go to gas station food? Personally, mine is a big bag of Albany's gummy worms and some sort of, you know, energy drink.

And Abby hates it because when I open up the gummy worm bag, it smells like chemicals. It's horrible smell. So it's like if you lit a match, the car would explode. And I eat it every time we travel, and I regret it every time. It wasn't that funny.

Right? But I regret it every single time that I eat it. But in the ancient world, when we talk about eating on a journey, you know, it's inconvenient for us in our day and age unless you find a Buc ee's maybe on the road somewhere. But it's it may be inconvenient for us to eat while we journey, but in ancient world, it was really a matter of life and death. After the exodus in Israel, they found itself in a wilderness, a distant place where there was really nothing for them to eat.

And yet, God met their needs and he gave them food for their difficult journey. And we already talked a couple sermons ago. I was planning on having this series closer together. This is part two. Part one is nine sermons ago.

So that's been a while. So we're coming back to this. We've already talked about the Passover being that meal of meals that meal that points towards the meal of meals that was a meal that marked Israel's redemption from Egypt. But tonight, I wanna talk about the manna story from Exodus chapter 16 where where Israel experiences other very significant feeding in their history. There they manna from when they traveled from the land of Egypt until they arrived in the promised land some decades later.

And what we wanna demonstrate tonight is how the manna ultimately anticipates that bread of life that Jesus will speak of in John chapter six. The bread of life, who is Jesus, whose body and his blood that we now eat and drink in the Lord's supper. But, of course, if we wanna appreciate the bread of life, we've got to understand the shadow that came before it in the bread from heaven, this manna. So we're gonna talk about Exodus chapter 16, sketch you out very briefly, jump to John chapter six, and then make some application in terms of our preparation and partaking of the Lord's supper. But I want us to see tonight really the what the manna should teach us about the Lord's supper is that the supper is the heaven sent bread for life's wilderness.

The bread of life, Christ's body and his blood, is God's bread for our journey. Christ given for us until we attain the resurrection from the dead. So let's jump into our study tonight, and let's first talk about Exodus chapter 16 and a manna from heaven. Of course, John chapter six makes several allusions to this account here, but we wanna kinda get a refresher on this story that I'm sure is familiar to us all. But the man of feeding comes right after the Red Sea.

God has been victorious over his enemies. Pharaoh and his armies have been cast in the Red Sea, and now Israel finds himself on the other side. They're free, but they're also in the wilderness. And so they begin repeatedly crying out for food and drink at these various stops on their three month journey to Mount Sinai. And it's on one occasion here in chapter 16 in verse three where they complained to God.

They say and to Moses, they say, would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the meatpots and ate bread to the full? For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Commenting on this very event, the psalmist says of the people of Israel that they did not believe in God. They did not trust in his saving power. In response, though, to their unbelieving grumbles, the Lord said to Moses in verse four, he says, behold, I'm about to rain bread from heaven for you.

And Moses says that the Lord did so because in verse eight, the Lord had heard their grumbling that they grumbled against him. But not only, you know, was God silencing their grumbling, silencing, you know, we think maybe the grumbling their stomachs, but really a little bit more than that. Right? But he was also, at the same time, trying to prepare them to receive his covenant there on Mount Sinai in a few short months. God told Moses in verse four that the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not.

And to listen to God's voice, at least as far as Exodus 16 goes on to show, well, they were called to trust on the one hand in God's daily provision that this manna would come every day, but also that they would relinquish control by resting on the Sabbath. So they would collect six days a week. Seventh day, they would take a rest. They collect extra bread on that sixth day. And as Deuteronomy chapter eight, the verse Jesus quotes in his temptation in Matthew's gospel and Matthew chapter four, Deuteronomy shows us that this manna feeding, moving Israel from grumbling to humbling, it was to serve a greater purpose than just feeding them physically.

He says, and he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with the manna, which you did not know nor did your fathers know that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. So, again, this bread, this manna that was sent from heaven, he had a greater purpose. And even though, you know, filling their stomachs was an important need, and that's what it what it did for them, it even pointed to a greater purpose. That through the manna, God was moving Israel away from their grumbling and their unbelief to satisfaction and humble trust in himself. But to teach such a unique lesson, well, God needed some really unique food to get this point across to the people.

And a manna really was unlike anything that Israel had ever experienced. In chapter 16, a few verses later in verse 15, when the manna finally rains down that morning the first time, it says when the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, what is it? Man who? Literally, what they say here. Sounds like manna.

That's where we get the word from. For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, it is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. So manna, really, the idea of that that name, it comes from your question here. Man who?

What what? Man is what it's referred to later as in Hebrew. Just kind of a short name for it. It's just the word what in Hebrew. What what are we looking at here?

That's what they named this bread. It's really fitting for God's new and strange food. It's later described says like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. I think growing up as a kid, when we did, like, BBS, we ate, like, vanilla wafers or something to talk about manna. Did anybody else do that?

Or oyster crackers. That was the other one. So when I think about manna, it makes me think of the lembas bread from Lord of the Rings. Anybody else think about that? You know, it's the Elvish bread.

You eat one tiny bite and it's enough to fill the stomach of a grown man. Unless you're a hobbit, then you have to eat four of them. Right? But that's what it makes me think of when I think of this bread. It's very special.

It's unique. It's so unique that when the people see it, they're they have no idea what they're looking at. I love how the psalmist Psalm 78, the psalm we quoted a moment ago, the psalmist expounds upon the unique origin of the manna. This is what he says about it. Says that yet he commanded he, being God, commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven, and he rained down on them manna to eat and gave them the grain of heaven.

Man ate of the bread of the angels. He sent them food in abundance. Psalmist calls it the grain of heaven, the bread of the angels. Isn't it so interesting that when when God gives him this food, he could've made anything rain down. He could've he could've rained down food on them that they could've they would've already known and recognized, but he doesn't.

He sends them something unique, something that is unlike anything that they've ever seen before. And so the manna's heavenly origin is really important. It's important because it showed that this food was of a different kind, a different type, a different order. It was so mysterious that its appearance and its taste, it could only be described by comparison to things that Israel already knew. This was truly unique food.

But god, he gave Israel this food in abundance, the psalmist says. He gave it to them not just in that initial feeding, but he gave it to them throughout their journey, which ultimately is Exodus 16 tells us. It says the people of Israel ate the manna forty years till they came to the habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. And once their wilderness journey has ended, they arrive to Jericho there.

They hold the Passover for the first time there in the land. Joshua tells us that the manna ceased, and there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. The manna, it wasn't something that was e easily forgotten for the people. It wasn't it wasn't just a onetime event. But like the Passover, it was something it was a it was an act of God that needed to be remembered.

And so God commanded Moses. He commanded Aaron to keep an omer of the manna before the ark of the Lord so that future generations would be able to remember this feeding of the manna and the faithfulness of god. But the manna really was it was god's daily provision. It was his daily bread for the people of Israel. The food that gave Israel the strength ultimately to reach the promised land.

So to kinda summarize very shortly, very briefly, Israel was on a journey. They hungered, and God sent them the manna. Now let's look to the bread from heaven in John chapter six and see how it connects to this old Old Testament event and how we can kind of connect it on to the Lord's supper as well. And John six has been one of those passages traditionally that's kinda it's debated as far as its relationship to the Lord's Supper. Some people read John chapter six and the bread discourse in particular, and they think it has nothing to do with the Lord's Supper whatsoever.

Some say it has everything to do with the Lord's Supper, and some say it's kind of both. And I'm in the both camp personally. I believe the text specifically is we'll get to verses 50 through two through 58 includes, but I wouldn't say it's limited to, the Lord's Supper. But today, really, I wanna use Jesus' words here to help us think about the Lord's Supper. And I want you to hear Jesus' teaching on the bread of life specifically when we get to the end here with the Lord's Supper in view.

I think it'll have some helpful things for us. But this account is it's a long account. We can't read it all, but it's one that's familiar. So we'll quickly summarize this as well. It's 71 verses, very long chapter here.

But the old test just like the old testament account of the manna feeding, the whole story really revolves around belief and unbelief. The unbelief on the crowds on the one hand and the belief of the 12 disciples on the other. The crowds, of course, have experienced the feeding of the 5,000, the fish and cloves, and they think that Jesus is a prophet. He's this new great Moses like prophet. They wanna forcefully make him king.

Of course, Jesus slips away, but the people come searching for more bread, and they end up finding him a ways away in Capernaum across the Sea Of Galilee. And it's there that Jesus begins to challenge their understanding of his identity. And the story really ends with with the crowds really taking offense to the things he says, as we'll see in a moment, about the bread of heaven. And many of the crowd end up leaving. But it's after these crowds leave that we get this powerful contrast between that's been going through this entire story where Jesus asked the disciples, he says, do you wanna go away as well?

To which Peter, good old Peter, resolutely responds saying, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed, and we have come to know that you are the holy one of God. This whole account really is Jesus. He's trying to bring these two groups and us as readers to make a decision about his identity. His miracle feeding proved implicitly that he was the Messiah.

The Jewish messianic expectation, it included a renewed feeding of manna. The people were looking for the manna to come back just as it had in the wilderness. But in his discourses, we're gonna see Jesus, he makes his identity explicit, claiming to be the bread of life, the true manna that came down from heaven. And so what Jesus does here is he's gonna take the statement of the crowds. The crowds, they catch up.

They're again, they're seeking physical bread, and Jesus responds by taking them deeper and deeper in this conversation. He becomes increasingly more graphic in the language that he uses. He tells them right on the outset that they need rather than working for the food that perishes, they ought to be seeking the food that endures to eternal life in verse 27. And this brings about a response from the people here in verse 31. Of course, the miracle itself, the nature of the miracle, and its timing at the Passover, it brought to the minds of the crowd Moses, the Exodus, and the wilderness journey.

And so the crowd says in verse 31 to Jesus, they were saying, our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. He gave them bread from heaven to eat. So the crowds really at this moment have identified Jesus as this kind of Moses type figure. They've been asking him about the sign.

What's the sign that you're gonna do so that we can believe in you as the Messiah? But Jesus begins with the statement that that they use their allusion to this manna story, and he's gonna begin correcting their understanding of this of the manna in really three distinct and kind of escalating parts here. And so he's gonna take this very statement and break it into three parts. He starts with the beginning. He gave them.

Jesus unpacks it, and he says to them here in verse 32, he says, truly, truly, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven. So Jesus is correcting some of their assumptions here. It appears based on Jesus' response that when they say he gave them bread, they're referring to Moses, and they're kind of comparison to Jesus as this Moses like figure. But Jesus tells them, no. Moses did not give Israel the manna.

God did. And secondly, he shifts the action from the past. He gave to the present. My father gives. So the crowd, what they're doing this moment is they're looking back.

They're looking back at the manna story and trying to think about their situation in those terms. But Jesus is he's redirecting them to the very present. What's happening before their very eyes? What God is giving them in the present? That is in verse 33, the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

Interestingly, you know, the crowd, they're wanting to compare Jesus to Moses right here, but Jesus instead identifies himself with the manna. Jesus says in verse 35, I am the bread of life. Jesus continues. He jumps to this next part of the statement, talks more about what this bread from heaven means in the next part of the statement. And he draws another contrast with the manna feeding here.

He says, your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. The manna, it gave temporary life, but he couldn't help the people of Israel overcome death. They're surprised Jesus here. He claims not only that he's the bread of life in whom they should believe, but he goes even further and says that the bread that he will give for the life of the world is his flesh, and those who eat of his flesh will live forever. Jesus is getting pretty provocative here in his language.

Right? And so, of course, the crowd responds, and they say, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? What is he talking about? Cannibalism? Who is this guy?

What is he who does he think he is? How can he say this to us? But Jesus in the conversation doesn't ease the tension at all, but he only raises up. It's not only he says that they must eat his flesh, but they must also drink his blood. And, of course, you know, drinking blood is in direct conflict with the Mosaic law in Leviticus chapter 17.

But Jesus places this really these really challenging words within warning. And this is a statement I really want us to focus on here. Says in verse 53 after they ask, you know, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? He says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Jesus has already revealed himself as a bread of life, but now he's telling them how it is that they're gonna be able to eat of him. Of course, nobody here and if we were there ourselves, nobody would've understood fully what Jesus meant at this moment. These are signs pointing to what was to come. But with hindsight, we know and with the help of the apostles and other New Testament writers that what Jesus was talking about was the offering of his body and his blood on the cross for the world. And it's through the offering of his body and his blood that he goes on to say that we are able to have these promises from him in his death.

In verse 54 through 58, he says, whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living father sent me and I live because of the father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died.

Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. So through the cross, through the offering of Jesus' body and blood, he promised the resurrection. He promised the abiding presence. He promised participation in the divine life for the father and the son, promised everlasting life. Not only would we experience resurrection, but we would die no more.

See, what Jesus was trying to help them turn them away from the past and see the present, what he was trying to help them see was that like Israel, the world was on a journey. They hungered, and God had sent the world the bread of life. So Jesus' words here in verse 53, I wanna come back to him in this warning and this challenge that he just delivered. And I also think about these words now in reference to the Lord's supper. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat of the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Unless you eat of the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. What if we considered this warning in relation to the Lord's supper? How would this warning change the way that you approach the Lord's table every first day of the week? You know, certainly, this statement is true if we're just reading it in terms of general belief in Jesus. I mean, no one can receive eternal life, neither can they really receive the Lord's Supper properly without faith in Jesus and his death.

But Jesus' crucifixion really is the focus of the text in John six, but also it's the focus of the Lord's Supper as well. Because in the supper, it is the cross. It's the death of Jesus that we remember. And in partaking, what we're doing is we're returning to the source of our life. At the table, it's not that we're receiving a new sacrifice every single Sunday, but we're returning to the sacrifice that promised us life when we first believed.

And when we eat of Jesus' flesh, we drink of his blood, but we're again receiving the life giving power and the promises of Jesus' death and resurrection. When we eat at the Lord's Supper, we continue to receive those promises from the cross. Each first day of the week, we should hear Jesus promises again these promises of the resurrection, the promise of his abiding presence of the divine life that he shares with us, and that we would die no more. You know, maybe you may read, especially these last few verses of John chapter six and fifty two through 58. You might still not be convinced that they are talking about the supper.

That's okay. There's definitely room for disagreement on on this passage for sure. But I wanna ask you these questions as reference to the Lord's supper. Can we neglect eating Christ's supper and still call ourselves faithful disciples? Can we claim to be faithful disciples while we reject the meal that our Lord offers us?

And can we truly say that we have life in us without regularly returning to the source of our life? You know, Jesus, he doesn't describe the eating, the drinking of him as being optional in John chapter six, but he describes it as being necessary. And it's the weekly meal Christ gives his people as we journey towards the resurrection. It's that that meal that we need on our journey, a meal in which we remember and we receive again the promises of his body and blood that were offered once and for all on the cross. So we as Christians, we're we're on a journey.

We hunger still. And how does god answer but through Christ who gives us the suffer? So in light of all these different Old Testament shadows and their fulfillment in Christ, I wanna consider really briefly just kinda three ways which these these two texts, I think, should help maybe shape how we prepare, partake, and participate in the supper each week. I think, first of all, when we come to the supper, we need to come hungry. You know, God, he had fed Israel manna to give them life in the wilderness.

The wilderness is a place of death. They Israel needed the manna. They were hungry for the manna when they first received it. And God, likewise, has sent Jesus to give his flesh for the life of the world. The world that was hungry in bondage of sin and death, hungry for relief.

We come to the table to eat and drink of Jesus' body and blood. We need to have an even deeper hunger than that of the Israelites or that of the crowds in John six. We've gotta be craving truly the promises that Jesus gives us through his death. You know, a lot of times when it comes to meals, you know, familiarity kind of it makes us take a meal for granted. All the mothers in here said, amen.

Right? How many times your husband said, spaghetti again? You know? Like, you should be lucky. You wanna cook?

You can cook. You know? I never tell Abby I'm tired of eating her food. Never. But sometimes we get to a point where we get so familiar with the food, we even start to despise it.

Right? That's how Israel was. Numbers chapter 21 and verse five, like Samwise Gamgee, he even got tired of the lembas bread. They say, we load this worthless food. They're talking about the manna there.

The bread that the psalmist says, that's the bread of the angels, the grain of heaven. And they say, we load this worthless food. The problem at this point in Israel's history wasn't that God had stopped feeding Israel. The problem was Israel had stopped seeing the value of the food that that that God had been putting before them. You know, we can't lose our our our deep need or our hunger for the bread of life.

Because, really, if we've lost our hunger for the promises that Jesus gives us in the cross and our need to take them in repeatedly to come back to them repeatedly, well, then we're probably at risk of losing our dependence upon Jesus. Because, really, our our hunger for the supper, isn't it so much intertwined with our discipleship, our daily walk with Christ? We got to come hungry to the table. But we also gotta remember the source of where this bread truly comes from. Because the manna that Israel ate was unlike anything that they'd ever seen before.

In the same way Jesus feeding the 5,000, that food was pointing to a better and a higher level of food than what they could understand or see with their own eyes. It was a food of the a unique kind and a unique order. In the bread that we eat, the cup that we all partake on the Lord's day, well, it too, these physical emblems we take. That's why we talk about them. Right?

Emblems, their symbols, signs. Right? They point us to that one true food and drink. They're meant to direct us to the heavens, to the body and the blood of our Lord. And I think it's really easy for me personally, growing up in the church, especially, you know, week in and week out to allow these physical symbols that we take in to kinda become the end of our attention rather than the means by which they turn our attention to Christ.

We shouldn't be merely seeing bread or seeing drink and the things we're taking, but through them, we should be turning to the body and the blood of our lord. We need in the supper when we come to the table to allow Christ to lead us into the heavenly the true heavenly reality that really stands behind the symbols that we're taking to the place where he sits enthroned at God's right hand. Because we understand as Hebrews says, you know, Christ has taken his body, his blood into the heavenly sanctuaries to purify us of our sins. And there, he continues to mediate on our behalf before the father. And so from the throne, as we sit here and we sup, the father and the son, they share their divine life with us even still.

And then lastly, we need to eat for the journey as well. Israel, they ate manna, of course, remembering that God had just brought them out of the land of Egypt. Getting close to the end here, in case. Whoo. Man, you haven't had to gonna have to put me up against the pulpit.

We're getting close here. Here we go. Excuse me. Israel, of course, you know, they're remembering that that god had brought them out of land of Egypt, but they also were eating that while they trust that god will bring them to the promised land as well. And we also we eat the lord's supper every week, and we remember the cross behind us, but we also eat it trusting that God will bring us to the resurrection that is before us as well.

So why do we need the Lord's Supper every week? It's not because Christ needs to be crucified afresh for me this Sunday, nor is it because I've somehow maybe lost the promises that I've received in the crucifixion since last Sunday. But we need the Lord's supper really because you and I, we are all Christian pilgrims, pilgrims who we haven't yet reached our home. And on our journey each Sunday, there's this is the time we need to stop, and we need to unload our burdens at the foot of the cross. And we all bring different burdens, different cares of the world.

You know, we often talk about when we come to the to the Lord's Supper. Usually, one one of the gentlemen will say as he's leading, you know, let's take our thoughts and cares of the world, and let's put those, you know, out of our minds. Right? And I understand what we mean by that. I think it's obviously a really good thing to keep in mind.

But also, the supper is a place where we bring those cares, those burdens to the foot of Jesus and we lay those things down. But no matter what it is that we're carrying, God gives the same provision. He gives the same food for all of us, whether we've maybe fallen in sin, maybe if we're carrying grief, whether we're struggling with doubts in our faith, we're afraid of what tomorrow holds, maybe we're just discontented or maybe we're just angry at the world, at our family, at ourselves, whatever it is, Sunday, the Lord's Supper is the opportunity to come and bring those burdens to the table. Because no matter what it is we carry on our journey, again, God gives us all the same food. He gives us Jesus Christ, the bread of life.

So as a Christian, I'm still on a journey. I still hunger every week. So every week, I need to return to the table, not because Christ needs to be sacrificed again, but because I need to return to that sacrifice that gave me life in the first place. In closing, first Corinthians chapter 10, the verse we started our service with tonight, Paul, he told the Corinthians that our forefathers, the Israelites, they ate and drank in the wilderness or what they ate and drank in the wilderness. It wasn't merely a foreshadowing of what we now eat and drink in the supper.

But spiritually speaking, he says, it was the same food and drink. He says in verse three and four, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. So therefore, the manna from heaven and the bread and the cup for the Lord's Supper, they both point us to the true bread from heaven, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood were given for the life of the world. And through the supper, isn't that one of the most beautiful thing got to me, I think about The supper, we get to commune with the saints of old, the children of Israel. Because now Israel's story, the story of the manna we started with, that becomes our story.

A story that unites God's people across the ages as we're all getting strength from that same bread from heaven on our journey that gives us all the same hope of eternal life. We all hunger, and God feeds us, and Christ offers his life. And none of us have arrived yet. We're still on the journey. So I pray that until he comes again, then we may never stop crying as the crowds did in John chapter six when they said, Lord, give us this bread always.

So tonight, we talk about this meal of meals and the manna from heaven and what it pointed to in terms of the bread of heaven. Tonight, you're probably coming and bringing those burdens. Maybe you aren't a Christian tonight. Maybe you are a Christian and maybe you've fallen away in sin. But if you are not a Christian at this moment, if you want to partake in this meal properly, you could eat it physically and it wouldn't do the things that it that it would do for you spiritually unless you become a child of God, unless you've expressed faith in Christ as the bread of life, the one who died to give his flesh for the life of the world.

Unless you come confessing that fact, confessing that you're a sinner and that you need the sacrifice, that you would repent. Stop working for the food that perishes, but working for the food that leads to eternal life. The food, you can only receive through the waters of baptism, to receive the forgiveness of your sins through the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, and to choose to live a life of faith and allegiance and obedience to him for the rest of your life. And if we if we if that's your desire tonight, if that's your hunger, well, we wanna help you with that. If you'll come now as we stand and as we sing.