“I Will Rain Bread from Heaven for You”

[* seems to us that it must have been a’ very

difficult thing to supply food for the hundreds of thousands, — I shall not be incorrect if I say the millions, — who were in the wilderness; but, difficult as that was, the commissariat was not so difficult as the education. To train that mob of slaves into a nation under discipline, to lift up those who had been in bondage, and make them fit to enjoy national privileges, — this was the Herculean task that Moses had to perform. And their God, who loved the children of Israel, and chose them, and determined to make them a peculiar people unto Himself, undertook to teach them, and He used their food as part of the means of their education. Animals are often taught through their food. When they could not be reached in any other way, they have been instructed by their hunger, and by their thirst, and by their feeding. And the Lord, who knew of what a coarse nature Israel was composed, and how the people had degenerated from the old stock during their long bondage, took care to teach them by every means, not only by the higher and the more spiritual, by the typical and symbolical; but He also taught them by their hunger and by their thirst, by the supply of water from the rock, and by the manna which He rained from heaven.

* Exodus xvi. 4.

God desired to teach them Himself by the gift of the manna; and He taught them, first, zs care over them, that He was their God, and that they were His people, and that He would lay Himself out to provide for them. Think of the care that God had over them, over each one of them, for each man had his own omer of manna. No woman, no child, was forgotten. Every morning, there was a sufficient quantity for every man, according to his eating for that day. There was no more; and there was never any less, so carefully did God watch over each individual. The - individuality of the Divine love is a great part of the sweetness of it. God thinks of every separate child of His as much as if He had only that one. The multiplicity of His elect does not divide the loaf of His affection. He has an infinite affection for each one, and He will take care of the details of each chosen life. He will see your omer just filled precisely, to an ounce. He will give you all you can possibly require; but He will give you nothing that you can lay by to minister to your pride.

And this care was shown every day. The Lord taught them the continuity of His remembrance by its coming every day. If He had sent one great rain of liberalities to refresh His inheritance, and had bidden them gather up the vast store, and carry it with them in all their journeyings, they could not so well have learned His care as when He sent it fresh ‘every morning. Besides, they would have had the burden of carrying it, and they were free from that, for the -heavenly supplies were always close at hand, exactly at the spot where they pitched their tents, and tarried. Every morning, there was the manna precisely

where they needed it, and that without any man’s shoulder being made raw by carrying his food in his kneading-trough. The Lord teaches you and me, in the same way, that He not only cares for each one, but cares for each one each day and each moment, tracking our footsteps, and meteing out the full supply of the hour according as the peculiar necessity arises. “He is always thoughtful, always thoughtful of me,” thou mayest say of thy Lord; “always thoughtful of all the brotherhood, of the whole company of the redeemed, but none the less thoughtful of each one because there are so many myriads to be cared for every moment of every day.” Was not that a sweet lesson for the children of Israel to learn as they gathered their daily bread?

But Jehovah taught them, next, zs greatness. He had taught them that in Egypt by His mighty plagues, and at the Red Sea, when He branded the breast of the waters with His mighty rod. But now He gently taught them His greatness, His exceeding greatness, first by the quantity of the manna. There was enough for them all. How much it required, I leave arithmeticians to calculate. But, remember, that quantity fell every morning for forty years. What a great God is He who could feed the canvas city of His chosen people for forty years at a stretch, and yet without His stores being ever drained! His greatness was also seen by the mode in which He fed these myriads.. Usually our bread springs up from the soil, but these people were in a waste, howling wilderness. Wonder of wonders, their bread came down from the sky! Shall men live on air? Will you sustain a population on mist, and cloud and dew?

Yet out of a seeming vacuum came.a constant plenty. Every morning the earth was covered with the heaped up food of all that multitude; and they had nothing to do but to go out and gather it. What a God is this whose marchings through the wilderness were so marvellous! Jehovah, Thy paths drop fatness! Wherever Thou dost put Thy foot, the wilderness and the solitary place are glad for Thee. If Thou dost lead Thy people through a desert, it is no desert to them. The heavens supply what the earth denies. Behold, the greatness of your God, ye who are fed by His care!

And, next, they learned Azs “Liberality combined with Hts greatness, for every day they were fed; but not fed as Joseph supplied the people in Egypt, when he took from them all their stores to buy the corn, and at last took themselves to be bondsmen unto Pharaoh, and their lands to be Pharaoh’s freehold, that they might live. No; there was never a pretence of paying for that daily bread. The richest man had his omer filled, but he paid not a doit for it; and the poorest man had his omer just as full at the same price. There was “nothing to pay”; no manna-tax was ever exacted of the Israelites hand. Oh, the liberality of God! His cry is, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk.” Do you notice how Jehovah’s invitation grows? He says first, “Come ye to the waters,” but He corrects Himself before He gets through with it, and says, “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” The Lord is infinitely good, essentially. He is growingly good, experimentally. The

More we trust Him, the more we discover of His liberality. He “giveth liberally, and upbraideth not.” He scarcely upbraided Israel, despite their frequent murmurings, but the manna fell continually; and the abundance of it must always have struck the people. God’s liberality never stinted them. Oh, yes, I have no doubt that it is quite right to weigh out the bread and to weigh out the meat, so much bone and so much fat to be allowed to every prisoner in the gaol, and possibly to every pauper in the poor-house! But that is not God’s way of going to work. Though we deserve to be in prison, and though we are all of us pensioners on His bounty, yet He gives each one his omer full. Ifa man has a large appetite, he may eat as much as he likes, and the manna seems to grow while he is eating; and if he has a small appetite, though he may have gathered much, yet still he will have nothing over. God supplied the manna bountifully, yet exactly according to the capacity of the receiver.