Lord, Feed Us!

11th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/5/18
Exodus 16:2-15


Lord, Feed Us!
I. In spite of our sinful attitudes
II. With your gracious power


You see their pleas for help every so often. I’m talking about charitable organizations whose mission is to feed the hungry. Inevitably the 30-second spot will feature hungry children, often in some faraway country. They’re often malnourished and you can see it by the way they aren’t developing properly. But the requests for your help closes with a child, receiving a sack of grain from a volunteer, and he’s smiling from ear to ear. With his hand on that food, he couldn’t be happier.

I don’t think I’m wrong in stating that, if you gave a small container of grain to every citizen in the United States, more than half of them would have no idea what to do with it. All too many people, even if they were hungry, would consider such a gift to be worthless. But that’s what happens when you live in a land of plenty. And isn’t that the truth about our country? We live in a land of plenty. Few, if any, of us, know what hunger is. I’ll bet you can say with me, “I have never gone to bed hungry.” By third world standards, we live in luxury. We live lives that millions of people in our world can only imagine.

With that being the case, you might think I’m kidding when I tell you that for the next 15 minutes or so we’re going to focus our thoughts under the form of a prayer for the Lord to feed us. But I’m dead serious. It would be a tremendous blessing for every one of us to pray for the Lord to feed us because in doing so we come face to face with the truth that our daily bread and every other blessing we have comes from the gracious hand of our loving Lord. So, as we consider these words from Exodus 16, join me in prayer, “Lord, feed us!” And may he answer that prayer by feeding us richly on the feast of his holy word this morning.

Part I.

Imagine for a moment that the Lord appeared to you and told you to walk from here to Indianapolis. After wrestling with the Lord in prayer, you decide to go. You no sooner start out than you reach the banks of the Great Miami River and the Lord tells you not to cross over it on one of the bridges spanning it. Instead, he parts the waters of the Great Miami and you walk across it on dry ground. On the next day, you’re thirsty but you have no water. You come upon a scummy pond, and the Lord uses a miracle to make the water of that pond fresh and pure. By the second day, you realize that the food you have packed is all gone and you still have a few days to go. What are you going to do?

Every one of us would like to think that we would pause for a moment, consider how the Lord has just used several wonderderful miracles to take care of us, and then with a fully trusting heart, pray to him to provide us with the food that we need to complete our journey. We would like to think that would be our response.

The Children of Israel found themselves in a very similar situation. This event described in our text from Exodus 16 occurred about 70 days after they had left Egypt. Do you recall the wonders they had seen in those 70 days? At the Passover, God put to death all the firstborn males of the Egyptians, an act which brought Pharaoh to his knees and caused him to agree to let the Israelites leaves Egypt. Just a few days into their journey, the Israelites stood with the waters of the Red Sea before them and the advancing Egyptian army behind them and God parted the waters of the Red Sea. At a place called Marah there was water for a thirsty nation of people, but it was bitter. So God used a miracle to sweeten it. But now the food they had brought with them from Egypt was gone. What’s a nation of perhaps 2 million people to do as they stand in the midst of a wilderness with no food to be found? You and I, having just stated what we would like to think we would do in a similar situation on our way to Indianapolis, would urge them to trust the Lord and pray for food.

But that’s not what happened. Instead we read, “The Israelites said to [Moses and Aaron], ‘If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.’” Certainly not the response we expected.

Even worse, their response speaks volumes about their spiritual condition. First, they had no trust in the Lord. They had just witnessed several miracles in the last 70 days by which the Lord took care of them and now, as soon as they feel the pangs of hunger, they’re ready to ditch their trust in the Lord.

And that’s not all. Their complaints betray a lack of appreciation. After all that the Lord had done for them through Moses and Aaron, and this is the way they treat them? Charging them with a conspiracy to lead them out into the wilderness to starve them to death? Are they serious? I’m afraid they were.

And their sinful stubbornness went so deep as to cause them to misconstrue the facts. Listen to the way they describe their slavery under cruel taskmasters and under a pharaoh who put their baby boys to death, “There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.” They made it sound as if they were at a beach resort in the Bahamas, not slavery in Egypt.

The bottom line is that they wanted to be fed even though their sinful attitude was despicable.

A few minutes ago we imagined how we would respond in such a situation, but wasn’t that a bit of wishful thinking? Let’s be honest. Would we have reacted any differently if we had been there? In the middle of a wilderness without any food would we have been shouting, “No, no, no! Let’s trust the Lord!”? The truth is, in situations far less dire, our attitude has been just as sinful as theirs.

We own several media devices, but none of them are fast enough. We have two or three vehicles, but we think we need a new one that shouts, “Hey, look at me!” We have a nice home that’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter, but we think we need a bigger one, a new one, one with more a modern look. Our closets and dressers are literally bulging with clothes, but we don’t think any of them are good enough anymore; we need new ones. You want me to continue? We’re not happy with our food, our health, our employment, our education, our parents, our children, or our spouse. And in effect, we cry out, “Don’t you know what I need, Lord? What’s the matter with you?”

Instead, we ought to be praying, “Lord, feed us!” Feed us first of all, Lord, on the goodness of your mercy and love. We don’t deserve grill-fried steak; we deserve to be fried like steak. And yet our God is merciful, so merciful that he sacrificed his Son for us on Calvary’s cross. He gave us Jesus as our Savior from sin. Don’t you think that same God will take care of whatever else we truly need, even if it takes a miracle? Lord, feed us! Feed us in spite of our sinful attitudes.

Part II.

And that’s precisely what the Lord did even though the Israelites didn’t pray for it.

First, he used Moses to correctly apply his holy law to their sinful attitude. More than once Moses hit them with the truth. He said, “Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.” Their complaints were rebellion against the holy God.

And in the face of such stiff rebellion, God was quick to reveal his glory. Our text says, “While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud.” At first, this glory strikes fear in the hearts of every sinner, for the holiness of the Lord is near. But this glory centers not in his punitive holiness but in his gracious holiness. He wanted these people to understand that he is the Lord who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. Instead, he forgives wickedness, rebellion and sin.
And in that gracious love for these people he acted. “That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew
round the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor.” Meat for dinner at night, as much as they wanted in the middle of a wilderness, and manna or bread to eat each morning, enough to fill every stomach, probably 2 million of them. You talk about power! And for a people who didn’t deserve it! You talk about grace and love and mercy and compassion!

Lord, feed us! Feed us with your gracious power just as you fed these people of Israel with your gracious power!

But we don’t need quail in the evening and manna in the morning. In fact, I’ll bet many of us wouldn’t even eat it. We want pancakes or bacon and eggs in the morning, and pizza or spaghetti in the evening. But that’s precisely why we need to pray, “Lord, feed us!” Our attitudes are sinful. We need him to fill us with his gracious power, the gracious power found in his gospel, the good news about Jesus as our Savior from sin. That power—that gospel—is in God’s word and in Baptism and in the Lord’s Supper. Our God graciously takes care of every physical need we have. And through Jesus he takes care of every spiritual need as well. Yes, he is the holy God who will not tolerate wickedness, rebellion and sin. But he is also the holy God who graciously gives us forgiveness and declares us holy through the life and death of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

That news about Jesus is food for our souls. Lord, feed us with that good news every day of our loves! Amen.