I Am Hungry

Exodus 16 is amazing. The nation of Israel has just seen God strike Egypt with ten terrible plagues, the last of these being the death of all firstborn males in the land of Egypt. God—He is a great covenant keeper—saves His chosen people, marking them with the purchase price of a lamb’s blood. Israel has been following the visible presence of God, the pillars of cloud and fire, and has seen the Red Sea parted by the breath of God. God is clearly working for His people, in magnificent and marvelous ways.

However, Israel is chronically lacking short and long-term memory. The people complain to Moses and Aaron, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." (Exodus 16: 3) Israel has forgotten both the recent acts of the present, all-powerful God, as well as his promises of old to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In their sinful hearts they pine for a return to slavery, forgetting that they had previously “groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.” (Exodus 2: 23)

But God is merciful, and seeing their need, provides sweet bread from heaven, manna, to sustain Israel for forty years. The bread is plentiful, filing, and it is deliciously sweet to taste. Here in Exodus we really have a picture of the New Covenant. God purchases His people out of slavery marking them with the spilt blood of the lamb. After they are freed, they are given heavenly bread that sustains them in their journey. Yet these are just a shadow and a copy of their heavenly betters—God is waiting to make a new covenant with His people, a better covenant. (Jeremiah 31:31-34) Christ becomes the mediator of this new covenant. In Christ, these former things are perfected and completed. Christ becomes the Lamb of God, with His blood fulfilling the law of the covenant, and covering man’s sin. Christ’s broken body on the cross, preached through His word, is our bread, our daily manna—by it we are encouraged, sustained, and transformed.

Before His crucifixion, Jesus celebrates the Passover meal with His disciples, and concurrently celebrates His perfect mediation of the new covenant,

And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” (Mark 14: 12-16, 22-25)

Christ is our food, He is our sustenance, He our hope and our joy. Only in Him shall we be fed.

I’m hungry today. I am really spiritually famished. I know and believe Deuteronomy 8:3. There is only one place I can turn to be fed. Yet I find myself not believing Christ is enough, even wanting Christ to not be enough. Can I really believe that Christ is everything? Do I found myself saying that even though “my flesh and my heart may fail,…God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever?” (Psalm 73: 26) These truths of the new covenant are beautiful, strikingly beautiful and terrible. I find myself easily believing such truths intellectually, you might say in generally. But will this do? Is it enough?

Remember how I chastised the Israelites for their lack of memory and berated them for their sinfully stupid desire to return to Egypt? Well, it still stands as a stupid desire. However, I can sympathize, for I too am stupid. Like me, Israel believed in God generally—they hadn’t literally forgotten the plagues, the pillars of God’s presence, or the Red Sea. When actuality struck, when the reality of fear, exhaustion, hunger, and homelessness settled in, a general belief in a saving God provided little hope.

Here I see my greatest sin. The fallen heart says there is none greater than I. No one is worthy of my trust except I. No, instead I must say, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” God may bring me into the wilderness where I may die of starvation, but still my heart will say “Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

My faith is weak yet I believe; help my unbelief.