That is the second book in the Bible. So if you go all the way to the left hand side of your Bible, right at the beginning, Genesis is the first book, Exodus is the second. Exodus 16. Exodus 16, I'm going to read verses 4 and 5. Then I'm going to read verses 19 and 20. Then I'm going to read two verses from Deuteronomy 8. And you don't have to turn to Deuteronomy 8. You can just listen if you like on that one. All right. Exodus 16, verses 4 and 5 we're going to read here. First, let's ask God's blessing. Thank you, sir. Let's pray. Dear Father, open our hearts, we beg to receive your word. You know our frailty, you know our weakness. Oh God, have mercy on us and give us supernatural power to go beyond it, to love you as we ought, to worship you as we ought. Lord God, to submit to you as we ought. I beg you to open our eyes to behold wondrous things from your law. I beg you to make your word living and alive to us, quick and sharp and moving. and empowering and full of life. Oh, God, give us help, we pray. Convict the sinner, strengthen the saint, dear Lord. Make Christ glorious for us as we don't have the power to do. Help us, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, Exodus 16, verses 4 and 5. Then the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and 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. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily. Then forward to verse 19, same chapter, Exodus 16, verses 19 and 20. And Moses said to them, let no one leave any of it over till the morning. But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. And then Deuteronomy 8, listen to this as I read it to you, verses two and three, this is a description of them going through the desert, they're at the end of their journey now, they're going through the desert, and Moses is describing how God fed them the manna, this bread from heaven. Deuteronomy 8, verse two, and you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the desert, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you, and he let you hunger, and fed you with 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. Amen. May God bless his word for us. What are these passages talking about? God led the people Israel through the desert for 40 years and that entire time, he fed them with manna. Now, manna is a Hebrew word that literally means, what is it? What is it? That's what manna means. What is it? Manna was a substance that would be on the ground anew, afresh, every morning, miraculously from God, and which could be made into a sort of bread. Six days a week, God would put the manna on the ground, and Israel was commanded to only gather as much as they needed for the rest of that day. They gather it in the morning, and they gather just enough to provide for them that day. They had to trust that God would provide for them Again, the next day, they were not permitted to gather more than they needed for one day. If they did gather more than they needed, the hoarded manna would breed worms the next morning. They couldn't eat it. They had no choice then but to trust God. The exception was the sixth day of the week, which for us is Friday. The exception was their Friday. On that day, they could gather enough for two days, since God would not give manna on the seventh day, which was the Sabbath, the day of rest, and it's our Saturday. This was because Saturday, for them, was a holy day on which God commanded you to rest from work. And of course, gathering the manna and cooking it would be work. Now the basic reason God did this, fed them by the manna, was to teach Israel to trust Him with a daily trust, to trust Him with a daily faith. Now by daily faith or daily trust, I mean a trust which does not look out further than the present day, but patiently, humbly, obediently looks to God to provide for today. The next morning, they were called to wake up once again and trust God to provide just enough for the present day. And they were called to do this day by day every day for 40 years. Manna was a great way to teach them this lesson because it's hard to get more basic than man's need for food, isn't it? Now God doesn't feed us with manna, but he does direct us to the same kind of daily faith, and that's my point today. I'm just telling you in this sermon today one thing. God's will for us is that we exercise a daily faith in humility, patience, and obedience. So let's begin by exploring these passages, and we're gonna get some details that will fill in this idea of a daily faith, all right? First, in Exodus 16-4, we see that God gave them manna in order to test Israel, whether they would obey His law or not, and specifically, this concerned whether they would refrain from keeping the manna overnight, and then refrain from gathering it on Sabbath, Saturday, their seventh day. Now, in order for God to test us or them or anybody, he usually has to create a situation of difficulty. You realize that, right? If God's going to test you, he has to create a situation of difficulty. There must be some evil thing. which we are tempted to do. In Israel's case, they were tempted to distrust God and His provision by hoarding the manna and by going out to gather it on Sabbath. Their difficulty was, the difficulty that sets up the temptation for them is this, the difficulty is that they are tempted to They need to rather forsake their own wisdom, forsake their own thoughts, and forsake their urge to protect themselves. And they have to simply rely on God like humble children. And you know very well that is a difficulty. That's a challenge in our lives. God is doing the same thing with us. He is creating difficult situations for you and me to see whether you will trust Him by obeying His simple command, despite your temptation to do what seems better and easier to you. This is especially so in the area of faith, okay, for us and everybody. God has set up the world so that we can lose it all in a moment, hasn't He? Isn't this world set up so that you could lose it all in a moment? Nothing is certain. We are tempted to obsess about the future and to hoard up money and provision so as to defend ourselves from eventualities, bad things that might come in the future. but that's against God's will. God would have us trust him with a daily faith, a faith which only asks for provision today and does not demand of God assurance of a security which God never offers. So this kind of faith does not look at God and say, you have to give me surety for tomorrow and next week and next month. Daily faith doesn't do that. Daily faith says, if I am provided for today, I give thanks to God and I rejoice. because that's all he told me to look for. Second, from Exodus 16.20, the command for daily faith aims to avoid the rottenness which occurs when we hoard for the sake of maximum security. The daily faith that God requires of us is trying to prevent rottenness from occurring in your life when you hoard things and hang on to them to keep yourself safe from the future. Listen, when Israel kept the manna overnight, what did it do? It rotted, it spoiled, there were worms in it. Take this as a picture of what happens to everything that we seek to use as security against the future. The man who hoards money is hurt by the money when it turns foul in his mind and heart. Just like the manna, his money changes from being a good and helpful provision, which money should be and can be, to being a stinking poison, bitter, unwholesome, impossible for it to nourish you. and this is going to happen in any area where you don't exercise daily faith. Everything you seek to hold on to in this way will become rotten. If you use a relationship to give you security, which you should only seek from God, you will ruin the relationship. It will breed worms. If you look to a career to protect you and give you identity, as only God is meant to do, your career will breed worms and stank. It will stink. What we're really doing in these cases is just idolatry. Men should only look to God to deliver them and give them security. But like the heathen of ancient times, we are prone to build little statues, little shapes of men and fish and lizards and bears, and bow down to them and say, deliver me, save me, give me security from the future so I don't have to trust in the real God. Brothers and sisters, we can't keep anything because nothing is ours. We can keep nothing for nothing is ours. Everything we have, we have only on loan and it is a fact, you are soon going to die and give it all back to the one who gave it to you. There's only one exception. I'm telling you, you can't keep anything in your life. You come up with something you have in your life, I promise you, you can't keep it. There is one exception. The one exception happens to be the only thing you can worship without fear of idolatry, and that's God. Anything else you cling to, look to for security, look to for identity, look to for maximum pleasure, look to to make you okay when things are hard, that is your God. Be certain of it. Drink, sex, women, relationship, career, money, security, interest, hobby, any one of these things, if you're looking to it the way you should look to God alone, that is your God. That is your idol, and you can't keep it. You know, I don't have to convince anybody here, the moment you die, you lose it, or before. There's one exception. There's one thing you won't lose in death if you possess it. That is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. If you cling to God, you will possess God right through death and into eternity, and you will never lose Him. He is the only proper object of worship. And now I say worship when we think, oh, you mean that thing that we do when we come to this building? No, I mean that thing you're commanded to do every second of your life, including when you're sleeping. which is handing yourself over to God, body, soul, flesh, bone, and blood without exception. That's worship. I hope that you worship here, certainly. I'm far more hopeful that you worship outside of here through the rest of your life. So daily faith is calculated to prevent the breeding of worms in your life. Third, From Deuteronomy 8-2, daily faith is designed to humble you. It's designed to make you low. It was much easier to be humble when we were children. For then, we literally depended on someone else for everything. When you were a child, small child, someone else changed your diaper. Someone else prepared all your meals. Someone else gave you all your clothing, all your shelter, and took you everywhere you needed to go and taught us everything we needed to know. When we grow up and gain autonomy, Freedom, now I'm starting to rule myself in a way I didn't before when I was a child. When I get that kind of autonomy, I begin to feel myself the master of my fate and the captain of my soul. But that is all nonsense. No matter how adult you are, no matter how wise, how rich, or how competent, how anything we have become, we are always and only relying on God for every single scrap of everything that we have. God wills daily faith for us and daily faith aims to humble us. That's because the more dependent we are, the more lowly we see ourselves to be. Let me ask you how proud you think a quadriplegic can be. How proud can a quadriplegic be? How proud can a child with Down syndrome be? How much occasion do they have for pride? How proud the blind man? who has to be led everywhere by the hand. Can those people be proud? They can. I know it's true. Sinners find a way to be proud in any circumstance. It's pretty remarkable. You actually have to admire them for it. But you see how those circumstances militate against the pride that we are prone to because the more dependent that we are, the more humble we have to be. So God would have us know for certain that nothing is certain. Tomorrow is not guaranteed to you. Trust God today and be content for what he gives you today. Don't proudly demand your allowance for tomorrow. If you do, it is nothing more than a devilish desire to be master of your fate and captain of your soul. Anybody know where that phrase comes from? You heard that poem before? If ever there was a foolish man who wrote a foolish poem, that was it. It's called Invictus by Henley, maybe. Invictus. I really liked that poem when I was in high school. You had to memorize a poem in one of my classes and recite it, and that was the one I chose. It would be hard to find a more foolish, a more false, a more God dishonoring poem than that one. The whole thing is about no matter what comes, no matter how guilty I am before God, I'm the one in control of myself. I'm the master of my fate. I decide, I'm the captain of my soul. Folks, that is exactly what God will put you through anything to remove. If God has to kill you to rid you of that, if you're His, He will do it. He will do it. He'll stop at nothing to drain you of that poison. because it is the opposite of daily faith. So fourth then, from Deuteronomy 8.3, daily faith requires that we learn to live more on God's word than even on bread. That's what God wanted to teach Israel, that it was more important for them to hear God's word, learn God's word, meditate God's word, trust God's word, hope in God's word, obey God's word, more important even than eating. What is more important than eating? Forget what I said for a moment. What is more important to you as a human being, a biological organism? What's more important than eating? Water and oxygen. Those are the two things I have. I can go a very short time without air. I'll tell you that. I can barely go longer without water. I can go without food for a while. Not long, and I certainly don't want to. But if anything, I need oxygen, I need air, and I need water. But after those two things, let me tell you, I don't want to go long without eating. I depend on it. I depend on my daily bread. I depend on the lunch that's coming, and the breakfast that I had, and the dinner that will be later, and maybe a midnight snack. I depend on food. That's how we are built. In fact, there's almost nothing more essential to us than nourishment. For most people, if you take away their breakfast and lunch, see how they feel by dinner. How are they acting by dinner? Would you like to have a tense conversation with them by dinner after they've missed breakfast and lunch? Observe their mood. Maybe test them a bit. Throw them a curveball. Give them a hard time. See how they react. How well they take it. Bread is basic. Most people can barely miss a meal without serious frustration, right? That's how essential, that's how basic eating is. And in daily faith, it is time for us to learn to live more on God's word even than eating, even than eating. Oh, if only we were people who were that frustrated over missing our morning devotions, as we are when I miss breakfast and have to go a few hours to lunch. if only we were people who felt frustrated, wrong, disturbed, a lack of peace, because we did not savor Jesus Christ in the scripture that morning. I confess to you, that's not me at the moment, and I need to repent. So in daily faith, we learn to live more on God's word than food. Here's how it fits together. Faith is like chewing. and God's word is what we chew. Can you chew without something in your mouth? No, you need something to chew, don't you? You've got to have something to chew. If faith is a burning fire, God's word is the fuel upon which faith burns. If faith is the truck engine, God's word is the gasoline which the engine burns and is thereby moved. Without an ongoing experience of God's word, your faith won't have any fuel. There will be nothing to burn. Your faith will be a fire that's gone out. The remains will be a cold pile of ashes. That will be your faith. And then someone will call you to daily faith and you'll say, in what? Faith in what? It's the same as being commanded to eat and having no food. Come on, be nourished. What's the matter with you people? Be strong, stand up. Work a day's work. Work hard, go out in the sun, do it. What's the matter with you? Say, I have no food. Right, your body runs on food, your faith runs on the scripture. And what, after all, are you going to believe in for this daily faith if not the word? So when the devil tells you, I bet this week I've got somebody pinned, I probably have a number of you pinned, this week when the devil told you you are too sinful for God to love you, accept you, and help you, To help you in ministry that you may be involved in? To help you evangelize to your co-worker or raise your kids? When the devil told you you were too sinful for that, what did you do? What fuel was there to throw on the fire of daily faith? I got a log for you. To the one who does not work, but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Oh, am I sinful devil? Well, that's good because those are the only qualified people for salvation. Am I ungodly devil? Thank goodness. Those are the only people God justifies. Romans 4, 5 says so. When the devil tells you, hey, It's just a little sin. It's really not that much. Will you relax already? You're being really over the top now. Come on. Have a little bit. Be out of it. You'll repent afterwards. You'll go to church. There's grace for you. The preacher quoted Romans 4, 5. It's all okay. What log then are you going to throw on the fire of your daily faith? Behold, all souls are mine, the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine. The soul who sins shall die. the soul whose sins shall die." Well, Satan, that's an interesting proposition you have there, but here's the thing. Sin leads to death. It has to lead to death. It has to lead to death as necessarily as anything is necessary. And so, devil, now I'm going to keep looking to Christ who justifies me, the ungodly, and I'm going to go on avoiding sin and refuse it. another log onto the flames, and then your faith is burning, it's hot, it's strong, it's providing light. How are you going to do that without the scripture? Live then on God's word that you may live in daily faith. There is no faith without the word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing what? the word of God. Your faith is the fire, God's word is the fuel. Well, that's just a couple of points to fill in this idea of daily faith, okay? Daily faith. But, I'm going to anticipate a possible question. Something somebody wouldn't say out loud, unless they were awfully courageous, but something that you might be thinking or feeling. Or if not now, you're going to before very long. Why should I believe God in the first place? You're telling me to trust God, right? What kind of trust are we talking about here? Sure, I believe Jesus died on the cross. Well, you're saved then, brother. No, you're not. You believe about as much as the devils do so far. Do you know what kind of faith you must have to be saved? It is a faith which is sweet, comforting, affecting, moving, and life-changing. It is a faith which makes a man or a woman look at Jesus and be overwhelmed with love. It's a faith which makes people die in fire at the stake. Come on now, no devil ever died at the stake on fire for Jesus. Do you have that kind of faith? Is your faith moving you with the sweetness of Christ? Could you pick up a book entitled something like The Loveliness of Jesus Christ and really relish it? Or does it just sound strange that anybody would talk about a historical figure that way? It's like being in love with George Washington or something. George Washington and I have a personal relationship. Well, that's creepy. Is that what it's like when the Christians say you need to know Jesus deeply and intimately and in love? Why should I trust God that way? Why should I feel that way about Him? Why should I be warmed by God when we live in this fine world He's made after all? This fine world with all of its sorrow and misery and pain that I have suffered. How can I have a daily faith, or any faith for that matter, when God made such a bad world? Surely that casts doubt on the character of God. But if the character of God is shady, How am I going to trust him with this warm, affectionate, affecting faith? There are two parts to the answer. The first is this, God didn't make a bad world, you did. God didn't make a bad world, he made a good one. Our world is now bad as a result of the joint effort of men and devils, creatures. Sorrow and misery flow from the sinful actions of creatures, not from the creative actions of God. So we have to be careful to keep that straight at the beginning. Genesis 3 is in your Bible for a reason. People talk about the great problem of evil. We don't have any solution. Yes, you do. Here's where it comes from. Read Genesis 3. But the second part of the answer is this. It is true that God permitted such evil to enter the world. Shall he be thought a villain because of that permission? I know our hearts are tempted to think that way at times. Let's admit it is sometimes easy to believe the devil's lie that God is after all the bad guy. To what then shall we turn to defend this daily faith in God that we have to have? a bunch of things could be offered. I'm going to give you the one thing that towers above them all. I'm going to show you what to turn to the next time that faith is impossible because the world is so bad in your estimation, and it is bad. Here's where we turn. If you want a guarantee about the character of God, if you want certainty about whether God is the good guy, In the story that we know as human history, you only need to look at the cross of Christ. You just need to look at where Jesus dies. When Jesus dies on the cross, he demonstrates the character of God. He makes it possible to know God. Jesus makes it possible in his death to know God on the cross for the world as it has never been possible before. Jesus' death showed that God is righteous, since in his death, God is punishing the sins of believers. All the believers who have lived since the beginning of the world, God proved that he's a righteous God. He won't turn a blind eye to sin. No sins are swept under the rug. The soul that sins will die. Every sin and evil deed will be punished. The account will be balanced. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. God punishes every sin which occurs in this universe, be it of man or angel. And God displayed his wisdom in the death of Christ. The predicament of the universe is not how we can make all men equal, but how in the world a righteous God can love and forgive sinners if he wants to. And he wants to. But how is he going to do that? If God is just, if he's good and righteous, he has to punish sins. If he desires to rescue sinners and he does so, then he isn't just. How is the predicament solved? It's solved by the death of Christ. In the death of Christ, God himself, God shows himself to be both just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. That is, God shows that he is a righteous judge. He does not ignore sin and crime. He punishes the guilty as a good judge must. And do you know anybody who would even be willing to punish their son just to show they're serious about sin? No, none of us are that serious about sin. Certainly not. And God shows himself to be the one who makes bad men right with himself. So he shows himself to be righteous. He will punish sin. And then he shows himself to be the one who makes bad men right with himself. That's what it means that God is the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. To be justified is to be made right. The word justify comes from the same root as our word righteous. You could say, are you righteous-ified? Would you like to be righteous-ified? Are you righteous before God? No, I'm not, I'm a sinner. Would you like to be righteous-ified? To be justified is to be righteous-ified, to be made right with God. God takes guilty people, horribly guilty people, people who should burn in the fire, and in the death of his son, God removes every ounce of that guilt. He erases the debt. He cleanses the filthiness. He expunges the criminal record. He slams his gavel and declares, not guilty, innocent, righteous, just, the most glorious archangel, or seraphim or cherubim could not have solved this riddle. How does the righteous God, who is love, forgive sinners who must die for their sins? The wisest angel in heaven could not have come up with the solution, but God devises and executes the solution in his gospel. And he does it with pleasure, and he does it with ease, because he is wise. I asked a moment ago where we are going to turn when we begin to doubt God, when it gets hard to have daily faith in the face of the evil, sorrows, and horrors of the world. Sinner, you can turn to the cross. There the righteousness The wisdom, the love of God for sinners is displayed as never before and never since. So the answer is simply, look at Jesus' death and have joy. Your sins, which are many, are forgiven. Let's pray. We praise you, righteous Father, for this glorious gospel and ask that you would indeed open our eyes to it that we might see, that is, that we might believe and be saved. Amen. ♪ God be the glory, great things he has done ♪ ♪ So loved he the world and he gave us his Son ♪ ♪ Who healed his life and atoned him for sin ♪ ♪ And opened the life that we may go in ♪ ♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord ♪ ♪ Let the earth hear his voice ♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the peoples rejoice. O come to the Father through Jesus the Son, and give him the glory, great things he has done. O perfect redemption, the purchase of God, to every believer the promise of God. The tireless defender who truly believes, That moment from Jesus forgiveness receives. Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear His voice. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Let the people rejoice. O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son, and give Him the glory, great things He has done. Thank you.