Manna – Exodus 16

And Moses said to them, “This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.” Exodus 16:15

It defied everything they had ever understood. It came with the dew and melted with the sun, yet they could successfully bake and boil it. Six days a week it would spoil overnight. On the Sabbath it stayed fresh for two days. Somehow there was always enough for everyone. It was a bright white, and tasted like wafers with honey. They called it manna, the Hebrew word for “What?” Although they did not realize it at the time, it was to be their primary source of nourishment for forty years.

The children of Israel were two and a half months into their journey. Apparently whatever supplies they had carried with them were now depleted, and they had just entered into the Wilderness of Sin where there was nothing to gather for food. Hunger can make you lose your spirituality pretty quickly. So they began to complain to Moses and Aaron, “Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

From their perspective, it was about living vs. dying. God, however, saw it all very differently. His word to Moses was this: “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not.” Ah. A test. Funny, isn’t it, how we don’t realize these when they come? And why can’t God give us our tests when we’re not so hungry?

But the Lord wanted to teach these people (and us) an extremely important lesson. Moses figured it out right away. After explaining God’s plan to the congregation, he adds this point. “The Lord hears your complaints which you make against Him. And what are we? Your complaints are not against us but against the Lord.” Our leaders (as Paul would later explain in Romans 13) are merely God’s ministers to us, His hand to do good or to punish. When we complain to them, God hears it—and takes it personally.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “I have heard the complaints of the children of Israel. Speak to them, saying, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

You see, when all the details are stripped away, that’s the goal of every test. God wants us to know that He and He alone is the Lord our God. His will and His authority stand above everything else. He made the manna behave differently on the Sabbath because He wanted them to understand that His law (which had decreed the seventh day to be sacred) transcended the laws of their logic (which expected the manna to behave the same way every day of the week).

As I pondered this passage, I began to realize that I too am presently in a wilderness, taking a somewhat similar test. Mine is far less dramatic than a living vs. dying situation, but the principles are the same. For all my life since I was a child, I have been provided with the “meat” of something I have to do. After the constant requirements of school and college, there was a steady regimen of jobs, and then (for decades) the assignment of raising a family. I was content to be very, very busy. It gave me a sense of stability and order and significance.

Now, for reasons I can only partially grasp, God has me in “pause” mode. I have good things to do here and there, but there is no “grand plan” that I can yet see. My human logic would suggest that I should try to make something happen—perhaps seriously look for a job or volunteer for some worthwhile organization. My flesh hints that it’s my time to begin to reward myself with some recreational pleasures. But my spirit has quietly guided me to the understanding that neither of these are what God wishes for me.

So the story of manna has today become a comfort to me. My complaint (which, like all complaints, is against God) has been heard by Him. And what He would show me is that I will be given—and truthfully, I am being given—daily, supernatural provision of both things to do and a purpose for life. Rather than finding my identity and worth and even my security in some larger ongoing role or task, I now can awaken each morning to find and gather the “dew” of duties He has miraculously prepared only for this specific day.

Leave Your Gift - Matthew 5:23,24

Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

As I read this familiar passage this morning, I noticed for the first time that the man who had approached the altar of God was specifically told to leave his gift there while tending to the business of reconciliation. How strange. What if someone came along and took it before he got back to make the offering? Why not just carry it with him on his errand?

As I pondered this in my spirit, however, it began to make sense. The giving of gifts to our Lord is not about the gift. It’s about ourselves. On one hand, this is an act that costs us something—it costs the gift itself, it costs our time and effort. But these are not the most important thing. “If you bring your gift to the altar...” The real offering is that we have chosen in those moments to focus our full attention on God.

Most of us go through life avoiding God. We fill our minds with so many other things. To be sure, most of these things may seem harmless. Some of the things are in fact good and helpful. At times we may turn our thoughts specifically to matters of God—to scripture or to prayer. Yet even there it is possible to avoid giving our actual attention to God. We can easily limit our Bible reading agenda to increasing our portfolio of insights we will use to teach others, and our prayers to a litany of worries and wishes.

When a person truly quiets his mind and heart before God, there is always a risk. The Spirit of God may very well use the opportunity to do some personal housecleaning, as the above verses indicate. However, this doesn’t always happen. “IF when you bring your gift, you remember. . .” Often our times with God are seasons of joy and refreshing, especially if we meet with God on a regular basis. But there are those times (and we learn to be grateful for them) when something has arisen that is a blemish on our souls, and thereby diminishes our communion with God.

The gifts we would bring to God are interesting things. They may be tangible treasures, or they may be the gift of our talents and abilities. They may be acts of service. They are necessarily costly, sometimes quite significantly so. But always they are simply “currency.” They are the carriers of something more precious than themselves—or they will ultimately be of no worth at all. Paul spells this out clearly in I Corinthians 13:1-3.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Everything we would bring to God shows up in this list. Our talents. Our words. Our supernatural giftings. Our wisdom. Our faith. Our possessions. Even our very lives. Paul says that the viability of any of these gifts is tied to one single thing: a heart inhabited by the very love of God.

In a real sense, none of our gifts come from ourselves. God has given us our life and our abilities and our resources to steward. We are accountable to Him for how we use them. Sometimes we can use them for our benefit. Often they are entrusted to us for the benefit of others. A certain portion, a “tithe,” we are required to return directly to God.

But underneath it all is the requirement that we be motivated and directed by God’s holy love. Just as oxygen is the invisible sustainer of all earthly life, so divine agape love must infuse every aspect of authentic kingdom life. And the only way this can happen is by our regular, consistent inhalation of the very presence of God.

So yes. Bring your gift—many gifts—to the altar of God. Bring them gladly, willingly, grateful that He has given you something to bring. But understand that the deeper gift and the deeper joy will be in your choice to bring yourself to His altar, into His presence, where He will impart to you the gift of Himself. And as that divine nature enters your heart, you will be inspired and empowered to do those things which most please our Lord.

He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you—but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

Ministers of God - II Corinthians 6:4-10

“But in all things we commend ourselves as ministers of God.”

Every now and then as I do my morning devotions, I find that my readings converge. Today was one of those days. This is what Oswald Chambers wrote in My Utmost for His Highest.
 

When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. (John 1:48)

"We imagine we would be all right if a big crisis arose; but the big crisis will only reveal the stuff we are made of, it will not put anything into us. 'If God gives the call, of course I will rise to the occasion.' You will not unless you have risen to the occasion in the workshop, unless you have been the real thing before God there. If you are not doing the thing that lies nearest, because God has engineered it; when the crisis comes instead of being revealed as fit, you will be revealed as unfit. Crises always reveal character.

"The private relationship of worshipping God is the great essential of fitness. The time comes when there is no more 'fig-tree' life possible, when it is out into the open, out into the glare and into the work, and you will find yourself of no value there if you have not been worshipping as occasion serves you in your home. Worship aright in your private relationships, then when God sets you free you will be ready, because in the unseen life which no one saw but God you have become perfectly fit, and when the strain comes you can be relied upon by God.

"'I can't be expected to live the sanctified life in the circumstances I am in; I have no time for praying just now, no time for Bible reading, my opportunity hasn't come yet; when it does, of course I shall be all right.' No, you will not. If you have not been worshipping as occasion serves, when you get into work you will not only be useless yourself, but a tremendous hindrance to those who are associated with you.

"The workshop of missionary munitions is the hidden, personal, worshipping life of the saint."

I then read Paul’s compelling description of what it means to be a minister of God.

But in all things we commend ourselves as ministers of God: in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in fastings; by purity, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. (II Corinthians 6:4-10)

Paul opens his “commendation of ministry” with the word patience, hupomone, which carries in its meaning the sense of steady, even hopeful, endurance. He then lists nine places that have been the context for hupomone in his life: tribulations, needs, distresses, stripes, imprisonments, tumults, labors, sleeplessness, fastings. Notice that each of these items in Paul’s list is preceded by the little word “in.” These are the specific situations where the Spirit of Christ has been given a powerful foothold in Paul’s spiritual personality, and has revealed Himself in Paul’s patient endurance.

In another letter Paul tells us,

Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11-13)

This kind of learning is actually not so much discipline as discovery. We tend to view endurance as gritting our teeth, as bearing up under the unbearable. But when Paul speaks of contentment, it’s with an almost amazed awareness of what Christ has provided in these hard places. While there is a certain kind of joy and gratitude in the “abounding” portions of his life, Paul has found an altogether different kind of joy in being “abased,” for it is here that he most clearly experiences the strength of Christ. It was this joy that enabled him and Silas to sing praises during their suffering and imprisonment described in Acts 16.

The preparation for ministry that comes only through suffering is never optional for anyone who follows Christ, just as ministry itself is not optional. We are by definition “ministers of God,” for if His nature is truly in us, then it has to flow out. The travesty comes when we profess to belong to God, but (as Chambers describes) there is no hidden preparation in the everyday moments of our lives, and thus when the crises come we are exposed as “unfit” and “useless,” a hindrance to those who are ministering.

What does an authentic minister look like? That’s Paul’s next list, a series of things that begin with the little word “by.” Ministers are characterized “by purity, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report.”

Notice that it makes no difference at all what these ministers DO. Whether a person is a world-renowned evangelist or one who is confined to his bed in great suffering, ministry in God’s kingdom is a matter of the “by.” When in the current circumstances of our life we are able to exhibit His nature by our purity, knowledge, longsuffering and kindness, if what we express is the Holy Spirit Himself in love and truth and power, if we are so guarded by righteousness that we are untouched by both honor and dishonor, by good report or bad—then we are ministering. God is using us because He trusts us to represent Him well.

Paul’s final list of the characteristics of a minister of God is interesting. Here we find a third little word, “as.” This is the legacy of our ministry. These are the identifiers of those who are truly used in service to God: “As deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”

Jesus warned us in Luke 6:26, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you.” One of the most consistent distinguishing marks of a true minister of God is that he will be misunderstood, judged, rejected, chastened, sad, and impoverished. Nevertheless, in the very face of what may seem to be complete failure in the estimation of the world, he will be honest and alive and joy-filled and rich. In the final count, our ministry is visible primarily to God. To be sure, there will probably be some people around us who realize they have been “made rich” by our lives. We may even receive their gratitude.

But I believe what Paul and Oswald Chambers learned, and what they are trying communicate to us, is that our accountability is to God alone. As we deliberately give back to Him the moments of our lives—accepting whatever hardships or distresses or beauties and gladnesses those moments contain as being His perfect will for us—then over time we will become true and effective ministers of the grace of God, useful and powerful in the kingdom, and pleasing to the One to whom we have given our lives.