WILDERNESS HUNGER AND HEAVENLY MANNA PART 3

Exodus chapter 16






Exodus 3:18


And they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, H4057 that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.




Today we look to the word-WILDERNESS- H4057 midbar --wilderness, pasture, uninhabited land




The Torah testifies.......................................




Genesis 16:7


And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, H4057 by the fountain in the way to Shur.




Exodus 4:27


And the LORD said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness H4057 to meet Moses. And he went, and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him.



Numbers 14:33


And your children shall wander in the wilderness H4057 forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness. H4057




Deuteronomy 1:31


And in the wilderness, H4057 where thou hast seen how that the LORD thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place.





The prophets proclaim..................






Isaiah 42:11


Let the wilderness H4057 and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains.



Isaiah 43:19


Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, H4057 and rivers in the desert.



Jeremiah 9:12


Who is the wise man, that may understand this? and who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD hath spoken, that he may declare it, for what the land perisheth and is burned up like a wilderness, H4057 that none passeth through?



Ezekiel 20:13


But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness: H4057 they walked not in my statutes, and they despised my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them; and my sabbaths they greatly polluted: then I said, I would pour out my fury upon them in the wilderness, H4057 to consume them.






The Writings bear witness.............








Joshua 1:4


From the wilderness H4057 and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.




2Chronicles 1:3


So Solomon, and all the congregation with him, went to the high place that was at Gibeon; for there was the tabernacle of the congregation of God, which Moses the servant of the LORD had made in the wilderness. H4057




Nehemiah 9:19


Yet thou in thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness: H4057 the pillar of the cloud departed not from them by day, to lead them in the way; neither the pillar of fire by night, to shew them light, and the way wherein they should go.



Psalm 65:12


They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: H4057 and the little hills rejoice on every side.



Psalm 78:15


He clave the rocks in the wilderness, H4057 and gave them drink as out of the great depths.






WILDERNESS HUNGER AND HEAVENLY MANNA PART 3!!!!!


3. But Yah has to prove by the wilderness, not only the truth and reality of his work upon the heart, but whether we will keep his commandments or not. It is not what we talk that Yah looks to, but what we do. "The tongue," says James, "is a little member, and boasts great things." To talk is easy enough, but to do is another matter. Talking brings with it no sacrifices, no self-denial, no crucifixion of the flesh, no mortification of the whole body of sin, no putting off of the old man, no putting on of the new. A man may talk and drink, talk and cheat, talk and lie, talk and live in all manner of unYahliness. But it is walking not talking, praying not prating, doing not daring, obeying not saying, which manifest whose we are, and whom we serve.


But what are we to understand by keeping Yah's commandments? It does not mean, I believe, as interpreted by the rule and spirit of the gospel, keeping the moral law, that is, the law of Moses in the ten commandments; but the preceptive part of Yah's word, as revealed and laid down in the New Testament, where everything that Yah would have us to do, and everything that Yah would have us not to do, are written as with a ray of divine light. It embraces, therefore, every gospel precept, every New Testament command and direction, in a word, everything which proceeds from the mouth of Yah as given by him in the last revelation of his own mind and will, as the guiding rule of our Hebrew obedience. For you will observe that this is the test laid down in our text, "whether we will keep Yah's commandments or not." And where are those commandments laid down in all their clearness and plenitude but in the New Testament.


Is he not our Master, whom we serve in Yahly fear and love, whose approbation we desire to win, whose favor we count better than life, and in the enjoyment of whose love we wish to live and die? Now with all the perplexity, doubt, or fear which may encompass your mind, through the worrying, distracting power and influence of sin, HaSatan, and self; if you possess the fear of Yah, there will be that honesty, integrity, uprightness, and sincerity wrought in your soul by a divine power, whereby you can say before Yah, "Most High, I desire to know your will and do it. However I come short, however I fail or fall, my desire is to be found walking in your ways and doing those things which are pleasing in your sight."


But HOW does the wilderness prove how far we are willing to do the things which are pleasing in Yah's sight, and how far we are willing to keep his commandments or not? Thus. Its trials and temptations, its sorrows and afflictions, its perplexities and the difficulties which spring from them, lay bare the real state of our hearts, and as they discover to us the weakness and wickedness of the flesh, so they also bring to light any good thing which Yah by his grace may have wrought in our soul. When we are in a smooth and easy path, flesh and spirit are alike hidden from view. Like the sea in a calm, the flesh is smoothed into smiles, and what it can be in a storm is hidden in the still yet deep water. Thus we know not what the flesh really is, until worked up into a storm by the winds of temptation. Then its waves roll and it casts up mire and dirt; and then we also know the mighty voice which can say to these winds and waves, "Peace, be still." It is thus that the strength of sin and the strength of grace are brought out, and we learn which is stronger, grace or sin, the power of the flesh or the power of the Spirit, the battlings of self or the victories of Hamachiach.


4. But to pass on. The Holy Spirit by the mouth of Moses goes on to unfold other reasons of these wilderness dealings, setting before us both sides of the question, that we may well ponder the path of our feet. The next point then which we have to consider is Yah's "allowing us to hunger." This, we know, was highly characteristic of the wilderness. No food naturally grew there. All the food supplied during those forty years was food from heaven miraculously supplied. But before that miraculous supply came, they were sharply hunger-bitten. Scarcely had they got into the wilderness before hunger pangs fell upon them, and they cried out, "Would to Yah we had died by the hand of the Most High in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger!" (Exodus 16:3.) They were therefore allowed to hunger that they might have a sharp though not long taste, of one of the severest of bodily pangs and human sufferings.


But this was typically instructive, and throws a broad light upon the teachings and dealings of Yah with the souls of his people in the wilderness now. He allows us to hunger. We cannot feed upon husks. Worldly things cannot satisfy the immortal desires of a newborn soul. We must have divine food; we must have heavenly realities. Whatever I am, whatever men may think I am, I feel this one thing, that I must have heavenly realities. I cannot do with shadowy appearances, with make-believes and make-do's in faith. I may have but little, but let that little be real, for all else is a mockery and a delusion. Let it be the pure work of Yah upon my soul; let it be the breathings of his Spirit into my heart; let it be the communication of his life and the visitations of his favor to preserve my spirit. I don't want much; I don't seek great things; but I seek real things. I want a faith to live and die by; I want something to save and sanctify, bless and comfort my soul for time and eternity. I have to die; I have to face eternity. My conscience registers many sins committed against a holy Yah. I cannot stand before him under the weight of these sins as thus manifested to my conscience. How, then, under the weight of all my sins, known and unknown, seen and unseen?


Nothing, therefore, but the manifested mercy, goodness, and love of Yah can speak any real comfort to my soul, can bear me up under any trial, support me under any affliction, comfort my heart when cast down, and speak a peace to my inward spirit which the world cannot give nor take away. Therefore I want realities. And this makes me teach them to you, and insist upon them both earnestly and continually. And I believe I have a witness in the consciences of those who fear Yah, that I am right in so doing, for Yah teaches all his people, be they strong and well established in the faith; or weak and feeble, the same lesson—he makes them all alike want realities. And the way which he teaches them to want realities is by allowing them to hunger.


Is not hunger a real thing? You who can always find plenty of food in the cupboard and plenty of money in the purse to go to market with, or who from various causes have but a weak and feeble appetite, perhaps scarcely for a day in your life know what real hunger is. But hunger is a reality, and you might get into circumstances to find it so. Say, for instance, you were on board a ship when provisions ran short, or on a long journey when food could not be readily obtained, or were so reduced in circumstances that you had no money to buy it, you would find hunger a reality.


So it is in spiritual matters. Hunger is a reality. And have you not sometime found it to be a reality? "As the deer pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after you, O Yah." Is there reality in that panting? We read of the wanderers in the wilderness—"Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them." (Psalm 107:5.) Is there reality in that hunger and thirst, or the fainting of their soul in the very pangs of famine? "My soul thirsts after Yah, after the living Yah." Is there reality in that? If you say "No" it is to deny at one and the same moment, and in one and the same breath, that hunger is a real feeling.


Sometimes you can hardly get beyond the sigh, the cry, the longing desire, the hungering and thirsting after righteousness; but it is a reality, and a divine reality too, for it is not nature, but grace, which produces it. And Yah allows you to hunger that you may know hunger to be a reality. If you could feed upon husks, why need you hunger? If you could, as men often bid you, take Yah at his mere word, believe the mere promises, rest upon the mere doctrines, claim Yah to be your Father, and walk in all the arrogance of the children of pride—why need you hunger? What do these men know about either hunger or thirst? What do they know of David's feelings or David's cry? "My eyes fail for your word, saying, When will you comfort me?" Why need their eyes fail or their soul faint for Yah's salvation when they have it all locked up in the cupboard? Locked up, do I say? No! for their cupboard has neither lock nor key, but is open all the day long to all comers.


But it is because you cannot take blessings and favors Yah does not give; it is because your heart cries out for heavenly food; it is because you know there is a reality in the things of Yah, and that if Yah withholds them you cannot get them, that you cannot do their biddings, and steal their stealings. Yes, it is your hunger which teaches you what real food is. Perhaps you have come here this morning hungering. As you walked along there might have been raised up a secret cry in your soul, "Most High, give me something this morning. I need a word from you. It is a long time since you were pleased to speak to my soul. I am in trouble. My soul is deeply tried. I need something from yourself." Here is the hunger of which I am speaking and on which I am insisting.


Now Yah teaches you by the wilderness to feel this hunger—it is his work. The emptying us of self is his; the sifting of our souls in the sieve is his; the bringing down of our proud heart is his; the wounding of our consciences is his; the stripping of all our own goodness, wisdom, strength, and righteousness is his; the feeling of hunger then which springs from these dealings of Yah with our hearts is his. We know that, alike in nature and grace, hunger is not food, but it is next door to it. We know that a sharp appetite is not good food, or a loaf of bread; but what is good food or the best of bread if there is no appetite for it? It is a blessed preparation for a feast, if it is not the feast itself. For what is a feast to a man who has no appetite for it? What the smell of roast beef is to a sickly invalid—a subject of loathing not of longing, quenching the appetite rather than sharpening it.


5. But what other dealings of Yah with them in the wilderness does Moses bid them remember? The FOOD with which he supplied their hunger—"He fed them with manna, which they knew not, neither did their fathers know." Here was a provision. What a miracle, and what an undeniable miracle. How stupid, to say the least, must infidelity be to deny a miracle which was witnessed every day by a million people. Could you deceive a million of people for forty years? Could manna fall every day except the Sabbath for forty years and feed a people amounting to more than a million, and all those people be deceived in their eyes, in their hands, and in their taste? Why, the very little children would rise up and testify when they saw their mothers bring home the manna which they gathered every morning, that it had fallen during the night from heaven.


But as a standing and permanent evidence of the reality of the manna, was not a pot of it laid up before the Most High by the side of the ark to be kept for all generations, not only to bear witness to the miracle but to show what the manna was in itself as a visible substance? I know that there are great difficulties in belief, but I am sure that there are greater difficulties in unbelief. If to believe Yah's word is a difficulty, and to give full credence to the miracle of the manna seems at times to try our faith, what a much greater difficulty there is in disbelieving a circumstance which was evidenced by such undoubted proofs. If it had fallen once or twice, or in a very small quantity, there might have been more room for question; but to fall every day for forty years together and in such a quantity as to feed more than a million people—this seems to afford a whole army of proof against infidelity and all its host. Besides which, if once we admit a forty years' wandering in the wilderness, how could that vast multitude have been sustained in it except by a miraculous supply of food from heaven, for earth could not supply it in a waste, howling wilderness? The unbelieving Hebrews in our Most High's time believed what our modern infidels dispute and deny—"Our fathers ate manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat." (John 6:31.)


It was then food unknown by any, until Yah sent it. The fathers of those who daily ate it did not know it; but for their descendants Yah wrought a special miracle, and gave them bread from heaven—typical, as you know, of the true bread which Yah gives to his family, the flesh of his dear Son, as our Most High opened up the subject in those remarkable words—"Then Yahusha said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the true bread of Yah is he who comes down from heaven, and gives life unto the world." (John 6:32, 33.)


6. Now what was Yah's object in thus sending them manna from heaven? He could if he had pleased have sent them quails every morning; or created bread, as our Most High created it when he fed the seven thousand. He might have sent them flocks and herds innumerable. But such was not his will. He was determined to feed them by sending them a daily portion of manna from the skies, that they might learn this lesson, that "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Most High, does man live."


This, then, is the grand lesson, dear friends, which you and I have to learn in our wilderness journey—that man does not live by bread alone, that is, by those providential supplies which relieve our natural wants. Thanks be to Yah for any bread that he gives us in his kind and bountiful providence. An honest living is a great mercy. To be enabled by the labor of our hands or by the labor of our brain to maintain our families and bring them up in a degree of comfort, if not abundance, is a great blessing.


But Yah has determined that his people shall not live by bread alone. They shall be separated from the mass of men who live in this carnal way only; who have no care beyond earthly possessions, and the sum of whose thoughts and desires is, what they shall eat, and what they shall drink, and with what they shall be clothed; who never look beyond the purse, the business, the daily occupation, the safe return, the profitable investment, and how to provide for themselves and their families. Yah has planted in the bosom of his people a higher life, a nobler principle, a more blessed appetite than to live upon bread alone.


We bless him for his providence, but we love him for his grace. We thank him for daily food and clothing, but these mercies are but for time, perishing in their very use, and he has provided us with that which is for eternity.


What then does he mean the soul to live upon? "Upon every word that proceeds out of his mouth." But where do we find these words that proceed out of the mouth of Yah? In the Scriptures, which is the food of the Ekklesia, and especially in Scripture as applied to the heart, in the words that Yah is pleased to drop into the soul by a divine power, which we receive from his gracious mouth, and lay hold of with a believing hand. That is the food and nutriment of our soul—the truth of Yah applied to our heart and made life and spirit to our souls by his own teaching and testimony.


And see how large and ample the supply is. Look through the whole compass of Yah's revealed word, and see in it what a store there is of provision laid up for the Ekklesia of Yah. How this should both stimulate and encourage us to search the Scriptures as for hidden treasure, to read them constantly, to meditate upon them, to seek to enter into the mind of Yah as revealed in them, and thus to find them to be the food of our soul. If we were fully persuaded that every word of the Scripture came out of Yah's mouth, and was meant to feed our soul, how much more we should prize it, read, and study it.


But how does the wilderness teach Yah's people this lesson? Do not trials and temptations make Yah's word exceedingly precious? Yah's book is written for Yah's people; and they are "an afflicted and poor people." When we are at ease, there is nothing in the word of Yah for us except indeed it be sharp rebukes and cutting reproofs. But directly we get into trial and affliction, there is something in the word of Yah at once sweet and savory, suitable and encouraging.


Thanks then be to Yah if we know anything of living upon Yah's word. How the prophet knew this—"Your words were found and I ate them; and your word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart." But through what scenes of temptation and sorrow did he pass to find the word of Yah to be the joy of his heart. "Why," he cried, "is my pain perpetual and my wound incurable, which refuses to be healed?" and this almost in the same breath with eating the word. (Jer. 15:16-18.)


By "the word," we may understand also Yahusha' Person, his work, his blood, his righteousness, his dying love, his sweet promises, his holy precepts, his kind invitations, and what he is as the Hamachiach of Yah. What food there is in all this to the soul. Paul could say, "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of Yah, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal. 2:20.) And how blessedly did the Most High open up the whole mystery of the manna in the wilderness in those striking words—"As the living Father has sent me, and I live by the Father—so he who eats me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate manna, and died—he who eats of this bread shall live forever." (John 6:57, 58.)


This then is the effect, and these are some of the benefits and blessing of a wilderness pilgrimage. We learn it in the lessons which I have endeavored to unfold. Can you say, looking up to Yah with a honest heart, that you have learned any of these lessons in the days of your pilgrimage?—learned humility, learned the trial of faith, learned the reality of a hungering spirit, and learned the blessedness of living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Most High? Now if you can look back through a pilgrimage, be it long or short, and say, "Ah, if I have learned but little, I have learned that which has humbled me before Yah; if I have learned but little, I have had my faith tried to the core; if I have learned but little, I have learned to hunger and thirst after a precious Hamachiach; if I have learned but little, I have now and then tasted the sweetness of heavenly food; and if I do know but little, I still feel that my life hangs upon every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Most High." Then you can look back and remember all the way that Yah has led you these years, be they many or few, in the wilderness; and now that you come to look back upon it, you can see that goodness and mercy have hitherto followed you. Why then should you doubt that you shall dwell in the house of Yah forever?