Sermon Notes — August 17, 2025
Exodus 16:1-5, 9-18
August 17, 2025
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
“Bread From Heaven”
I didn’t eat lunch until fairly late in the afternoon last Thursday. I had spent the morning snacking on a bagel, but suddenly it was a quarter to 2 and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Ron stuck his head in to ask me something, and when we had solved the problem at hand I said, “I guess I’m going to go get something to eat. I’m not hungry right now, but I can go from “not hungry” to “unfit to live with” in no time flat.
I have preached on this text a number of times, and I will confess that I have not always had a lot of sympathy for these Israelites and their histrionics in the wilderness. For me, it has always been the audacity of being rescued from slavery, and only one month later, when the going starts to get tough, begging to go back to slavery because they got hungry.
This time, however, I started to see their point.
Will you pray with me and for me?
Let’s set the stage for today’s text. Genesis tells us that during the lifetime of Jacob – who was also known as Israel – a terrible famine fell on the land of Canaan, where Jacob and his family lived. But God had already seen to it that Jacob and his family would survive the famine. Genesis 37 - 50 tells the story of Joseph, the second-to-youngest son of Jacob, and how his brothers sold him into slavery, and how Joseph ended up being Pharaoh’s right-hand-man in the land of Egypt. God reveals to Joseph in a series of dreams that there is going to be a severe famine, and Joseph makes plans for the Egyptians to store up food for seven years while there is enough so that they can survive the seven years when there will not be enough.
Jacob and his children and their families relocate to Egypt where there is plenty of food, and Exodus 1:7 tells us that
“the Israelites (Jacob and his family) were fertile and became populous. They multiplied and grew dramatically, filling the whole land (of Egypt).”
A new king eventually comes to power in Egypt who doesn’t know the story of how Joseph saved the Egyptians from starving, and he sees all the Israelites living in Egypt and feels threatened. In fact, the king notes that at this point there are more Israelites than Egyptians living in Egypt. So he decides to make the Israelites slaves, and as you read through the first few chapters of Exodus you see how the new Pharaoh made life increasingly difficult for the Israelites, to the point that they begin to cry out for rescue. Exodus 2:23 tells us that
They cried out, and their cry to be rescued from the hard work rose up to God.
Notice that they didn’t cry out to God. They simply cried out, and
God heard their cry of grief, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked at the Israelites, and God understood. (Exodus 2:24-25)
So this is where my more sympathetic reading of the text comes in. It only occurred to me this time around, and you can judge me for my lack of scholarship in the past, it only occurred to me this time around that the Israelites living in Egypt didn’t know who God was. At the time that the Israelites cry out for rescue they have been living in Egypt for 400 years, or roughly four generations. They have long since forgotten who God is. According to the story in Exodus, there were only two people living in Egypt who had any connection to the God – Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and those are the two Israelite midwives who help Moses’s mother give birth to Moses. Do you remember this part of the story? Pharaoh has ordered all the Israelite midwives to kill any boys who are born to the Israelite women, but these two ladies – Shiphrah and Puah – disobey Pharaoh.
Exodus 1:17 says that
Now the two midwives respected God so they didn’t obey the Egyptian king’s order. Instead, they let the baby boys live.
And this is how we get Moses. These two midwives refuse to obey the order and so Moses is born and his mother hides him until he’s too old and then she puts him in a basket and floats him down the Nile where one of Pharoah’s daughters finds him, pulls him out of the river, and gives him back to his own mother to raise.
But they are the only people in the whole story of the Israelites in Egypt who remember God. Not even Moses knows who God is. When Moses sees the bush that is burning but doesn’t burn up, God has to introduce Godself to Moses. In fact, Moses even has to ask God’s name, because he knows that if he goes into Egypt and tells the Israelites that God has sent him to rescue them, they’re going to think he’s lost his mind. They don’t remember the God of their ancestor Jacob. They don’t know the story of their ancestors Abraham and Sarah. They don’t know the story of Isaac and Jacob and Esau, and how Jacob wrestled with God through the night to get God’s blessing. They don’t know these stories. All they know are Ra, and Isis, and Horus, and Osiris. That’s why Moses asks for a name to give the people. All the gods had names. What is your name?
Yahweh–I am who I am. I will be who I will be.
Moses goes to Egypt, of course, and after all sorts of trials and plagues and attempts to leave, finally God tells Moses to get the people ready to leave. He tells them to roast a lamb per family and bake some bread. Eat the lamb and bring the bread with you. It will not have had time to rise, but that’s OK. Load it up and bring it anyway.
And the really short version is that 600,000 men, not including women and children, plus livestock, left Egypt. They cross the Red Sea, which then destroys the Egyptians who were pursuing them, and travel for three days in the desert when they start to complain of thirst. And then they come to Elim, an oasis, with twelve springs and seventy palms.
One of the things that you will find out about me is that I love a map. And I was going to wow you with all sorts of maps so that we could follow along on this journey together, but what I quickly learned is that there is no scholarly consensus about where these places are. So we’ll skip the maps and focus on time. The scripture is much more precise about times than locations. Scholars believe that the Israelites got to the oasis of Elim about thirty days after they left Egypt. And then they camped in this beautiful oasis with fresh water and fresh food for about two weeks. So I imagine that they were probably easily sustained by the bread that they had packed for those first thirty days, and then they got their fill of fresh water and fresh food, and then we get to today’s scripture.
They set out on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had left the land of Egypt. The whole Israelite community complained against Moses and Aaron in the desert.
Why didn’t this God who rescued us just kill us while we were in Egypt instead of dragging us all the way out here in the desert to starve us? At least in Egypt we got to eat as much meat as we wanted, but now we’re going to starve in the desert.
Like I said earlier, I used to chuckle at their complaints. In my conversations in my head with the Israelites I said, “You were the ones who begged to be rescued and now that you’re free all you can think about is going back!” But then I realized, they don’t know this God who has sent Moses to rescue them. They have absolutely no reason to trust this God. Sure, they’ve seen lots of miracles, but they have no reason to believe that God is going to continue performing those miracles. They are taking each step of this journey waiting for the Gotcha moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for God to let them down.
And if I had been out there, in the desert, the food has run out, we’ve left the comfort of Elim, you’d better believe I would have been the loudest complainer of all. I would’ve been the one out there getting everyone riled up. At least we weren’t hungry in Egypt.
Some of us don’t do well with being hungry.
And so God says to Moses, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you meat to eat at night and bread to eat in the morning. I’m going to give you exactly what you had in Egypt, but this time you will have to trust me to give it to you.”
So God feeds the people. And God starts to teach them to trust God in real, concrete ways. Not in big, audacious miracles – seas parting and rivers turning to blood – but by giving them what they need every day.
Moses tells them to gather an omer per person per day. What’s an omer, you ask? Well, it’s one-tenth of an ephah, of course. What it really is, though, is enough. An omer is enough. It’s enough to satisfy your hunger for the day. And that, God says, is all you get because it’s all you need. And tomorrow you will wake up and do it all again. And there will be enough for that day, too.
And the scripture says that no matter how much of the manna the people gathered, it always equaled an omer. Gathered more than an omer? You still get an omer. Didn’t get quite an omer? Somehow it always equals out to an omer. Everyone gets enough. In God’s economy, when the world works the way God intends, everyone gets enough. Everyone gets their daily bread.
In Exodus 16:12, God says to Moses.
“I’ve heard the complaints of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat. And in the morning you will have your fill of bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”
Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.
This is how God wants the Israelites to know him. After all that the Israelites had seen – the Red Sea split in two so that they could cross on dry land – after all that they had experienced – a cloud that leads them by day and a pillar of fire that leads them by night – after all that they have endured, this of all things is how they will know that this God is their God. Because this God feeds them in the desert. God is the one who gives them exactly what they need. No more and no less. Jesus teaches us to pray by asking God to give us this day our daily bread, to give us only what we need and no more. Why? Because if we’re getting only what we need, then there is enough for everyone else to get what they need, too.
First, though, we have to recognize that we are hungry. Unless we acknowledge our dependence on God’s goodness to provide everything we need, we will never be able to enjoy the gifts that God alone can give us – we will never be able to recognize God’s grace in the everyday things and everyday moments.
The title of this sermon series is “At the Table.” Our scriptures are full of stories of how God nourishes and cares for all of creation. After providing the whole Israelite congregation with manna in the wilderness, God feeds Elijah at his lowest moment, and then sends him to feed others. When God put on flesh and lived among us in the person of Jesus, the table became one of the central symbols for the Kingdom of God. Jesus made room for everyone at every table, and in our celebration of Holy Communion we anticipate that day when we will all feast at God’s heavenly banquet.
All of this is grace. Grace not meant to be hoarded for ourselves but shared with others. And each week will we reflect on two questions: How is God providing for us? How is God inviting us to provide for others?
Next week you’re going to hear more about the mission and current needs of Feed America First, and we’ll end this sermon series in September by packing Rice and Beans together. We love a good miracle story, but so often the miracle is that God invites us to help create the world that God intends, a world where everyone has enough.
So as we leave this week, and I invite you to take a picture or write down these questions, these are the questions I invite you to consider and to talk about:
How is God feeding you – providing for you – this week in ways that only God can?
Who around you needs to be fed? Who does not have enough that needs enough?
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.