Gluten Free & God Seeking: Why Did God Really Send the Manna in Exodus 16?

Monday, May 23, 2016

Why Did God Really Send the Manna in Exodus 16?

Family walk in Arizona

Food raining down from heaven might seem a bit out there. But it happened and not just for a day, a week, or a month. God sent enough manna to feed about 2 million people for 40 long years.

When I read this chapter many years ago, I got that it was a picture of the Lord being our heavenly supply. Especially since the Lord in John 6 makes this point really clear. But I saw in my reading that there's something more here. And Witness Lee brings out that it's about God using manna to reconstitute the Israelites for His dwelling place. Before you go huh, keep reading because the excerpts below will explain this.

I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel; I speak unto them, saying, At evening you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread, and you shall know that I am Jehovah your God. Exodus 6:12

After God spoke this, He sent quail to their camp, but it’s not like that was a good thing. I learned from reading chapters 33 and 34 of the Life-Study of Exodus that it was to show the Israelites that what they were hungering for was actually what they were constituted with. Here's some excerpts on pages 401, 405, 407, and 409 that helped me to understand why being reconstituted was such a big thing:

God's desire is to use His people as material for the building of His habitation on earth. However, although the people were no longer in Egypt, they were still Egyptian in their constitution.Their tissue was Egyptian….His aim is to eliminate every trace of the Egyptian constitution. Students of medicine know that a new diet causes our cells and fibers to be gradually changed….The point here is that whatever we desire, hunger, and thirst after is the diet according to which our being has been constituted….We need a change in our inward constitution, not merely a change in our outward behavior. If we would have such an inward change, we need to have a change of food supply, for the food we eat is the source of our constitution….By feeding on manna, God's people eventually became manna….This picture shows that only those who have been

reconstituted with Christ are qualified to build up the church as God's dwelling place today…. This reveals that our constitution must be rearranged through the eating of Christ. Christ must replace the Egyptian diet.… Remember that those who built the tabernacle had experienced a change of diet and had begun to be reconstituted with the element of manna….In fact, after being reconstituted, they themselves are the dwelling place of God. (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Exodus. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1980, Print). .