Tonight we're going to take a look at how God provides for us; and the lesson that we're going to look at is that God provides for us in a way that we will know that He is the Lord. He could provide for us in all kinds of ways, but the passage that we're going to look at in Exodus tonight I think will encourage you that God sometimes has a unique way of providing for us the things that we need.

I'm not sure what you guys might be praying about today or what you're praying about out there, things on your heart, but maybe you're looking for God to really provide some things that you need and you're wondering how in the world is He going to do it, how is He going to bring about what He wants to bring about. And I hope you'll be encouraged that God has His ways of providing. Even when we're out in the wilderness, even when we're out in the desert, He can provide for us. And He can do it as supernaturally or as naturally as He wants to do it.

But the bottom line is, and the lesson tonight is, He does it in a way that we will know that He is God, so it's very clear that it's Him that's doing the provisions and that's what we'll find out tonight.

So if you have a Bible and you want to open up with us, we're just going to read through here in the room Exodus Chapter 16, the whole thing from Verse 1 through 36, and we'll just go around the room taking turns. And this is the story of the manna and the quail out in the desert.

Bud, do you want to start off there and read a few verses?

BUD: 1 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."

ERIC: Stop right there. Isn't this funny again? Didn't we just talk about these people? They see God's miraculous power, and what do they do? They grumble again. And it says how long it's been, what does it say here in Verse 1?

BUD: The 15th day of the second month, so it'd be a month and a half.

ERIC: A month and a half after they came out of Egypt and saw the huge water split and they all put their faith in God again, and back in Moses again, and said "Okay, we'll follow you wherever." The last time, they were only three days out in the desert on the other side of the Red Sea, and they ran out of water. They're all grumbling, saying what? "You brought us out here to die and we ought to go back." And God provides water for them.

Here they are a month and a half later, grumbling again against Moses and Aaron. "If only we had died back in Egypt, at least we had pots of meat." They sort of forget that they were in slavery.

DEE: Yeah, they had all the food that they could eat but they were slaves. So somehow I doubt that they had all the food that they could eat.

ERIC: And we can laugh at them, but we do the same thing, don't we? We'll see God provide for us; we'll follow Him, and then a couple things go wrong and we're back grumbling against God, grumbling against the people that brought us there, whatever the word is. And we're complaining about it and we're saying "God, where are you now? Okay, yeah, maybe you showed up before but you seemed to have left us." But God hasn't left at all. So let's pick up from there and we'll see what God tells Moses.

Someone else want to start in Verse 4?

DEE: 4 Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days."

6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, "In the evening you will know that it was the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?" 8 Moses also said, "You will know that it was the LORD when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD."

9 Then Moses told Aaron, "Say to the entire Israelite community, 'Come before the LORD, for he has heard your grumbling.' "

10 While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud.

ERIC: Someone else?

JIM: 11 The LORD said to Moses, 12 "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, 'At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.' "

ERIC: Stop right there. That last verse that you read is our lesson for tonight. You want to read that again?

JIM: 11 The LORD said to Moses, 12 "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, 'At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.' "

ERIC: Then you will know that I am the Lord your God. So God says, "I will provide for you, I've heard your grumbling. But I'm going to do it in a way that you will know that I am the Lord."

God continually wants to show us that He is Lord, He is in charge, He is there, that He's going to provide for them. He said it back a few verses earlier as well when Moses and Aaron back in Verse 6 says, "In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt. In the morning you will see his glory". And He says He's also going to give them a test through this. He says that word that we ran across the last time, that he's going to test them in how they do with receiving what He gives them. We'll look at that as well.

But I just wanted to point that out again, that the point is that God wants to do what He does in a way that we'll know that He is God. All right, Jim, you can pick up at 13.

JIM: 13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was.

Moses said to them, "It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. 16 This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.' "

17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18 And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed.

19 Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning."

20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.

21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. 23 He said to them, "This is what the LORD commanded: 'Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.' "

ERIC: Someone else?

BUD: 24 So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 25 "Eat it today," Moses said, "because today is a Sabbath to the LORD. You will not find any of it on the ground today. 26 Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any."

27 Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. 28 Then the LORD said to Moses, "How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? 29 Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where he is on the seventh day; no one is to go out." 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

ERIC: Someone else?

DEE: 31 The people of Israel called the bread manna. [manna means "What is it?] It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. 32 Moses said, "This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the desert when I brought you out of Egypt.' "

33 So Moses said to Aaron, "Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the LORD to be kept for the generations to come."

34 As the LORD commanded Moses, Aaron put the manna in front of the Testimony, that it might be kept. 35 The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.

36 (An omer is one tenth of an ephah.)

ERIC: Nice closing verse :) That's helpful. "An omer is one tenth of an ephah."

DEE: That clarified that. :)

ERIC: It's very specific that God provides for them this manna from heaven. And if you read your footnotes there, what does manna mean? Can you tell back on Verse 31?

JIM: What is it?

ERIC: It means "What is it?" in Hebrew. Why do they call it "what is it?"

DEE: That was their first response. What's that?

ERIC: Obviously, they'd never seen this stuff before, right? This was a thing that they were totally not used to. It wasn't a normal thing that any of them had ever seen before. There's some 600,000 people there. You'd think some of them surely might have seen some strange things that had come in and out of Egypt or that part of the world.

But God provided for them this bread from heaven. I guess it came and was just like dew on the ground in the morning, and then when it dried it was like flakes. What I can picture is like potato flakes like you make instant potatoes from, right? Instant bread. You could bake it, you could boil it. I suppose they said they could mash it, they could make it into cakes. Later in the Bible they talk about all the different ways you can prepare manna, which I guess after how many years did they eat this, after 40 years you could come up with some nice recipes from Camp Israel, a lot of good manna.

But it was something totally unknown before, so they called it, "What is it?" They named it manna. To me, when I read some of these passages from the Bible, I think they're so strange and yet when I became a Christian, they all became very real to me, these passages, that I read them more like the newspaper, like this actually took place yesterday, not 2,000 years ago. But I read the Bible now much more like that, like "Okay," I just accepted that they did have this manna in the desert and that gets me starting some questions though so and I still say, "Well, it was probably some phenomena of nature that this manna appeared in the morning, it's just something that happens in the desert and it only lasts for a day and the next day, it gets maggots in it."

But He sort of blows that theory out of the water later, doesn't He?

DEE: Yeah, because of Sunday.

ERIC: Right, the Sabbath. He says for some reason one day out of the week you can keep it for an extra day and it doesn't get maggots and stuff on it. And also on Sunday -- the Sabbath day for them was Saturday back then, but on that one day of the week, what happens?

DEE: It doesn't appear.

ERIC: It doesn't show up at all. Yeah. It just doesn't even appear on the ground. So it's not like some freak of nature thing or something just natural, some natural phenomena. Something or someone obviously caused it unless there was some cycle that every seventh day it didn't appear and the seventh day it happened to last an extra day.

But no, God tested them. How did some of them do with the test?

JIM: Not well.

ERIC: What did they do, Jim?

JIM: They tried to save it for the next day.

ERIC: Some tried to save it for the next day. You can picture them out there in the desert walking around. All right. They were probably thinking the same thing we were. "All right, some desert phenomena. I'll go get some more." But God had the laugh on them; it wasn't there.

He also said He'll bring them meat to eat in the evening, and what was their meat? Do you remember?

DEE: Quail.

ERIC: Quail. Back in Verse 13, quail. 13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.

Although when I first read that, I thought, "Well, this is from all the quail that came before. I don't know if that's what you'd want to eat on the desert floor. But because of what we just looked at, it clearly seems to be a supernatural phenomena, not just a natural phenomena. And the fact that they ate it throughout all their years on the border, we'll find out later in the Bible that the manna disappeared after that time. Once they came into the Promised Land, God had new food for them to eat, new provision. Grapes that two guys had to carry on a stick, the big clusters of grapes, there were so many on a cluster. Food was so abundant in the Promised Land, they didn't need to rely on manna any more, these bread flakes, whatever they were. And it's actually, you know, nobody's ever seen it since. It's not been documented since. And at the end of the chapter, what does God tell Moses and Aaron, back when Moses tells Aaron to do this. It does say in Verse 32, it says the Lord has commanded this?

DEE: Put it in a jar and save it.

ERIC: Put it in a jar, save it.

DEE: They put it in a jar and they didn't have see-through jars then, so they put it in a jar for the future generations, but the future generations can't see it because it’s in a clay jar.

ERIC: They would have to open it.

JIM: Do you think it would have maggots in it?

ERIC: I doubt it if God commanded it. And where is that jar put? Where did they put that jar? Did you catch that reference, what they're putting it with?

DEE: Tent of the testimony.

ERIC: That's right, in that room in front of the testimony. They put it in the ark of the testimony, this ark that they're going to build as we'll see later in the book. But they had manna throughout the time, so at some point God says. "All right, save this manna in a jar and put it there," it turns out, right with the Ten Commandments and the testimony. That whole Raiders of the Lost Ark. That's what's in the ark: the Ten Commandments and manna. So he found that. That's pretty amazing. And if it really was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey, I guess we'd only get a few bites of it, but we'd be able to confirm that that really happened, really occurred.

I think the lesson for me, though, is still to trust that God will provide in a way that we'll know that He is the Lord. It may be as simple as our daily bread and meat, which was not a simple thing for them in the desert, but for us it could be a very simple thing. But as long as we can recognize that it's God who's doing the providing, we'll be a lot better off.

The second lesson out of this is that we must follow His instructions. When God says He's going to provide in a certain way and He wants us to collect it or gather it in a certain way, then we need to just obey that. Sometimes we go into our own mode. We think, "Oh well, if it works this way on this day, we should do it again on the next day." But if God says, "No, I want you to do it this way and in this place and at this time," then we need to trust Him and follow those instructions.

I can think of one particular time when I've seen God provide so clearly. And a lot of the stories that I tell about how God has worked in my life, they seem so personal to me and they speak to me so that I will know that He's the Lord, but they don't always speak to other people. Other people can see the same story and go, "You know, I don't know if that was God or not God." But that's because God wasn't speaking to you or you or you or you. God was speaking to me, just like he was speaking to the Israelites and trying to tell them specifically.

But maybe you have some of these instances where God has spoken to you and it's helped you confirm something or helped you make a decision. I think we've talked about, you know, who to marry or whatever, that God may answer these prayers in a way that is so specific to us that we know that we know that we know that God's in it. But other people might just look at us and say that's totally foolish.

I'm not as concerned about what other people think on these issues, but sometimes when I tell stories like I'm about to tell, I think that other people could look at it and go, "I don't see it, I don't get it." And I've had people do that. But to me, God is so clear. And my encouragement as I tell this story is that you would also make the connection between what you're praying about or you're grumbling about and when God provides an answer, that you would make a connection and see that that was God that provided that answer.

And the story that I want to tell is just about the Ranch and sort of how all this came to be and why we call this web site The Ranch. And it wasn't really my idea at all. I was praying several years ago about what I ought to do and where I ought to go and how God wanted to use me. And I happened to get out a map of the United States. Actually, it might have been the whole world. I can't remember right now. But I was just in one of those moments of "All right, God, I have no idea what to do or where to go. What do you want me to do. And I just closed my eyes and just dropped my finger on the map and it landed on Dallas, Texas. I was living in Illinois at the time. And I looked at that and I was like, oh no, not Texas again. We've been to Texas and we had a great time in Texas and all, but we moved back to Illinois and we just went through this whole transition and had done this transition a few years ago here. I was like oh, Texas again. I just couldn't believe it.

And later that day I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in Houston, and I told him what I was praying about and what had happened and laying my finger on the map And instantly on the phone my friend said, Eric, I see this vision of this ranch and that's exactly where you're supposed to go. There's this ranch, and he described this whole scene to me, what it looked like with this river here and this dirt road here and the sun over here and he put labels on things. He described it so in detail. But he said, you know, let me draw you a picture of it, and I'm going to fax this to you. And so he drew the picture up and he faxed it to me and I just put it aside, put it aside. I'm like not really interested in it, it was sort of a joke, God.

Within that year I get a call from church in Dallas that had heard about me through my friend in Houston and some other chain of events, and they were looking for somebody to come down and sort of help them out as an associate pastor-type of person. And the guy called me and asked me about it, asked all about me, asked me if I would be interested. I said you know, I'm not sure I really want to do this but I can come down and help you out for a month or so and spend some time there with you and your people. And so I went and did that. And my friend reminded me, of course, of this vision that he had of Dallas.

At the end of our month there, we just thought wow, God is really moving and active here and we really enjoyed the congregation. We said yeah, maybe we should move down. They invited us to move down and come on staff. And so we said okay, we'll go. So we were driving down there. We didn't have a place to stay. They were trying to line up someplace for us to stay while we went and bought a house, but they weren't able to get anything lined up. They get this deal where you can stay at somebody's home while they're trying to sell it, because the home sells better with furniture in it and people living in it. So even though the family has moved out, you can live there for very cheap and you just pay them some small amount each month and you can live there until the house sells. When it sells, you've got to move quick, but at least you can stay in a really nice house.

And this company that we were working with to do this, they said okay, we've got this house picked out for you. So we loaded up our moving van in Illinois and filled it with all our stuff and started a two or three day drive down to Texas, taking our whole family, and taking our time.

And we get down there -- actually, on the road, we're a day into the trip down, and I called to check on the place. And we had another moving van behind us that's going to meet us there, and I needed to let them know where to go. They said well, that house actually just sold, so we're going to have to put you in another house. So I'm like okay, give us the address.

The next day we call again. They say that house has gone too, so we've got to put you in another house. There's a choice of these two houses.

DEE: Were you grumbling yet?

ERIC: And there's one in this part of town, or there's one in this part of town called Valley Ranch. Which one would you rather go to. I was like well, huh, Valley Ranch, that's interesting. I mean, Brett did say we would be living at a ranch. So we'll take the Valley Ranch house.

So they gave us the address and we go to this house in Valley Ranch. It turns out it's a house that overlooks the Dallas Cowboys practice field and it's the only house that does this. They built this balcony out on the house and you can see over the fence, because they got a huge, huge covered fence so you can't watch them practice. But this one house had this big balcony, big beautiful house. We were way out of our -- our furniture did not help sell that house, as the current owners would testify to.

But we moved into this Valley Ranch house, and I thought well, that's neat, you know, it's sort of the ranch idea, and we're here in Dallas. And I was praying about it and thinking about it, that drawing, and we were going around with the realtor. And I pulled out that fax and it was this fax that my friend had sent me at the time. I pulled out the fax and this realtor was a Christian and he was reasonably up for the desire-ness that we were about to show him.

So I pulled out this fax that said to Pastor Eric Elder from a missionary, it gave my friend's name, and the subject was "The Ranch" in quotes, vision sketch. And so he sent this vision, this is the vision that he faxed to me. And it's got this dirt road here it says and the water over here and these obstacles he had sort of drawn like these ditches, and here's the clouds and the sun. I'll put this on the computer so they can see it, too. And it's dated October 22, 1995, and it says "vision after Eric saw Dallas on the map".

So I gave this to the realtor and we're saying, you know, if you see a piece of property like this as we're driving around, then we'd be interested in at least talking about it, because we don't know why we're here in Dallas anyway other than this church has called us. But if there's some other reason that God has in mind, we'd like to know it.

Well, we're living in this house for about a month, and we're trying to decide where to live next, what to do. And one morning I get up and I say, you know, there is a river right next to our house. I'm just going to draw this here. This was our house in Valley Ranch and there was this little moat sort of creek that curved around, and here was the Cowboys practice field. It went like this, these are all the lines on the football field. And there's a fence here and this was where this very high fence was that we couldn't see too much, but we could see over it and see the players way back here practicing.

So I'm looking out off our balcony. This is where we are. And every day I'd look out this way off our bedroom balcony and I'd see that big wall there. I thought, well, there is this creek anyway, this sort of moat thing that they had built for security around there and I wonder why, though, my friend had drawn this vision, this particular angle. You know, I wondered with the water there, why he had drawn it that way. So one morning I thought, you know, I think I'll walk along all these houses here and see if I can see what's back this way. It was a little dangerous to do this because it's a pretty high security place.

So I get up one day, and I walk around and I take a look from this perspective and all of a sudden I see the river over here, the fence is here, but behind the fence that I couldn't see was the cinder track, this dirt track that they would run around on. And all of a sudden here was the river, there was one lone tree here, and that morning the tree had this shadow here in the water, which is just like the sketch was. There were trees back here in the background back here, and the sun was exactly here and even the ditches that he had drawn, which I was looking for ditches out on the field. You see these? The practice field didn't go this way like that. It went exactly like this and he labeled these ditches obstacles that you had to get past to get to where you were trying to go, which obviously that's what they were doing every day in practice, trying to get past these.

So when I just ignored this part of the river, it was right in front of me. All of a sudden I saw "the ranch". And it was a couple days before October 22nd. It happened to be October 19th, a year later that I saw this. And I looked at it and ironically, just on the other side of this playing field, there was a new sports complex going up and they had just put a sign up that said coming October of '96 or fall of 96, there was this little sign over here, and it was a sports complex called The Ranch, a sports rehab center.

And it so stunned me that God could actually speak that specifically a year in advance. It wasn't a house that we picked out to make this all work out. This was a house that came two houses after while we're driving to Dallas, which was there on the map. I took some pictures of this and showed them to a couple people. And I walked around the property with them and they looked at it and they said we don't see it. Now, to me it's black and white, you know, plain as day. But here's the balcony and here's the little creek and here's the fence. And the fact that I couldn't see it, here's the one tree here. And when you go around the property to the side, there's the cinder black track, the dirt track that I couldn't see because of the other thing. There's the sun over in the left. Here's even a reflection of the tree in the water. This is the tree, the one tree that's there and the reflection of it in the water, which is just what was on the map that my friend had drawn for me.

In fact, I look at it even today and go, you know, it's not quite like the vision sketch in some ways, but in other ways it's so clear and specific. And here's this little sign from across the way, "Opening Fall of '96 The Ranch Health Club and Sports Medicine Rehab Center"