Manna from Heaven

[david omweno ongori]

Exodus 16:31

"The people of Israel called the bread manna.  It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey." 

 The Lord brought the Israelites out of Egypt with many signs and wonders.  Even so, the Hebrews rebelled against the Lord and complained that they had no food to eat.  They foolishly believed that God had given them this great deliverance from Egypt only to let them starve in the desert!  Yet the Lord had a plan to provide for His people.  Each morning when the dew on the ground dried, thin white flakes appeared on the ground.  Yahushua commanded them to gather manna each morning but only as much as they needed for that day.  He provided this food for them for forty years as they followed Him in the desert.

The manna is a type of the Lord Jesus (see John 6:58).  Like the manna, Messiah came from heaven to the earth by a miracle.  Just as the manna was the only sustenance for the Hebrews for their forty years of trials in the desert, Jesus is the only nourishment for our souls.  Like our messiah, the manna was something the people did not earn or deserve.  It was a gift of our Elohim.  The manna was white, symbolizing the holiness of the Lord.  Likewise, our messiah came to earth as a man yet retained all his Holiness on this earth.  Finally, the manna tasted like honey, a recurring Biblical symbol speaking of our messiah and the sweetness of the nourishment that He brings to our souls (see Judges 14:8, 1 Samuel 14:24, Proverbs 16:24).

The manna appeared daily because the Hebrews needed daily nourishment.  When our messiah taught the disciples how to pray, he told them to ask for their "daily bread" for that day.  Our daily bread is the same as the daily manna for the Hebrews - Messiah.  We need his revelation, his Word, his presence in our lives every day.  How do we gather this spiritual nourishment each day?  We seek the Lord and we plead with him to give us "our daily bread."  For example, there is a parallel between the Hebrews gathering of manna and "early morning prayer" The Lord gives a special blessing for those who seek Him in the early morning and ask for their own nourishment for that day.

Messiah gave a restriction on how they were to gather the manna.  They could gather only what they needed for that day (Ex. 16:19-20).  There was a temptation for the Hebrews to gather manna for more than one day. Messiah did not allow this because He requires His people to seek him every day, not just fill up on one spiritual high and then drift away from Him for a while.  When the people gathered more manna than they needed for one day, the manna would spoil before the next day (see verse 20), a symbol of how blessings from our messiah can be lost if we do not continuously come to Him.

There was one additional requirement on the gathering of manna.  They could not gather it on the Sabbath, the sacred Day of Rest (see verses 22-24).  In our churches, we do not keep a physical Sabbath day of rest as some do.  Our Sabbath is the spiritual rest that we have in the Lord.  In fact, the Sabbath in the Bible is a symbol of our messiah Himself, who said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."  (Mt 11:28).  Those who did not observe their Sabbath found that there was no manna waiting for them on that day (see v. 27), and they went hungry as a result.  They are a symbol of those today who hear the word and taste the blessings that the Lord gives, but choose to remain in the world.  They continue to live without messiah' rest in their souls.

Our messiah commanded Aaron (through Moses) to store one "omer" of manna in a jar (verse 33).  An omer was the amount of manna that one person ate during one day (verse 16).  This jar of manna was eventually stored inside the Ark of the Covenant (see Heb. 9:4), where it became a perpetual symbol of our messiah.  Messiah is the bread of life that sustains our souls.  The Hebrews named this food "manna," which is Hebrew for "What is it?"  They did not have a better word for it, so they named it "What is it?"  It must have been amazing – even mysterious – to awake each morning to have all of your food for the day provided for you by a miracle.  The provision by the Lord for His faithful is also a mystery.  When we first have an experience with the Lord, we marvel and ask ourselves "What is it?"  When we see the Lord work in more profound ways in our midst, we still say, in our messiah we have spiritual nourishment for our souls that we have neither earned nor deserved.  He sustains us each day when we rise early and seek Him for what we need each day, and He will continue to sustain us until the day when He raptures His faithful church from this spiritual wilderness and brings us into the promised land of Heaven.