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As we have begun to track our dependence on God through The Story, we have made the following observations:

• As Christians, we tend to be ok with the idea of dependence in theory, but practically manifest an ongoing desire to live independently of God. This is most evident in the area of provision and protection. The fact that we see money as the most immediate path to provision and protection suggests that it, not God, may be the true source of our confidence.
• In the stories of Adam and Noah, we see God revealed as the One who Provides for and Protects those He has chosen.
• In Israel’s wilderness wanderings, God used manna to teach Israel that man is not kept alive by food, but by the active and intentional will of God. The manna was for testing and humbling Israel, so that when He brought them into the land where they would prosper, they would remember that it was God who gave them the power to make wealth. Israel’s ongoing recognition of this was to be expressed in their continued worship of, and obedience to, Yahweh. The worship of other gods would be proof that they forgot this lesson. Thus, their entire relationship with God rested in the recognition that their minute-by-minute existence was a result of His active provision and protection.

But the lesson doesn’t end with the 40 years in the wilderness. How were the succeeding generations to remember this truth?

To answer this, let’s take another look at Exodus 16:22-30 and the lesson of the manna.

“Now on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, then he said to them, “This is what the LORD meant: Tomorrow is a sabbath observance, a holy sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning.” So they put it aside until morning, as Moses had ordered, and it did not become foul nor was there any worm in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. “Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the sabbath, there will be none.” 

It came about on the seventh day that some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. Then the LORD said to Moses, “How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My instructions? “See, the LORD has given you the sabbath; therefore He gives you bread for two days on the sixth day. Remain every man in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.”

(Exodus 16:22–30 NAS95)

To review, God gave manna to Israel to vividly demonstrate that He was their Provider. In order to teach them to rely on Him, not the manna, He caused any left-over manna to spoil overnight, so that they would have to trust Him each day for the provision for that day. However, on Friday, they were to gather enough for two days – Friday and Saturday. On Fridays, what they gathered would not spoil overnight. It would last through Saturday. Note the reason for this – Saturday was to be a Sabbath – a day of rest.

If you have been around church much, the concept of the Sabbath is probably something that you have been very accustomed to, without really understanding where and how it came into the story.  It is easy to just assume that it was always there, and that God somehow took pleasure in our practice of it, although many of us fear that maybe we should still be keeping the Sabbath today.  

So, how does it fit into the story, and why is it important?

Later, Yahweh will elaborate on the details, but here at its introduction, we see that the Sabbath is about resting totally in God’s provision.

Again, it is important to pause and consider what God did in using the manna to introduce the Sabbath. If He had simply introduced the Sabbath as a “rule” to be followed, Israel would have likely done what they tended to do with all of the other aspects of the Law, selectively follow it as it suited them, if they followed it at all. But recall the situation in which God introduces it. They are in the wilderness, in fear of starving to death. There are no other options for them. The only thing to eat was the manna God provided. Any manna they tried to keep spoiled overnight. They couldn’t store it up. They had to trust Him daily. But their focus had to be on Him, not the manna. Which meant that they had to follow His instructions and gather enough on Friday to get them through Saturday. On Saturday, they did not have any choice but to rest. There were no other options. They had to observe the Sabbath. For 40 years God used the manna to clearly demonstrate that He, and He alone, was Israel’s Provider. Once they got into the Land, the manna stopped (Joshua 5:12), but the observance of the Sabbath continued, intended to be a recognition and observance of the fact that Yahweh was Israel’s Provider and Source of all that they had.

However, the concept of the Sabbath was much bigger than just resting one day a week. In the giving of the Law, Yahweh detailed all of the instances in which Israel was to rest in Him (Leviticus 23-25). Although we are most familiar with the Sabbath day, we must note that the Sabbath concept also involved a Sabbath year, every seventh year, and then at the end of seven groups of seven years (every 49 years) there was to be an additional sabbath, the Year of Jubilee.

Just as on the Sabbath Day, the Sabbath Year was to be a time of rest. In the case of the Sabbath Year, the focus was on the Land, and letting it rest, but the effect was that Israel would have to trust Yahweh’s provision for the entire year. In this year, they were not to plant any crops, prune their vineyards, or even harvest any crops that came up as a result of seed that had been dropped in the fields from previous years. In addition to these things, in the Year of Jubilee, everyone who had sold themselves into servitude were released, and all land was returned to its original owners. In giving the instructions regarding the Sabbath Year and Year of Jubilee, Yahweh specifically addresses the concern of how they are to take a so much time off from farming and still survive:

“‘You shall thus observe My statutes and keep My judgments, so as to carry them out, that you may live securely on the land. ‘Then the land will yield its produce, so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it. ‘But if you say, “What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sow or gather in our crops?” then I will so order My blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the crop for three years. ‘When you are sowing the eighth year, you can still eat old things from the crop, eating the old until the ninth year when its crop comes in.”

(Leviticus 25:18–22 NAS95)

Just as Israel had to learn to trust Yahweh to make the manna of the 6^th day last through the 7^th day, so they were to trust Him to make the produce of the 6^th year’s crop last through the Sabbath and the Year of Jubilee.

So, we see that the system of Sabbaths was to be a perpetual reminder of the lesson of the manna. At the core of Israel’s relationship with Yahweh, it was His intention that they recognize Him exclusively as their Provider and Protecter. This recognition was to manifest itself in their worship of Him and Him alone.

Next week, we will look at how well Israel grasped The Lesson of the Manna and The Sabbaths.

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