Archive for the Category ◊ Old Testament ◊

05 Sep 2023 Exodus (Program #40)

Exodus (Program #40) – The Living Water Out of the Smitten Rock (1)

When the children of Israel were in bondage, they cried out and Jehovah God heard their cry and rescued them.  When they were hungry, He heard their cry and sent them manna, bread from heaven.  Exodus 17 shows us the story of God providing  another necessity of life; water, to sustain and satisfy.  Stay with us as we enjoy another marvelous view of our Savior God taking care of His people on today’s life study of the Bible.

We return to Moses and the children of Israel.  This time murmuring to God and murmuring to Moses because of their thirst.

We come to the rock that was sovereignly waiting for the children of Israel.  The Lord led them to this place to another great miracle that has very much to do with, as we are going to find out, our own experience.  Let’s read this portion that we are going to be talking about for several programs that are coming up in the days immediately ahead. more…

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04 Sep 2023 Exodus (Program #39)

Exodus (Program #39) -The Heavenly Diet—Manna (5)

When Moses was leading the children of Israel through the wilderness, what they have to eat became a major concern.  To sustain and nourish them, God provided a mysterious food called manna.  These small round wafers appear on the ground every morning and this was their sole diet for 40 years. 1600 years later, God brings manna back to His people in the book of Revelation.  But this, rather than being out in the open as it was in Exodus, is hidden in a golden pot, within the Ark, in the Holy of Holies.  What is this hidden manna?

We have seen a lot by now  regarding eating Christ as our manna.  We are talking today about manna  in little different aspect.  What is the hidden manna and where do we see it in Scripture?

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03 Sep 2023 Exodus (Program #38)

Exodus (Program #38) -The Heavenly Diet—Manna (4)

After the exodus out of Egypt, God’s people needed food.  In His sovereignty, He provided for them with manna, daily bread come down from heaven to be their supply.  But after they begin eating this manna, He commanded that they take a small portion and place it in a pot to be kept perpetually in the Ark of the Tabernacle.  This hidden manna shows up again in the New Testament book of Hebrews and Revelation.  What is all this mean for us?  There is a word for us in the living word of God on today’s life study of the Bible.

We are talking about manna today and the hidden manna and the new diet that God had in mind for His people.  We have been looking at the characteristics of this manna that Jehovah had provided for His people as they were journeying through the wilderness.  But today we come to the deeper aspect, the hidden manna.

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02 Sep 2023 Exodus (Program #37)

Exodus (Program #37) -The Heavenly Diet—Manna (3)

The food that man eats is the focus of the Bible from the first pages of Genesis to the final pages of Revelation.  Man’s eating represents what he takes into his being.  Manna, the heavenly bread given by the Lord for His people in Exodus is one of the Bible’s meaningful types of our Lord Jesus.  A careful consideration of the details and characteristics of manna can open up a great insight and appreciation of Christ.

The last couple of days we’ve been looking at the characteristics or details that are given in Scripture related to manna.  Yesterday in particularly we saw 3 items that first it came from heaven, second it came with the dew of the morning and third it came every morning.

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01 Sep 2023 Exodus (Program #36)

Exodus (Program #36) -The Heavenly Diet—Manna (2)

Manna was the food that God gave to the children of Israel to eat during their 40 year journey in the wilderness.  We know that it was small and white and round, but beyond that description we don’t know much else.  In another word, it was mysterious. Though numerous words have been written about the Lord Jesus Christ, He also remained in may ways a mystery.  It’s hard to say exactly what or who He is.  Yet like the manna of old, He can surely feed and sustain His people.

We began this topic of manna a few days ago and Witness Lee put chapter 16 of Exodus on the same plain as chapter 14 and chapter 12 where the Passover feast and the crossing of the Red Sea are all depicted.  It is quite remarkable that this chapter has the same kind of stature.  Manna is mentioned in two places at least in Scripture in the Old Testament; this portion in Exodus 16 that we’ve been looking at and also comes up in Numbers chapter 11.  more…

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31 Aug 2023 Exodus (Program #35)

Exodus (Program #35) -The Heavenly Diet—Manna (1)

Listen to these brief words from Exodus chapter 16, “in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.  And when the layer of dew lifted, there upon the surface of the wilderness were fine round flakes, fine as the frost on the earth.  And when the children of Israel saw it, they said to one another, What is it? For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, It is the bread which Jehovah has given you to eat.”  It is easy to see why the people ask “what is it?”  They needed what we need; vision and revelation as we touch the matter of manna, the unique food for God’s people.  In this broadcast will be a tremendous help to us in our Christian journey to fulfill God’s eternal purpose.

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30 Aug 2023 Exodus (Program #34)

Exodus (Program #34) – The Change of Diet

Exodus presents a clear picture of God’s salvation, a picture that is not found in any other book of the Bible, including the great epistles of the New Testament.  For the fulfillment of His purpose, God does not want His redeemed people to be anything or do anything.  He wants to be everything to us and to do everything for us, which makes us nobodies.  Are you willing to be a nobody in God’s purpose?

This book has been described as a picture book and it real is a picture book displaying graphically so many items in God’s economy to us even as New Testament believers.  We have the children of Israel who had been brought out from their captivity and have seen so many miracles done.  But now we are at a point in time when their diet is threatened.  Here is how they responded in chapter 16:3 “And the children of Israel said to them, If only we had died by the hand of Jehovah in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole congregation with hunger.”…

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29 Aug 2023 Exodus (Program #33)

Exodus (Program #33) – God’s Dealing with the Flesh of His People

Chapter 16 of Exodus is a chapter in one sense a miracle, two great miracles in fact; first the Lord sent thousands and thousands of quail in the wind to His people for a meal of flesh.  The other miracle is that on the following day, they people awoke to find the ground covered with small round wafers called Manna, bread from heaven that would miraculous feed His people for 40 years.  One way to study this passage is to examine the miracles that God wrought and marvel at His great power to do such miracles.  Another way is to see the divine revelation of the Scriptures in the way of life.

For 400 years, God’s people lived in Egypt and understandably they really became Egyptians in their constitution and particularly in their diet.   But once God brought them out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, He was very definite they could not continue the Egyptian life.  What was His wise way reconstituting them?

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28 Aug 2023 Exodus (Program #32)

Exodus (Program #32) – The Experience of Manna

In Exodus the Lord performed miracle after miracle in rescuing His people Israel.  Once through the Red Sea, He continue to bless them with rich experiences such as quenching their deepest thirst.  Yet despise His merciful treatment, they murmur bitterly at the first sign of difficulty.  How can we explain such pitiful behavior by the people of God?  Well, the same way we can explain much of our own shameful behavior before the Lord.  Stay with us as we get another view of our savior God on today’s life study of the Bible.

We see something very remarkable in this journey with the children of Israel in the wilderness.  They had a remarkable series of experiences with the Lord; His miraculous deliverance of them through the Passover and going through the Red Sea, and this marvelous experience of the bitter water at Marah and finally the flowing stream and the growing palm at Elim.  Yet after all of these, there is a very ugly, an ugly display of their dissatisfaction toward the Lord.  more…

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27 Aug 2023 Exodus (Program #31)

Exodus (Program #31) – Israel’s Experience at Elim

When God led the children of Israel out of Egypt in the book of Exodus, their destination was ultimately northward to Canaan, the good land and the place of fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose.  But He took them first far to the south, to the shores of the Red Sea, then after crossing the Red Sea, He led them south again to a place call Marah and then to Elim.  Surely this did not match their expectations.  God’s ways are not our ways.  Is He leading you south when you thought that you should be headed north?

The background of this message today is one that most of us can relate to, at least to some extend.  The children of Israel had just come through the miraculous events related to their exit out of Egypt; the Red Sea, the Passover, all the miracles in God’s dealing with Pharaoh.  By now they must have been expecting a swift and direct journey to the promised land, the Good Land.  more…

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