Steven Furtick - Expiration Date (01/12/2020)
In John 6:48-50 Jesus declares Himself the bread of life, contrasting the temporary manna that couldn't prevent death with the eternal provision He offers. The sermon "Expiration Date" urges believers to trust God's fresh, daily provision right here and now instead of clinging to past memories or future worries, because here is the bread—Jesus Himself—who sustains forever.
Jesus Declares: I Am the Bread of Life
I want to share with you from John chapter 6, verses 48 through 50, and if you want to join me on the app that you have on your phone or if you brought a physical copy of God's Word, if not, we'll just put it on the screen there for you. I'll be sharing from the NIV 1984 version. No, I'm serious. There are different ones, so you'll see a few of the words are different. That was not a joke, but they change it. They revise it. And so this may be a few words different than what you're reading and what I normally preach from, but listen to this.
Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I like that so much. When I read it, I'm going to go back for seconds. Let's go back. Let's go back. Let's read the whole thing again. Amen. That's what you came for anyway, is the Word of God. That thing came alive to me.
The Verse That Came Alive
Last night I was preaching it. I was talking to my pastor, Pastor Craig Groeschel, after church on the porch. I started pacing all around the backyard, telling him how these verses just had been coming alive for me. I was preaching to him on the phone, whether he wanted to hear it or not. I think he put me on speaker or mute or something like that when he cut the grass. But it said, I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread. Somebody say, here is the bread. Here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.
I want to use just as a title today, Expiration Date. And touch somebody next to you and say, check the label. Amen. You may be seated.
Knowing Someone... Until You Don't
It's so crazy how you can think you really know somebody for years, and then they just do something that makes you question everything you thought you knew about them. You sound like you're going through something. Are they sitting next to you? I mean, I can tell you Holly's favorite movies, her favorite color, her favorite stores, her favorite brands within her favorite stores. I know a lot of things about that woman. I know her favorite books, audiobooks. I know her favorite book club that she's having this week, what she's reading for—I went to her book club this week—but even sometimes in the context of a marriage where you really think you know somebody, they would just shock you.
The other day she horrified me because I thought I knew her so well until I went in the refrigerator and I pulled out some cheese. I was just going to eat a few blocks of cheddar from my low-carb lifestyle just for a snack. I looked at it and it said it was expired three months ago. Fridge was so full, you know, but I saw that. As I'm going to throw it away, she stands in front of me and blocks me from putting the cheese. She said, oh, oh, you have to smell it first. And I'm like, no, babe, I don't. It says right here on the label it's expired. And she said, oh, I feed you expired food all the time. And she said, the expiration date is just a suggestion. I'm like, the devil is alive. Smell it, you know. You think you know somebody. Turns out they're poisoning you trying to collect that life insurance. I want to see about that term life insurance.
But, you know, it really should be in your relationship with God that you think you know Him, you think you know what He's like, and just as your life experiences accumulate and just the ways that you witness Him working in your life that you didn't expect and that you didn't predict and that did not fit your preconceived notions of what God was like 18 years ago. He doesn't change, but the way that we see Him should and must. It must expand. It must evolve to include the parts of who He is that we didn't know about in our arrogance and our pride, because as we become broken by the trials of life, it leaves spaces for God to get in, and He couldn't get in when we were all sealed uptight by thinking we were perfect.
Progressive Revelation of God's Character
But then when you live a little while… Wave at me in the back. When you live a little while, you get about to that age where you start to say, Well, I thought I saw everything. I thought I knew who was a good Christian and who wasn't. I thought I knew what God would always do and what God was always like, but He was just always surprising them in the person of Jesus Christ as He walked the earth. He was showing them progressively who He was, and He wasn't changing to be something He wasn't. They were just seeing what He had been all along.
That required a sort of rewiring, because if you go off of what they thought in the Old Testament, they saw a lot of wrath and vengeance, because that was the way they saw God through that lens. But as you track through the redemptive history, the God of the Bible is revealed as one who not only is full of love and full of grace, but He is love. He is grace. See, it doesn't say, God has love. God is love. We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He was always full of grace and truth. We just beheld it in the person of Christ. But it's progressive.
And there is a reason that God does not show you everything all at once. It's called mercy. If He showed you the whole thing, you would die. You would give up. You would quit. And you would be so overwhelmed. So, because He is kind and because He is wise, He progressively shows you Himself, and He progressively shows you His purpose for your life. So, you can't figure it out all at once. And if you are a planner, aka control freak, this will stress you out. It stressed the disciples out. He would not tell them everything.
The Miracle That Led to the Declaration
They would show up to preach. You'd be like, hey, I'm going to preach a little bit. In fact, it's worse than that. Okay, John chapter 6. He's like, let's get away. John the Baptist has just been beheaded. Things are going crazy. Let's get away. He didn't tell them there'd be a crowd waiting on the other side. Not because He didn't know, but probably because He knew they wouldn't go with Him if they knew. So, some things God does not show you about what's waiting for you on the other side, because He knows you won't go if He tells you what's there. So, He'll get you there and then show you the reason He came to begin with.
Well, He starts healing people, right? He starts blessing. He starts teaching. It gets late. The disciples… I know you've heard this story before, even if you only went to church once. It's like a Hall of Fame Bible story. 5,000 men, women and children, five loaves of bread, two fish, one little boy who Peter beat up and took his lunch. I put that in. It's a speculation. It's a speculation. Just thinking about how that boy gave his lunch. I have kids. I've never seen them voluntarily give anything to the Lord, or anybody.
But there's this sense in which they were gleaning what they could about the identity of this Christ they chose to follow by the activities they saw Him do. Yet what got confusing was that a lot of times people would get so caught up in what He did that they would miss the point of who He was. So John gives us seven statements in his gospel alone that he collects that start with the name of God that was revealed to Moses at the burning bush. I am. This is the first one. I am the bread of life.
Jesus as Provision, Not Just Provider
And how many are grateful that the first thing that Jesus wanted to be identified with was sustenance, carbohydrates? How many are grateful that the first thing He wanted you to know is, I am not only your provider, I am your provision? If I'm just your provider, then you need what comes from My hand. But if I am your provision, you can trust My heart to know that even if it's not coming your way, everything you need for life and godliness is in Me.
I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. If you can't see your next step, it's all right. I'll give you enough light for the next step that I've called you to take. Not the next 1,500. It is a progressive revelation. I am the gate. That means you come in through Me. You go out through Me. Church is not the gate. Other people are not the gate. They don't get to decide what your life becomes or what it doesn't. I am the gate. I am the good Shepherd. I will lead you through the valley of the shadow of death. It's just a shadow because I am the resurrection and the life. Even the things that have died in your life are subject to resurrection.
I serve notice on dead bones. If the breath of God hits the bones in the valley, they have to rise up and live in the name of the Lord. I am the vine, the true vine. There are imitators. There are substitutes, but they can't sustain you. I am the bread of life.
From Manna to the True Bread
In order to get them to see it, He has to bring them all the way back to their experiences. Many of these experiences happened before they were ever around. In order to get you to see that God is your provider, I want to show you something from Exodus chapter 16 that really speaks to me about how in some seasons of my life I feel like the demand is greater than the supply.
The disciples weren't the first ones that got put in a situation that was too much for them. I'm preaching to people who are looking at too much in an area of your life today, and I believe, if nothing other than the device that is in your pocket, we are living in a time of too much information. They're showing us now, through studies on compassion fatigue, that by knowing everything bad that happens in the world, we are becoming unable to mobilize to do anything about the real things we can affect because we are so overwhelmed with too much. Too much.
The disciples saw the crowds. They said, It's getting late, Jesus. This is John chapter 6. Before He said, I'm the bread of life, this is what led up to that statement. This is the story behind the statement. He wasn't just saying something out of context. He took the bread and multiplied it, and everybody was fed. But before that happened, the disciples' tendency was like the same tendency we have when it's just too much. Send them away. It's just too much. I can't fix it all. It's too much debt financially. I don't even know where to start digging out of this. It's just too much. It's too much on my schedule. It's too much.
And then if the spirit of too much stays on you too long, it'll become the spirit of not enough. And so then you start evaluating your potential on the basis of your experiences. And what God is so good at in moments like these in our lives… If you're in a moment like that in your life, and I know I certainly have been, where you start sending opportunities away because you don't believe you have the resource to meet the need. You can relate with this passage and this statement, I am the bread of life.
The Spirit of "Not Enough"
So recently, and I'm going to share with you Exodus 16 in a minute and I didn't forget, but I started noticing that I was turning down things that I believe God wanted me to do, but it wasn't even because I was too busy to do them. I started to feel like I didn't have enough to give, and it started scaring me that maybe I was going to get out there to try to do it, and I wouldn't have what people expected me to have, so I started to send stuff away that God was trying to bring to me to multiply His provision and to use me, which is what I wanted.
But when you stay in the spirit of too much long enough, it becomes a deep feeling of not enough. I believe I'm looking at people today… I believe it's a cultural epidemic that we have never been in a time where we have felt more deprived and depleted and insufficient to face life's challenges because we are constantly exposed to the world's entire need all at once.
So Jesus says, your fathers ate manna in the wilderness. Last week I talked about the wilderness, and I talked about finding your water in dry places. God will always put a rock where water will come from, even in the driest, most difficult seasons of your life, and how when you're too hungry or too thirsty you become susceptible to substitutes, which is why you can be tempted to turn stones into bread.
The wilderness passage, which Jesus demonstrated by overcoming temptation and the nation of Israel succumbed to the temptation, is mentioned in Exodus 16. Remember that they came through the Red Sea. They had been in Egypt for a long time, suffering under slavery. After they came through the Red Sea, they dwelt in a place called the Wilderness. That wasn't the name of it. It was several stops along the way.
The Disappointment of Deliverance
For a little while after they left Egypt, apparently they had some snack packs. But at the point that the food ran out, they were caught in an interesting situation, just like the disciples in John 6, where we're in a remote place and we don't have enough to do what we need to do.
I want you to look at the Scripture because it's kind of a test that some of you are dealing with right now, the Do You Trust Me Now test. You get so many opportunities in your life to trust God again. Every time you trust Him on a different level, in a different scenario, you see a different dimension of who He is and what He can do.
Look at this in Exodus chapter 16, if I can ever find it. Here it says, Verse 1, the whole Israelite community set out from Elam and came to the desert of Sin, which is between Elam and Sinai, on the 15th day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt, where they had been for 430 years in Egypt, where they initially went to escape a famine that was in Canaan. But then in Egypt, the place where they went to escape the famine became the place where they were enslaved by Pharaoh. We dealt with that last week. Watch the message. It's free on YouTube, and you have no excuse not to watch it. Download the podcast, download the app, and watch the message.
But where it brings us to is they're out of Egypt, but they're not into Canaan. They are in a place where they need God's provision, but they have not fully accessed the promise of God. I call this the disappointment of deliverance. It's when God brings you out of something, but not all the way into anything either. It's when you raise your hand to receive Christ, and you still have issues with your anger. It's when you believe God touched you during worship, and you still have bursitis in your right knee when you go home.
It's when God makes you a promise and speaks a word concerning your daughter, and her attitude gets worse on Tuesday than it was last Wednesday. It's the disappointment of deliverance when He brings you out, brings you through, brings you forward, but now they're in a stuck place, really, to wonder, what will we eat? And they don't pass the test, because instead of gratitude for the grace of God that brought them this far, they begin to grumble about what's ahead.
Every Season Has an Expiration Date
This is in Bible times. We don't deal with this anymore. You know, the Bible is outdated. Times have changed. But they came out of Egypt when the expiration date on their season of suffering had reached the ears of heaven. Everything you go through in your life, everything that even the Enemy does in your life, anything you do to yourself in your life, it can't go on forever.
And here's why it can't go on forever. Because you are not in charge of the calendar of events of the purpose of God in the world. So even if the Devil is messing with you in your mind, even if the Devil is messing with you in your family, he can't just mess with you for as long as he wants, as much as he wants. God had to give the Devil permission to hurt Job. He didn't just get to do what he wanted to do for as long as he wanted to do it. God said, Now that's enough. Somebody shout, That's enough.
When God saw His people struggling in Egyptian slavery at a certain point, He said, Now that's enough. When He spoke to Moses, He said, I've seen My people mistreated, and I see how their backs are breaking with heavy labor, and I hear how they're crying out to Me, and that's enough. And I came down to deliver My people and bring them out of Egypt.
Every season of suffering, every season of struggle has an expiration date. God is sovereign. God is in charge. The Enemy doesn't run my life.
Here Is the Bread—Right Now
So when that ended and a month passed, they've come through the Red Sea, but now they need something to eat. This is why I thought Jesus brought it up to say, I am the bread of life. Just like I did it then, watch this. Just like I did it in that period of time. Just like I took care of you before. Just like you didn't know how before and I did somehow, I am. Just like I was, I am. And just like I am, I will be.
I haven't been giving y'all any love this whole sermon, but this is for this section, fifth row, this section. I am, I was, I will be. I am, I was, how you know I am, because I was. How do you know I will be, because I am, how you know I am, because I was. There is a testimony in your life to the faithfulness of God that will enable you to trust Him in this season. You just get to do it over and over again.
If you trust God with one test, you get to trust Him with another. Algebra two is your reward for passing Algebra one. I don't like that. You don't get to graduate. You just get to trust Him again.
I will never forget what Holly said to me when Elijah was born. She goes, oh, you don't get to quit worrying about your kid after you have them, because you know, we're rubbing oil on her stomach and feeding her avocados or whatever. You know, everything prenatal, what to expect when you're expecting. By the way, that book sucks. I want my money back.
But it put an expectation on us. It is the disappointment of delivery. Oh, I had the kid. Now I have to check on them all through the night. I'm worried when they're crying. Man, I'm worried when they're quiet. I'm worried. And now, not only do I get to trust the life of my child to God when they're a toddler…. Because that's scary. You run around the house protecting them from everything. You know? Well, the first one. I mean, we have three by the third one to figure it out. But the first one, you know, you plug in electrical sockets with plastic things. Then you get to trust God when they're a teenager. And they don't make one of those plastic plugs for their friends.
So now it's like, hey, trust Me now. Trust Me deeper. Trust Me broader. Trust Me greater. I am, because I was, and I will be too. It's the kind of God that I am. The bread of life. Here is the bread.
What Keeps Us from Trusting God Today
And I'm going to show you two things that keep us from trusting Him now. Two things that keep us from trusting now. They're in the passage. It says, in the desert, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. I wanted it to say they were grateful to Moses and Aaron because of all the courage it took to lead us out of Egypt and stand before Pharaoh and last through the duration of the ten plagues. But no, people tend to forget. People tend to focus on what's missing. And then they tend to have a selective memory.
Because sometimes what keeps you… You want to take notes. This is the only chance you have the whole sermon. What keeps you from trusting God in the present is your attachment to the past. It's like when you've been in Egypt too long and you've been gone for a month and you start remembering. It's a selective memory.
I don't mean to start any marital fights here, but sometimes, even in a relationship, it can be a selective memory of what I said and what you said. Well, that's what's happening here. It's a selective memory. It's like… Watch this. Watch what they say. In the desert they grumbled. Verse 3. The Israelites said to them, If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt… Remember, they were crying God to take them out of Egypt. But now they're saying it would have been better to die there, because there… Is the verse on the screen? Shout the word there. There we sat around pots of meat.
Yeah, when they weren't beating you with whips and working you 20 hours a day. Okay, so fine. Egypt had a meal plan, but it was miserable. But you forget that, and you choose familiarity over freedom. Wish we were back in Egypt. Big old pots of protein. The golden corral meat section of Egypt. Pots of meat. All the food we wanted. A buffet. $7.99. I'm talking about Egypt now. They gave you mud and made you make bricks without enough straw, but you don't remember what they didn't give you in Egypt.
You brought us out into this desert to starve the entire assembly to death. The people you try to help the most will often turn on you, but that's a life advice. That's not what the message is today.
God's Response: Daily Bread and Trust
The Lord said to Moses, I'm going to kill them all. Watch this. This is how you start out thinking God is. This is for most of us. I'm preaching in the South, the United States of America. We have churches all over. Usually, your first concept of God, if you're introduced through a religious system, is that God is… Do you know what I always pictured? Triton on The Little Mermaid, like just zapping stuff. Sometimes He zaps you and gives you healing, but sometimes He zaps you and gives you diarrhea. I'd be scared of God, like, oh, I don't want to say that. He might buzz me.
And you start thinking of God like that. But then Jesus comes along and He says, no, no, no. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. I am the bread of life. The first thing you want to be identified with is, I provide for you. I am the bread of life. You start off thinking of God in this way, but then over time you begin to see that grace is really that good.
Yet, if your attachment to the past in the way you saw God is somebody who was just to punish you and keep you in line and make sure you have no fun while you're here on this planet… If that is your view of God, it is very difficult for you to progress in it until you need the grace of God, until you get in a season where you can't do enough, and you get to a thing in your life that you can't overcome, and you get to a place in your life where you can't clean it up, and you make a mess that's so big that you end up in the pig pen, and you're wanting to eat what the pigs ate, and all you can do is come back home to your father, and then you see Him on the road and you're like, oh, the whole time I was away from you, this is what you were like. You were waiting for me the whole time, but you don't see that all at once. It's progressive.
And so He gives them grace for their grumbling. They're not even praying correctly, and He still gives them what they need. I will rain down bread from heaven for you. This is how you're going to deal with it, okay? God says, I'm going to meet your needs. I'm going to provide for you. Here's how you're to respond to My provision.
Now listen closely. This is important. This applies to us. It's not exactly the same for us because this is a physical manifestation. Most of the ways we see God's provision through the Spirit of Christ is through the spiritual. The tangible is important, but it's nothing compared to the spiritual. So this is how God provides peace and joy and contentment and faith and hope and all of the stuff that really matters, the stuff that doesn't perish, the stuff that doesn't get moldy, the stuff that doesn't get old, the stuff that you don't have to throw out after three months, the stuff that lasts.
He said, I'm going to give you bread from heaven. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. Somebody say, enough. It's in the passage. He said, I want you to take enough for that day. In this way, I will test them to see whether they will follow My instructions. I want to test them to see if they trust Me. I want to know, do you trust Me? Do you trust Me enough to believe that I am enough? And do you believe that if I am enough, so are you? Because if I'm in you and I'm your God and I made you and I put you in a situation, I would never put you in a situation that I would not make you enough for.
The Test of Daily Dependence
So He said, on the sixth day, as they get ready for the Sabbath, I want them to prepare what they bring in, and that will be twice as much as they gather on the other days so they don't have to work on the Sabbath. But it was kind of a system that they set up where it was like, get what you need for today. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us next week our daily bread. Give us last month our daily bread. You see how it can be two things?
It can be your attachment to the past where you remember what you used to eat in Egypt, or it can be your fixation on the future. That's the second thing that keeps you from receiving God's provision right now. Wish we were in Egypt. There we had. See it? And then when the Messiah comes, then He will. Go. Then. There. Back there. Then. One day. Back there. Then. The provision is never then or there. It is here and now. The provision is always here. The bread is always here.
What makes the bread enough is who touches it. What made the bread multiply was when they put it in Jesus' hands. See, this is the principle. It is your proximity to the presence of Christ that becomes your provision for the challenges that you face. If you stay close to Him, even if it's in a wilderness, even if it's through a mistake, even if it's insurmountable, even if you don't know how, if you will stay close to Christ, your bread will be blessed, and it will be enough, and it will go around, and there will be 12 basketfuls of leftovers.
He is the bread of life. When they set up the tabernacle, they made a table with acacia wood, overlaid it with gold. The acacia wood is humanity. The gold is divinity. They put 12 loaves of bread, six stacks on each side to represent the covenant that God had with His people. 12 loaves, 12 tribes, 12 disciples, 12 basketfuls of leftovers. But they were not in the Holy of Holies. They were only close to it. They were right outside that place. It was called the table of showbread, or watch this. The bread of the presence.
When it came into the temple, it was bread, but when it got close enough to the Holy of Holies where the presence of God was, it became blessed. The closer it got to the presence of God, the less common it became. When it came in, it was just a loaf, but when it got close enough to the Holy of Holies where the presence of Yahweh is… See, I'm trying to say you don't have to be enough. All you have to do is get close enough to the one who is more than enough, and I declare my God shall supply all your needs, not one or two, not one day in the sweet by and by. Here now is the bread of life.
Recognizing God's Provision Today
Where's my organ? Here now. Here is the bread. That's what Jesus said. Here is the bread. Somebody shout, here is the bread. It's not in tomorrow. You cannot fight tomorrow's battles with today's strength. You are wasting today's grace trying to fight tomorrow's battles.
When we were talking about something yesterday, she said, Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. She said, I'm getting maggots in my manna. I'm going to show you this. You're like, Whoa, that's a weird thing. This is how y'all talk? Is pillow talk around the Furtick House? Matter of fact, it is.
When I preached it, the first thing is, Oh man, the past. I used to have so many friends, but now they've all… You just have to leave Egypt. God can bring you new friends. God might bring you some friends this time, and they pick up the check. It might be an update. I don't know. But when in the wilderness, you have to be able to trust and not be too attached to the past. And please don't quit your job over this message. I hate it. Everybody always hears what they want to hear.
I'm talking about the paradigm of the past, Egypt thinking, where they hand you your food. God's like, Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to rain down bread from heaven. Then it happened. He told Moses He was going to do it. Then He did it. First, He gave them meat in the evening to remind them of Egypt. He's like, I'm not doing that anymore. From now on, for the next 39 years, this is what you're going to eat.
When God switches the form of provision, your first instinct is going to be to resist it, because you won't recognize it. When God starts doing new things in your life, at first it will just look like trouble, but you won't recognize it's really training. Send the crowds away. You can't deal with this. This is unfamiliar.
They wake up. Let's go to verse 13. I think that would be enough. The evening quail came and covered the camp. In the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. Bring me my box while I read this next verse. When the dew was gone, the Bible said, Thin flakes like frost on the ground and appeared on the desert floor.
Now, I never saw manna, but it said, Thin flakes like frost. I was just picturing the Bible. I never ate manna, but it said, Thin flakes like frost. Touch somebody, say, They're green. But he put it, Can you do it on the camera? And the people were like, Huh? Never saw this before. I mean, we know how to eat in Egypt. In Egypt we had a meal card.
What Is It? The Challenge of New Provision
But sometimes you don't know how to receive something that God has given you, because when you've never seen it, it's hard to receive it. Do you ever wonder why you sabotage yourself sometimes when you're starting to succeed at something? Amen. Because when frustration and failure is familiar to you, you will recreate it without even knowing that you're doing it.
Sometimes we surround ourselves with people who treat us crappy, because being treated crappy to us is emotionally familiar. So, when somebody treats you nice, you're suspicious. What do they want? Like for me, I have a hard time believing that people could just like me. It's hard for me to believe, because I think at some point during my life I was like, Well, if I preach good, or if I can generate a job, I have all these staff members that I'm responsible for.
So, there's this feeling like you start thinking you're the bread after a while, and you start thinking if it wasn't for what you did. So then when somebody tries to really love you for who you are, you're like, Hold on now. This is too close.
Watch this. When the bread came from heaven that God was trying to provide, and it rained down and covered the ground, look at the Israelites' reaction. When they saw it, verse 15, they said to each other, What is it? They did not know what it was, because they never saw it before.
Some of us are resisting the resource that God is sending into our life at this moment, because we do not recognize it as His presence and His provision. Some of us right now have what we have been asking God for in a form that we don't recognize that is before us.
The trick is this. God will give you this day your daily bread. Not there in Egypt. Not then, when Messiah comes. But here is the bread. I am the bread. The bread of presence is this. God, give me the grace in this moment. Now, if I try to reach back to my past mistake, I'll miss it. If I try to reach forward into my future and fixate on that and try to plan everything out, I will miss it. But here is the bread.
That's the word. Here is the bread. Somebody say, here is the bread. Look at the person next to you and say, here is the bread.
So you're pointing to the provision and you're going, what is it? In fact, the reason they called it manna is because in Hebrew, manna is an ambidextrous term. It means, what is it? And it also means what it is. So they didn't know what to call it because it was new.
When God does something new in your life, at first you don't know what to call it or how to receive it. And what keeps you from receiving it sometimes is your past and sometimes is your future. So they named it manna. What is it? What it is. What is it? I don't know. It's what it is. But I know one thing. I know I am.
So whatever it is, I am is in the middle of it working it out for a purpose that is beyond my human perspective. Here is the bread. Here is the bread.
Gathering Enough—Not Too Much, Not Too Little
And then some of them thought they were smarter than God. You know, because the Bible says when they saw it, even though they didn't recognize it, Moses said to them, he explained, it is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. And this is what the Lord has commanded. Each one is to gather as much as he needs. It's the power of enough.
Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer, half a gallon, for each person you have in your tent. And the Israelites did as they were told. Give us this day our daily bread. Some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much. I like that. It's not too much. It's enough.
I am the bread of life. It didn't have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. It was enough. It's enough. Somebody say, it's enough. Make the confession. Say, it's enough.
And just all over every area of your life where the enemy has been speaking too much or not enough, I want you to look at whatever God put in the ground in the form of His grace and His provision in this season of your life and declare, it's enough. He's enough. I'm enough. It's enough. He's enough. I'm enough.
Give the lesson to your neighbor. It's enough. He's enough. I'm enough. Now, the reason I'm enough is because He's enough. And so, if He's enough and I'm enough, it's enough. It's not too much. It's not too little. It's enough.
Don't Store Up—Trust for Tomorrow
But some of the Israelites, some of them… Look at verse 19. No one is to keep any of it till morning. Some of them paid no attention to Moses. They kept a part of it until the morning. But watch what happened in the morning. In the morning, because they did not trust God to give them enough for today, the manna had maggots, because God's presence and provision is always in today. Amen.
Your stress, your ulcer, your sleeplessness, much of it is because you are letting maggots get in your manna. See, here's what happens. So, Bob turns to Judy and he's like, Moses said there'd be more in the morning, but just in case, put a little of that right there in your pocketbook. And just in case, you know, we can't eat all of it today because we've never seen this before. And it's hard to trust that there will be enough for tomorrow, but that's exactly what faith is.
You see it? That's exactly what faith is. It is to deal with today and to trust for tomorrow. Strength for today. Bright hope for tomorrow. Blessings all mine with 10,000 beside. Great is Thy faithfulness. Great is Thy faithfulness. Morning by morning.
When I wake up tomorrow, there will be manna. When I wake up Tuesday, there will be more. When I wake up Wednesday, in my weakness He is strong. When I wake up Thursday, He'll see me through. When I wake up Friday, He's fighting for me and I can rest on the Sabbath because He is the bread.
And I break the spirit of not enough off of your life today. I break the spirit of I can't and I'll never. I break that spirit in the name of Jesus. Here is the bread. He is the bread.
He has given you right now an opportunity to trust Him on the next level and to discover who He is all over again. He doesn't change. It's just the more you experience where you're in a desert place. When Lazarus dies and you wonder why would God let something die that you love, but then you see Him show up and call Lazarus out of the tomb because you already knew that He was a healer, but now He wants to show you I am resurrection, you understand that everything in your life is designed to show you not only who God is, but who you are in Him.
The Bread of the Presence—Here for You Now
Now, the reason He lets us need things is so that we don't get confused about where our help comes from. The reason He wants you to get it every morning. All those little plans you stay up making, all those little things you scribble down about what if and what this and what that. The stuff that's going to screw up your life is going to hit you from behind anyway. Pray about it. Praise God through it.
You can't keep the manna until tomorrow. You can't eat in Egypt anymore. This is a new place. This is a new season. God has given you what you need for the season you're in. Here is the bread. Here is the bread.
In every moment, I'm looking for it. Oh, here is the bread. There I go again, going out here thinking about… Here is the bread. Here I am again, replaying five minutes ago, five months ago… No, no, no. Here is the bread.
When I put this message online, I'm going to call it expiration date, but you know the real message is here is the bread. Stop trying to eat stuff that has gone sour. Stop thinking in ways that you have outgrown. Stop coming down to a level of who you used to be. Here is the bread, the bread of the presence.
Stand up. I want to pray for people. Oh, I want you to get this message. I don't want you to chew it. I want you to swallow it, digest it, get it deep down so it can strengthen you. Here is the bread. The presence of God is everywhere. It just takes you a while to recognize it. He has always been there. You're just starting to see Him now.
You start to see that He was there in the heartbreak. He was there in your childhood. You see Him now. He was always there. Remember when they walked down the Emmaus Road? They were like, Hey, who are you? He didn't tell them. He was resurrected from the dead. Luke 24. It says they were kept from recognizing Him until He did something with the bread. When He broke it, they saw Him.
He is what He held, and He is what you need. He doesn't just have what you need. He is what you need. He is that thing inside of you that won't let you give up. He is that invisible, that wonderful, nameless grace that turns horrible things like the cross into a triumph called resurrection. He is the bread, and He is providing for you right now, but you might not see it because it looks different than what you're used to.
Get what you need. Gather it. Gather it from the people that are in your life. I know sometimes you get lonely. I do too. Oh, you pastor. You have so many people. Come on. It's different to talk to people than be with people. Everybody gets lonely, but here is the bread. Here is the bread.
Father, to the best of my ability, I broke the bread today. You are the bread. I'm not. You know what they need. I don't. Holy Spirit, I pray that You would do that supernatural thing that I've seen You do so many times I lost count, where You take what was said and make it exactly what each person needed to hear.
Whatever continent they streamed from, whatever campus they drove to, make it the bread they need for this season. So, if it means they're dealing with new pressure for success, be the bread. If it means they're dealing with failure or rejection, be the bread. Feed them what they need for the season they're in.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Sacred be Your name. Holy is Your name. As our bread gets closer and closer to Your presence, may it multiply. May it multiply in Your hands. Give us this day, this moment, this second, this breath, our daily bread.