Manna Every Morning [Part 2]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. There's a big difference between remembering God's grace in the past and trying to rely on God's grace in the past.

Have you ever noticed that? That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series From Now On, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now, a copy of Pastor Alan's book, Lover of My Soul. This can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries.

As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Allen Wright. You work, you work all day, take a little short lunch break, and then you're exhausted, you wrap up your workday, have a little supper, maybe watch a TV show and fall in the bed exhausted, and get up the next day and do the whole thing over again. How do you get out of that? And I said, here's how you get out of it. You do that every day for the next 45 years, and then you retire, and that's how you're out of it.

The fact of the matter is, it's a beautiful thing God made us to be able to work. He gives a gift, so like he'll give Abby. Here is this gift, right? It's the thing she dreamed of, this job. It's really her dream job.

Here's this wonderful gift. Now, what do you get to do? You get to work it. It's sort of like work out your salvation.

Not work for it, but take it and work it out. And when God gives something to you, you actively receive it, right? Our dear, dear Elder Bill Rice had gone home to Jesus last weekend, and I wasn't ready for it. He's been a long, long time friend, and he has done so much more for me than I could have ever done for him as his pastor, his remarkable man. And he spoke into my life. And one time many years ago, maybe as much as 20 years ago, we were talking about getting revelation from God and preparing sermons. And he just spoke this to me, just like prophetically, and it just went right into me. He said, Alan, revelation doesn't have to always take a long time.

It was in the middle of one of those weeks where it was like, I don't have time to just labor and labor over a text. And I just received that, that that is right, that when God shows you a truth, it's not like you have to work for it. It's something he gives you. And I feel like that's what happens with me in the word of God. And so I expect him to show me what it is that will enthrall me, encourage me, and let me then share it with you. But that said, that revelation is a gift and you don't labor for it doesn't mean that I don't put my nose in the Bible and into the commentaries and into worship and into prayer and into conversation because it's in the gathering that the revelation comes.

So grace is a gift, but it's a gift that you actively appropriate. That's the nature of manna. So what is this strange story all about?

Well, we're told we're told explicitly what this story is all about. Exodus chapter 16, verse four. This is part of the explanation about why the manna, why manna and why can't you store it up and why can't we're told this?

The Lord said to Moses, behold, I'm about to rain bread from heaven for you and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day. And here's why. That I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not. That this is a test. What does that mean? Does this mean that God is like a drill sergeant who is testing you and if you fail, then he's just ready to pounce with more condemnation? I was remembering this week a hilarious story my nephew Chris told after he had been through 10 weeks of basic combat training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

Ten of the most grueling weeks that a man could ever or woman could ever go through and talking to Chris afterwards about experience. And he said if you disobeyed the rules, it was tough on you. And he said there was one young soldier who we'll call Private Jones who got disciplined a couple of times for various things. One time they came into their barracks at 0400 and a half hour before they normally would get them up banging pots, clanging everything loudly. And they said we're doing an inspection and we're looking for any contraband, anything you're not supposed to have here in the barracks with you.

They started opening up people's lockers and throwing stuff around and overturning mattresses. And they came to Private Jones and they looked at his overturning thing and then someone looked up. One of the officers looked up and saw the flimsy tiles, the acoustical tiles I guess that were above his bed. One of them looked like it was out of place.

So he reached up in there, moved to the side and there clearly were several granola bars like the ones that came from the chow hall. And it was expressly forbidden to bring any food out of chow hall. Needless to say, the entire platoon was now disciplined and hazed because of this one guy's disobedience.

And it were several instances during the 10 weeks. But he made it through, Private Jones did, until the final week. And on the final week as they were leaving chow hall one day and they were making their way to line up in formation, Jones talked to someone else. And the drill sergeant heard him and came over and said, Jones, why do you think that you need to be running your mouth right now? And took his cap off of and he threw it like a Frisbee as far as he could and made Private Jones hit the ground and do a low crawl with his face in the dirt to go get his patrol cap. And as he's crawling along, Chris said he couldn't believe his eyes. As he's crawling out of his cargo pocket, he saw something, a bright colored wrapper. It began slowly coming out of his pocket.

Everybody's watching. It began slowly coming out and it fell out and there it was, a granola bar. He said the drill sergeant just very calmly told everybody else to go back to the barracks and begin cleaning. And about an hour later, Jones came back covered with mud and blurry eyed, teary eyed and they found out later that though Jones completed his 10 weeks, they told him that because of that last infraction, he had to go back and start for day one and do all 10 weeks again. And Chris said just to add pain to it all, on the day that the families came for graduation from basic training, Jones was out there having to direct the parking of the cars.

That's rough, that's rough. You can't hoard the granola bars from the chow hall in the army, but you certainly can't hoard the grace of God. But when he says it's a test, does he mean that it's like a drill sergeant just waiting for you to mess up?

Not at all. It's not the nature of God. No, in fact, when the Bible talks about a test, it really means it more like, remember how our teachers used to say, this test is actually a learning opportunity. A test is a gift, beloved. Everything God gives really, he gives gifts and a test, if you get into the car to take a driver's test and you don't know the difference between the gas pedal and the brake and you don't know what a stop sign means and you can't steer to stay in your lane and you don't pass that test, that test was a gift to you because you're not going to make it and stay alive out there on the road and you probably hurt somebody else. If you're supposed to pass a swimming test before they let you swim out in the deep water at the summer camp, the swimming test is a gift to you. But it's not just that, it is an opportunity for you to discover where you are.

That's really what it is. So you learn through it. When Bennett was little and we started homeschooling at his young age in second grade, and he was, at the end of the year, he was given some standardized tests by someone that we hired to come in and evaluate according to state standards where he was. And so what they did in administering the standardized tests is they just start you at this level of reading and then you just keep going, answering questions, answering questions until you're not understanding it anymore.

Same thing with math. And afterwards, the instructor who administered the exam came to us and he said, Bennett did really well on this, he said, but there's a very interesting thing about your son. He said what? He said almost every single student, what they do is they try to keep answering math problems and keep working on them far beyond what they have the capacity to be able to do.

But your son didn't do that. He said he would just work right along, work, work, work. And he said, oh, I don't know how to do that. He'd read along and say, oh, I don't know how to do that.

Come right along. It's just like he knew where his limit was and he just quit, you know, at that point said, well, I'm not going to try to do something I'm not able to do. But I think that's the way it is with the test of God. That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, what you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages, says the incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy His embrace, revel in His love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. The Gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. The tests were essentially helping to point them towards how much they needed to grow in their trust of God. So we know it's about a test, but we also know this. This story, we know what it's about because in John chapter 6, Jesus tells us. Here's what we read in John chapter 6, verse 31. Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

He's talking about the manna. Jesus then said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Jesus was saying, I am the true manna. I am the bread from heaven. And they said, sir, give us this bread always. Jesus was born in a town called Bethlehem. Bet lechem.

Bet, house, lechem, bread. He was born in the house of bread and put into a feeding trough. And He came and lived and ministered and died and was raised so that He would have the authority to describe Himself as the substance of life. That everything that you need could be found in Jesus who is the bread of life. So that's what this story is about.

Let me give you a couple of principles to take home with you. This is interesting about really practical when you think about relationship with Jesus and you think about manna being a symbol of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. So the manna which was being provided 1500 years before Christ was born in the wilderness is a picture of what grace in Jesus is really all about and what it's like.

Now here's the first thing that I would conclude from all of this. Trying to live on yesterday's grace stinks. Let me be very clear about this. The power of memory for us and the power of testimony is exceedingly powerful to release faith today. So remembering and rehearsing all that God has done in your life is designed so we can have faith today. What it's not is sentimentality that is designed to take us always into the past as though we're still trying to live in the past. There's a big difference between remembering God's grace in the past and trying to rely on God's grace in the past.

Have you ever noticed that? That when you think about what God has done in your life and say if God was faithful in this way, I can trust that he'll be faithful to me today. That is exceedingly powerful to your faith. But if you look at your life and go all the best years were the former years and everything God used to do in my life he doesn't do anymore and then you get sentimentality about it and it's just like I'd rather be living back in yesteryear.

That makes life really, really hard. Living by yesterday's grace doesn't work. What worked yesterday may not work today because God's mercy and grace is fresh. His compassion are new every morning. Every day there is grace for what you are going through. And so God calls us to live by his grace that's sufficient in this moment.

He really wants us to know this. This is why all of the major addiction recovery ministries have been built on the principle of living one day at a time. It's a cliche but it is one of the most biblical concepts in the history of the world. To live in a mindful condition, being mindful of the moment, this is God's way of living. We can't live on yesterday's grace anymore than the Israelites could live on yesterday's manna.

Secondly, this is really important. Somebody taught this to me probably 30 years ago and it's changed the way I live. God doesn't give grace for hypothetical situations. Have you ever had this happen where maybe there's a great tragedy, maybe someone that you know suffered a deep loss and your mind goes to this place of imagining what it would feel like and it feels unbearable to you? The reason that worry is so, so painful is that I don't think God designed us or gives to us a grace for a situation that hasn't happened and probably won't happen. What he gives you grace for is what you actually go through. And I have watched people walk through unbelievably difficult trials and seen that the grace that they might not have ever imagined would be there is there. And beloved, you don't have to worry about tomorrow because whatever tomorrow brings, God's got manna for it.

God's got grace for it. So when your mind goes to those places where hypothetical what ifs, you just have to turn your mind off and remember, ah, there's manna today and there'll be manna tomorrow. And here's the other thing you learn from this and I think this is the point of it. What we learn from the manna story is the promise is better than the provision.

In fact, we're told this through the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 8. God humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna which you did not know. You didn't even know what it was.

You never heard of it before, never seen it before. Nor did your fathers know, nobody's ever heard of manna, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. That in the end, here's what you take with you, is the promise of the provision is far better than the provision. And Jesus quoted these words from Deuteronomy when he was tempted in the wilderness by the devil himself who said, Why don't you turn these stones into bread? And Jesus said, Man will not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. What God wanted the Israelites to know is that because he said there would be enough tomorrow that that word was what mattered. Whatever you need, you see, he's saying, I'm providing the grace for it. So when Jesus said, I'm the true manna, he was saying, I'm all you need.

Every day the same white flaky substance, and they could get a little bored with that, right? And with the same white substance they could think, well, maybe there's something else that we need and God say, no, this is what you need. Jesus is what you need. He is the Son of God and the Savior of sinners. He is the giver of abundant life. He's the way, the truth, and the life. He is the vine and we are the branches. He's the light that has come into the darkness. He is the healer of our diseases. He is the comforter in our grief. So whatever you need, the answer is manna.

And the answer tomorrow will be manna. If you need some peace, you need Jesus. If you need more love, you need Jesus. If you need more kindness, you need Jesus. If you need provision, Jesus is the provision.

We don't live by collecting the provision. We live by trust in the timeless, invincible, reliable Word of God. You can't live on yesterday's manna and you can't live tomorrow in your mind until you get to tomorrow. So you might as well gather the manna for the day and enjoy it.

There'll be more tomorrow. You can live from now on by the manna of God. And that's the gospel.

Alan Wright. Today's good news message, manna every morning from our series From Now On. Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio as he shares his parting good news thought for the day. Stay with us. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, what you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages, says, The incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy His embrace, revel in His love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. The Gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day. And our good news thought for today is for today, right? Let's savor it.

You know, it's day by day, the walk with God. And I want to leave the listeners again with this thought. Manna could not be hoarded. If you tried to gather up enough to last year for the whole week, then it just rotted real quickly and became putrid. So yesterday's grace, in a sense, Daniel, yesterday's grace sort of stinks. Because God doesn't want us living on yesterday and He doesn't want us living like, oh, I'll hoard it all up and so that I don't have to have any faith in God today or tomorrow. God likes for us to live day by day with His grace, breath by breath, manna by manna, and His grace is going to be sufficient for us not only today but for tomorrow. We'll trust that tomorrow, whatever we need from God, it'll be provided. So take in His grace each moment, thank Him for it, and don't try to hoard it. It'll be there tomorrow too. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.