1 Peter 5:5–6
5 all of you, clothe yourselves with
humility toward one another, for God is
opposed to the proud, but gives
grace to the humble. 6 Therefore
be humbled under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper
time,
So what does humility have to do with anxiety? That was our original question, but there is
one more thing we need to look at first.
We saw in the last article that God is actively working in
our lives to humble us. We saw why He was doing it, but we didn’t
spend enough time explaining how He does it.
Deuteronomy 8, which we looked
at last time, says that “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with
manna (8:3).”
This process of humbling has two distinct but related
aspects to it. The first is the idea
that God allows problems to surface in our lives that we then pray about and He
fixes them. He let them get hungry. He didn’t preempt the situation, knowing that
they would get hungry and provide the food before that happened.
That specific time referred to here (Exodus 16) the people
grumbled against Moses and Aaron, their leaders, and God started His program of
providing manna every day for them. God doesn’t
provide manna anymore, but I believe the two principles remain.
The first is this pattern of God allowing problems that He
fully intends to resolve in order that we might understand “that man does not
live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth
of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Life is not
a series of natural events, natural causes and natural effects, but God is
active in the affairs of life, just not too obviously.
He wants this process of our praying for things and seeing
answers as a normal part of the Christian life that we may begin to understand how
much God is involved in our lives and how dependent we ultimately are on Him.
But that’s not the entire thing. When Israel became hungry, as part of God’s
humbling process, He gave them manna, which essentially meant they shouldn’t
wonder again when they were going to eat, though this program of providing
manna only lasted while they were in the wilderness.
But this whole program of providing manna is critical in
understanding how God works in our lives today.
I have written elsewhere on the Lord’s Prayer (even a book on it), and I
believe that when Jesus tells us to pray “Give us this day our daily bread”, He
had manna in mind.
Notice that if we are praying for our daily bread, we will
need to come back tomorrow and pray the same thing all over again. And what if we don’t pray for our daily
bread, will we still get it? Perhaps,
but don’t blame God if you don’t, because He told you to pray for it.
Exodus 16 has the story of the manna. “Then the Lord
said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people
shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them,
whether or not they will walk in My instruction” (Exodus 16:4).
The
test is that of obedience, whether the people will do what God says or
not. A lot of people have problems with
this concept, because they feel like it makes them like slaves to a bully. The real reason for learning obedience is
that there are a lot of times when we won’t have enough information to make the
right choices. In fact, the right choice
will often not seem to be the right choice at the time. People in the habit of simply obeying will
find that they made the right choice.
Not always immediately, not even necessarily soon. But Christians need to learn that God is not
a tyrant. When He wants us to obey Him,
it is actually for our sakes rather than His own. But that was the last article, but being one
of the hardest lessons to learn it bears repeating.
The manna appeared on the ground with the dew and remained
after the dew evaporated. The people
were to gather a day’s portion of food every day. Verse 18 makes the statement: “he who had
gathered much had no excess, and he who had gathered little had no lack.” The work of the weak was enough, and the work
of the strong required his full effort.
I see this as showing how God deals with us as
individuals. A mature believer doesn’t
find the Christian life easier. He just
gets bigger problems to deal with. And a
new believer doesn’t need to envy people who have been Christians longer or
feel that they can’t contribute, because he who gathered little had enough. (I have a feeling some of you aren’t going to
get what I am saying here. I’m not sure
how to explain it better.)
This reminds me of working out with weights. One person can lift 400 pounds, and the next
person can lift only 100 pounds. But
each person is working at his capacity.
So in the Kingdom of God, the efforts of a new believer, however small
they may look to human eyes, are comparable to the exploits of a mature
believer in God’s eyes.
Moses told them that they shouldn’t leave any of it until
morning. The manna would spoil. This shows how God’s people have to go to God
every day for their daily provision.
Like the Lord’s Prayer says: daily bread.
The manna melted when the sun got hot. They had to gather their day’s provision in
the morning. If they didn’t go out and
get it in the morning, it would be gone.
So if they didn’t have their daily provision, whose fault was it? Was it God’s will that they didn’t have
it? No, because He told them what to do
and when to do it.
We don’t have manna today, but we do have the Lord’s
Prayer. I know some Christians don’t
believe the Lord’s Prayer applies for today, but why would the Bible include it
if it doesn’t? A lot of things changed
after Pentecost where the law had been fulfilled and a New Covenant
established, but the gospels weren’t written until sometime after this. It would make no sense to record a
conversation the disciples had with Jesus asking Him to teach them to pray if
this has no bearing on the Christian life today.
On the sixth day, they were to gather a two days’ supply of manna. There would be no manna on the Sabbath (the
seventh day). In this case, the manna
would not spoil overnight.
The Sabbath was as much of a test as anything else, and as
much of a test today as well, though many Christians don’t believe it applies
anymore. Can a business afford to be
closed on Sundays today? Can people stop
their busy lives one day a week to rest and to worship?
I should talk some about this exaltation that Peter
mentions, but I will save that for another time. Next time we will look at anxiety in the
Christian life and how humility is related to it.
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