Everybody feels sorry for Moses. Joshua got the
land. Moses got God. Which one sounds like the
loss to you? Tonight we're standing on a mountain
with an old man who could smell the river. Forty
years of dust behind him. The Jordan breathing
cool air up the valley. And the land God promised
spread out below like a table already set. Moses
can see it. Close enough to count the trees.
Close enough to taste the water. But he already
knows he won't cross. Which raises a question
most of us never think to ask. What if the wilderness
wasn't the waiting room? What if the years of
manna, the daily reaching of the hand, the conversations
with God in the dust, what if that was the point
all along? So pull up a chair with us. Plates
have been cleared from dinner, coffee's still
warm in a few mugs, and we're opening scripture
together from our midweek Bible study. We're
glad to see you here at the table, and I will
see you on the other side. I realized when I
was listening back to last Wednesday night's
episode that I neglected one very important thing,
that I had forgot to ask Wayne for his thumbs
up. So I need a double thumbs up tonight, Wayne.
There's the double thumbs. That gets us back
on track. So I want to begin by using tonight
the best trick in the book on how to be a good
preacher. And that is, I'm going to start off
by offending you about what you know about the
Bible. Because you have been reading this story
wrong your whole life. And so have I. So has
everyone who has ever stuck a flannel board Moses
on a Sunday school wall and told a room full
of kids that the wilderness was the hard part.
Before the good part. Forty years. That's how
long Israel walked, not can't walk. Every time
we teach it, we treat it like a delay. Like God's
GPS recalculated and the scenic route just took
four decades. As if the real story begins when
Joshua crosses over the Jordan, and the real
tragedy is that Moses never did. But here's the
thing nobody talks about on flannel board Sunday.
Moses is the one who knew God face to face, not
Joshua, not Caleb, not any of the ones who made
it to the other side. Man who never crossed the
river is the one who saw the face of God. And
somehow, after reading the story, we still feel
sorry for it. But what if the wilderness isn't
the detour? There's a man on a mountain tonight,
40 years of sun and sand behind him. breath of
that river, and he's not going to cross, and
he already knows everything he needs to know.
Friends, tonight our scripture reading actually
is a selected number of readings coming from
the Pentateuch, which means the first five books
of the Bible, and I will begin reading first
with Deuteronomy chapter 34, 1 through 6. Moses
went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo,
to the top of Pixah, opposite Jericho. Yahweh
showed him all the land. Yahweh said to him,
This is the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. I have caused you to see it with your
own eyes, but you shall never go there. So Moses,
the servant of Yahweh, died there in the land
of Moab. No one knows his truth, even to this
very day. Now from Numbers chapter 11, 4 through
6. The mixed multitude among them began to crave
intensity, tensely. And the Israelites wept again
and said, Who will give us meat to eat? We remember
the fish we ate in Egypt and for free. The cucumbers,
the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.
But now we have lost our appetite. There is nothing
at all except the manna to look at. And one more
tonight from the Exodus, chapter 16, verses 14
and 15 and 31. When the dew that lay had gone
there on the surface of the wilderness, it was
a small round thing, as small as frost on the
ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said
to one another, What is it? Moses said to them,
It is the bread Yahweh has given you to eat.
The house of Israel called it manna, and its
taste was like wafers. with honey. Thus ends
reading the word this evening. They called it,
what is it? That's literally what manna means,
the word. It's a question, not a name. Every
morning for 40 years, read on the ground, and
they never stopped asking. Wafers with honey
from the hand of God. And they named it the question
mark. Now let's look at that section, Numbers
11. Israel has manna every morning, bread from
the hand of God, lying on the ground when the
dew lifts. They don't plant it. They don't earn
it. They don't even fully understand it. They
named it, what is it? And kept on eating. Wafers,
honey, 40 years. Daily unexplainable provision.
And they're weeping. The whole camp is weeping.
Because they want cucumbers. Not just any cucumbers.
Egyptian cucumbers. From the country that worked
them to death. from the place that threw their
sons into the Nile River. They are standing in
the middle of miraculous daily provision and
feeling homesick for the place that had broken
them. Because, at least in Egypt, you can see
food coming. You knew where your next meal lived.
You could plan. Mana doesn't let you plan. Try
to store it overnight and you wake up with worms.
And that's not a design flaw. It's actually the
point. Mana keeps you reaching out your hand
every single morning and discovering again that
someone, capital S, showed up. It requires trust.
on a 24 -hour cycle. And trust on a 24 -hour
cycle is exhausting when you'd rather just sign
a lease and stock the pantry. But notice something.
The manna didn't appear because Israel sat still
and waited for it. The manna appeared because
they broke camp and walked every morning, packed
the tents, moved the family. Follow the pillar.
And when they got to the next place, bread was
already on the ground. The provision met them
in motion. It never once showed up at yesterday's
campsite. And the craving really isn't about
food. Craving is about control. Egypt was brutal,
but it was predictable. The wilderness is divine
provision, but it's daily. And if we're honest,
many of us trade the miracle for the mortgage
that meant that we could stop wandering. And
there's a pattern here. And once you see it,
it runs through the whole Bible. Settlement provision
is good. The vineyards that come, the cisterns,
harvests, storehouses full of grain, God gives
them and blesses them. But they all share one
feature no one talks about. They're storable.
You press grapes on Tuesday, the wine is still
there on Friday, whether you prayed that morning
or not. And you can go a long time in the settlement
without noticing whether God showed up today
or not. The math ends up working without the
miracles. Wilderness provision is different.
Manna cannot be stored. Every day is the same
reach of the hand. And that's not inferior provision.
That's intimate provision. It keeps you and God
close. Now picture Moses up there with God on
Mount Nebo looking out. Sun is low. The whole
land is spread out. for him like a table that
has been set for somebody else. His feet are
bare on the rock, the way you stand when the
ground is holy and you learn to recognize it.
Forty years of reaching for manna every morning.
Forty years. Conversations so close, the text
says it happens with a man who talked to him
like his friend. And the river, a promise, the
Jordan River, it's right there. He can hear it
pulling south towards the Dead Sea. He can smell
it, the wet breath off the Jordan he's been walking
towards since Egypt. Canaan, the promised land,
is close enough to count the trees and hear the
birds singing. And he's not crossing. And he
grieved that. Deuteronomy chapter 3 tells us
plainly. He asked, please let me cross over and
see the good land beyond the Jordan. He wanted
it. He pleaded for it. God said no. So let's
not turn Moses into a saint that just somehow
floated above the hurt. He is a man. standing
on a mountain with his heart in his throat, looking
at the thing he will not get to touch. And the
text still calls him the man who saw God face
to face. Joshua gets the land. Moses gets the
face. Who really got the inheritance? The wilderness
was never the in -between. The wilderness was
the address. Now, let me jump back in time. I
had mentioned Moses taking off his sandals. Let
me go back in the story, back to Exodus 3. Moses
is not in Canaan or the Promised Land when God
speaks to him. He's on the far side of the desert.
Tending somebody else's sheep. He is about as
far from a rival to anything promised land that
you could get. And God says, take off your sandals.
The ground you are standing on is holy. And you
don't take your sandals off to keep moving. You
take them off to stop. To plant your feet and
feel. The ground and what is underneath it talking
to you and telling you the whole time without
you ever noticing. Not the palace. Not Canaan.
The back of beyond. The place that genuinely
felt like exile. Like failure. Like it was supposed
to be temporary. And God calls it holy. The ground,
where Moses stopped expecting anything, God names
that as his address. But the sandals come off,
so you can hear what the ground is saying. They
don't stay off. Moses puts them back on. He had
to. If Moses had stayed at the bush, Israel would
have died in Egypt. Bush wasn't the destination.
It was his. God didn't say, stay here where it's
holy. God said, now go back and bring my people
out. Stopping is how we hear. The walking is
what we do with what we've heard. And it's worth
noting, Moses does appear on the other side at
the transfiguration. An unmarked grave, east
bank, never crossed in life, but when glory breaks
through on that mountain, Moses is standing there.
The wilderness person is not forgotten. The wilderness
person shows up as the hinge to the whole story.
And you may recall that story. We just talked
about it a couple weeks up the stairs. Now, this
isn't just about Moses. It's also about us. Standing
in the kitchen at six in the morning, coffee's
the only thing between you and the coming day,
and it doesn't feel like your horizon has moved
for months. Whatever you thought your life was
heading towards, the job, the healing, the relationship,
the answer to whatever, still out there, still
across the river, and your feet are still here.
Same tile, same coffee mug, same reach. You're
a wilderness person. But 99 % of us are 99 %
of the time. And we have been told our whole
life that that means we're in the waiting room.
But we're not in the waiting room. We're at the
address. And some of us, I've been so busy craving
the settlement. Whatever our version of milk
and honey looks like. Maybe we've been stepping
over manna the whole time to get to the horizon.
And it's not because we're faithless. It's because
we're tired. Tired isn't the same thing as faithlessness.
And the enemy of manna isn't disbelief. It's
exhaustion. Because when you're exhausted, the
miracle of the ground looks exactly like just
more work. One more thing to have to bend down
to pick up when your back already hurts and that
horizon doesn't seem like it's moved for weeks.
But manna doesn't require you to be grateful
to nourish you. It doesn't ask you to approach
it with the right attitude. It doesn't hold your
weaknesses or your weariness against you. It
just asks you to reach down. So, what do we do
with this? Well, we stop long enough to hear.
Then we move with what we've heard. Provision
met Israel on the road, not in a chair. Recognizing
that the ground is holy does not mean you stop
walking. It means you stop walking past. And
carry this into the coming week? What are you
craving right now that maybe it's the promised
land promising? And is that craving costing you
manna that you might be standing on right now?
Israel wasn't wrong. Canaan was coming. They
were wrong about what they had missed while they
were walking. Don't let your horizon cost you
your ground. So, go from here knowing the burning
bush is your address. Not the one you're headed
towards, but the one where your sandals are right
now. When the man is on the ground and tomorrow
morning, taste it. Before you look to the horizon.
And then keep walking. May the God who met Moses
on the far side of the desert, not in the palace,
not in the promised land, but in the ordinary
dirt of an ordinary Thursday, meet you and yours.
Amen? Amen. Thanks, guys. Maybe tonight you realized
something you hadn't noticed before. That the
wilderness isn't always the detour. Sometimes
it's the address. Sometimes the miracle isn't
waiting across the river. It's lying on the ground
in front of you, quiet as frost when that morning
dew lifts. And if you're tired, really tired,
kind of tired, we're bending down for one more
day. It's worth of manna feels just like too
much. Hear this, tired is not the same as faithless.
God never asked Israel to feel strong before
reaching for the bread. He just asked them to
reach. Tomorrow morning, their eyes and may still
look the same. The ground under your feet may
already be holy. And if you heard something tonight
you hadn't quite considered before, something
that maybe made you look at your story, your
own life, a little differently, go ahead and
toss that old like in the offering plate the
way we used to do down at the church. And if
you'd like to keep walking with us through this
Lenten season all the way to Jerusalem, make
sure you tithe your subscribe. That way you'll
know when we're gathering and starting down the
road again together. And until then, friend,
be blessed.