Lesson 7: “The Bread and Water of Life”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Have you ever wondered why God gave Israel manna and the Sabbath at the same time—before the Law was given at Mt. Sinai? And what was the purpose of God’s leading Israel to camp in places where they had no water to drink?
We’re going to review lesson 7 in the third quarter’s Sabbath School studies entitled Exodus. This week’s lesson is entitled “The Bread and Water of Life”. We are going to look at the way Adventism teaches the giving of manna and the crises of Israel’s not having water as lessons to emphasize obedience and Sabbath-keeping instead of seeing these accounts as God’s revealing His faithfulness to provide all His people need and to teach them to trust Him. The focus in Scripture, however, is God and His sovereign care, not Israel and their grumbling disobedience.
God the Problem-Solver
Sunday’s lesson sets the stage for the lessons’ point of view. The author opens by comparing the structure of biblical narratives with literary storylines and reminds us to “pay close attention to plots, places, timing, and villains.” Then he says:
As the episodes show, God is the Problem Solver and the Peacemaker; however, His work is complicated by people’s unbelief. As a result of their constant murmuring and disobedience, the Hebrews experienced serious complications, even tragedies. They brought upon themselves many difficulties because of their incredulity and unrepentance.
This introduction to some of the Bible’s most important demonstrations of God’s sovereign faithfulness to His own promises and to His people helps us understand how human-centered Adventism’s view of Scripture is. Reducing the accounts of the Exodus to stories with villains and heroes and plot lines blinds us to the fact that these accounts are about God, not about Israel primarily.
Of course Israel is God’s nation, and it is among the Israelites that God reveals who He is and how He provides and protects and disciplines for His own glory; yet Adventism reads these accounts as immature and petulant Israel needing to learn to be patient and polite, obeying God’s rules so they won’t get into trouble. God, meanwhile, is pictured as being there to solve Israel’s problems and to settle their grumbling quarrels.
God is never their “problem solver” and “peacemaker”. He is their sovereign Lord and King, and He is directing every step of their journey, never surprised by their grumbling and rebellion, and He is teaching them that they aren’t in control and can’t manipulate Moses to get their needs met.
Also in Sunday’s lesson is the account of Israel’s first water crisis—besides the crisis of the Red Sea, of course. Exodus 15:22–25 tells us:
Then Moses had Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. And they came to Marah, but they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter; therefore it was named Marah. So the people grumbled at Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” Then he cried out to Yahweh, and Yahweh showed him a tree; and he threw [it] into the waters, and the waters became sweet. There He set for them a statute and a judgment, and there He tested them. And He said, “If you will earnestly listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, Yahweh, am your healer.”—Exodus 15:22–27 LSB
The lesson makes the point that Israel had to learn to wait patiently for God’s timing and that “God does things in cooperation with humans.” The day’s study ends with these words:
And yet, even after their grumbling, God promised that He would not bring upon the Israelites “any of the diseases” (Exod. 15:26, NIV) that had plagued the Egyptians. He would protect them. They could experience this promise only on the condition that they stayed faithful to Him.
Yet in Scripture these lessons are not the point of the account. Even God’s promise that He would protect Israel from the diseases of the Egyptians was a national promise connected to their agreement to keep His stipulations as His people. Yes, God said that if they kept His statues and commandments, He would not put the Egyptian diseases on them, but the emphasis here is on God’s protection and promise to supernaturally protect them from epidemics and diseases if they would honor Him. He wasn’t asking them for perfection and Sabbath-keeping; He was saying that if they trusted Him and honored His requests, He would supernaturally protect them.
Adventism manages to turn this promise into a lesson teaching that if people obey, God will take care of them. In reality, this focus is upside-down. As the author says, Israel had to learn that “God does things in cooperation with humans.”
No! This is never what Scripture teaches! Adventism DOES teach this man-driven idea—but God is sovereign and unilaterally does what He promises. Yet Adventism teaches God’s promise about protecting and preserving Israel as a sort-of prosperity teaching: if Israel would obey, God would reciprocate and prevent disease.
This viewpoint is wrong. God set the terms. He said He would protect them—and He also said He would do so if they honored Him. But it was not a cause-and-effect arrangement. It was God saying that if His people ignored and rejected Him, He would withdraw His covenant provisions for them.
For example, a parent may tell a young adult child that they are welcome to live at home provided they fulfill certain adult requirements: a rental fee, or regular work on the property, and the parent may even include certain behaviors as conditions for staying in the home: no drugs, no partying, regular church attendance—or whatever the parent deems appropriate.
The child’s agreeing to keep those terms does not drive the agreement between him and the parents. Rather the parents hold the power. They are in charge of the terms between them and the child, and the child’s doing the requirements of the agreement don’t mandate that the room in the house will always be theirs necessarily. In other words, their rent-paying or their church attendance does not produce or mandate that they will automatically have that room. The parents are the ones providing the room, and they are free to change the terms of agreement or even to withdraw the availability of the room because the house is theirs.
This is a limited illustration of God’s relationship with Israel, but the lesson, in keeping with the Adventist great controversy worldview, paints the picture that God, in cooperation with Israel, would keep them well if they kept the commandments. In reality, this wasn’t a “cooperative” effort. This was a relationship between a sovereign God and His dependent people. God had the power; the people were subject to Him and to His terms. Their obedience did not demand that God keep them well; the situation was not cause and effect. It was God’s sovereignly promising His ongoing protection as long as they honored Him and His terms of agreement.
God Led Them to Bitter Water
Significantly, the passage above states that Israel, led by Moses, went out from the Red Sea for three days and camped in the Wilderness of Shur. We have already learned that God led Israel every time they moved on their journey. His pillar of cloud and fire would move and lead them where He wanted them to go. It was Yahweh Himself who had led Israel to the wilderness of Shur and stopped them by the waters of Marah—water which was undrinkable and bitter.
God intentionally placed Israel where they were without water—millions of people and animals who had just experienced the greatest deliverance of God in the history of the world up to that point—and they panicked and complained to Moses. Less than a week after walking through the Red Sea on dry ground, they turned on Moses and blamed him for leading them to a place where they couldn’t drink.
God instructed Moses to put wood into the water, and the waters became sweet—and then God “made for them a statute” and promised that He would protect and provide for them if they would do what was right in His eyes. God was personally revealing to Israel that His protection wasn’t random and occasional; it was an ongoing promise—and He expected them to be trusting and submissive to Him always.
The lesson doesn’t mention verse 27 of Exodus 15, but it is significant:
Then they came to Elim where there [were] twelve springs of water and seventy date palms, and they camped there beside the waters.—Exodus 15:27 LSB
The very next step in Israel’s journey after the episode at the bitter waters of Marah was that God led them to Elim. Notice what was there: twelve springs of water and 70 date palms! God had intentionally led them first to a wilderness destination where there was no water—for the express purpose of revealing His faithfulness to them. They were to trust Him. They were to learn not to lead with grumbling and unbelief but to know that their redeemer God would not only lead them through the desert but provide for them the water of life even if there was not natural water!
After His revelation of Himself as the Source of the water they needed to live, He took them to a huge oasis where there was plenty of water for their huge caravan as well as food!
Neither the camp at Marah nor the camp at Elim was by chance or by the will of Moses or Israel. God was leading them, and He brought them the crisis of the bitter water and then took them to the oasis.
Manna As Sabbath Teaching Tool
Monday’s lesson introduces the account of God sending manna and quail to the grumbling Israelites. The study stresses that God used the manna to show Israel “how to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.” Significantly, the lesson develops the central idea of food as temptation. In fact, this Adventist insistence that appetite and food are at the heart of human sin drives the Adventist health message with its obsessive focus on vegetarianism and lifestyle as the means of extending one’s life on earth.
Monday’s lesson says this:
It is important to notice that temptations in the Bible are often related to food. In the Garden of Eden, the Fall was related to eating from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16, 17; Gen. 3:1–6). In Jesus’ wilderness temptations, Satan’s first shot at Him was through food (Matt. 4:3). Esau lost his firstborn rights because of his undisciplined appetite (Gen. 25:29–34). How often was Israel’s disobedience connected to food and drink! No wonder Moses reminded later generations:
“ ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord’ ” (Deut. 8:3, ESV).
On Ellen White’s authority, Adventism teaches that Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden was the sin of appetite: the desire to indulge the temptation to experience that fruit, and this temptation of appetite played on their personal pride: they could be like God. Yet Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden was this: they did not believe God. Adam knew God’s command not to eat the fruit lest he die, but he stood with Eve and watched her be deceived by the talking snake and did not intervene to protect her from that sin.
When Adam ate the fruit, he did so with his eyes wide open. When Adam ate, that was the moment that he and Eve knew they were naked and hid. They died spiritually just as God had said they would when Adam acted in unbelief. He knew what God had said, but he did not act on God’s word. He allowed himself to be tempted; he rationalized and ate the fruit instead of acting on God’s word even when his surroundings and senses appealed to his reason. His sin was not primarily appetite; it was unbelief—and so was Eve’s sin. Eve, however, was not held responsible for humanity’s spiritual death because Adam was the one who had received the command from God in Genesis 2, and Adam was responsible for Eve.
Similarly, Jesus’ temptation to turn rocks into bread was not a temptation of appetite; it was a temptation to disbelieve God. His temporal circumstances seemed to support the idea that he needed food and had the power to provide it for Himself—yet the real issue was the same as Adam’s—and it was NOT appetite. It was trust and belief in God Himself and in His eternal word. In fact, Jesus silenced Satan’s temptation by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, the very text the lesson uses to say Moses reminded Israel that bread doesn’t sustain one, but God’s word does.
After establishing that food and appetite are the stuff of humanity’s core temptations, the lesson then develops the Adventist framework using the manna as a tool for teaching Sabbath-keeping. The lesson says this:
Manna, of course, was a heavenly bread that God supplied the Israelites with during their 40 years of sojourning in the wilderness. Through this gift, He taught them that He is the Creator and the Provider of everything. Also, God used His supernatural provision of manna to show them how to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.
Each week four miracles happened: (1) for six days, God gave a daily allotment of manna; (2) on Fridays, a double portion of manna was given; (3) the manna did not spoil from Friday to Sabbath; and (4) no manna fell on Sabbath. God was constantly performing these miracles so the people would remember the Sabbath day and celebrateGod’s goodness on that day. God said: “ ‘Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath’ ” (Exod. 16:29, NIV).
Using the Adventist great controversy paradigm, the lesson develops the story of the manna as an event primarily meant to teach Israel to keep the Sabbath. The assumption is that Sabbath is eternal, that Israel had known of the Sabbath before they were in the wilderness but had lost the practice of keeping it while in Egypt. In fact, Adventism teaches that the seventh-day Sabbath was set apart as “holy time” from the creation week, and that all humanity had known of the Sabbath and had been expected to keep it.
Now, Adventism assumes, God is reminding Israel to keep that seventh day, and He gave them the manna to teach them what keeping a holy day looked like. In fact, their obedience to keep the seventh day would determine whether or not they would qualify for God’s sustenance on the seventh day. If they didn’t obey God’s commands, then He would punish them by depriving them of food.
Sabbath and Rest In Christ
In reality, Exodus 16 is the first time in the Bible that the word “Sabbath” is used, and it’s the first time God gave anyone a command to keep the seventh day. Sabbath is not a “creation ordinance”, and God gave no commands for anyone to keep the seventh day at the end of His finished work of creation. It was God who rested on the seventh day; Adam and Eve are never described as resting on that day.
Furthermore, the seventh day at the end of creation had no “evening and morning” boundaries, and Adam and Eve were created INTO God’s finished work which He sanctified for His purpose and pleasure. God’s finished work was the mark of God’s ceasing from His six days of creation. God ceased, and there is no command for Adam and Eve to “rest”. In fact, their creation into God’s finished work comprised their rest as well. They were perfect and in communion with their Creator.
Only sin put an end to the perfect rest of God’s finished work.
When Israel went into the wilderness after the miraculous Red Sea crossing, food was scarce if not completely absent. There were no crops to harvest or dependable sources of nourishment, and God was keeping these millions of rough Israelites alive in forbidding circumstances.
In Exodus 16, God gave Israel two things at the same time—and these two things were shadows of their coming Messiah. He gave them the bread of life—manna from heaven that would keep Israel alive until they entered the Promised Land 40 years later where they would harvest crops from the rich soil. Concurrently with the manna God gave Israel the gift of rest in their Redeemer. One day in every seven Israel would stay in their tents and gather no manna—yet the manna that would spoil if they gathered extra on any other day would stay fresh after gathering a double portion every sixth day.
Furthermore, if any Israelite decided NOT to gather a double portion on Friday, reasoning that God would OF COURSE provide manna on the seventh day if needed, that Israelite would go hungry.
The point was never that a created thing—a day comprised of hours and minutes—was intrinsically holy. The point was that God was their sovereign Lord and King, and He alone would supply their needs and keep them alive. God was introducing Israel to the form of worship that He demanded from His nation, and the point of the Sabbath was not that Israel was to consider the seventh day an eternally holy thing—almost like a relic needing to be guarded and protected—but that GOD was holy. Israel had to do what God said in order to learn who He is and to understand His faithfulness. Israel had to learn that no one—not their own hard work, not Moses’ leadership, not their own cleverness—no one but Yahweh alone was providing for them and making them into a nation that would trust Him.
God gave Israel manna—the shadow of the bread of life which the Lord Jesus later said represented HIM—and the manna showed Israel that God was their sustainer and provider. Along with the manna God gave the shadow of His provision for their spiritual redemption. The Sabbath was a shadow of the Messiah who would perform God’s second perfect finished work: His death on the cross that would pay for human sin and release all who believe from their slavery to sin and death.
One day in every seven Israel would stay in their tents and trust that God was working for them. He would keep their food good. He would keep their health good. He would protect them from danger and marauders, and He would prosper them as long as they honored Him as their sovereign Lord.
The manna was never given for the purpose of being a teaching tool for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was given so Israel would realize their work would never make them successful or secure. God alone would give them rest from their work while He worked for them. He would give them their bread of life, and He would provide the water of life for them as well.
Earned Blessings
Adventism subtly teaches that they “earn” God’s blessings by faithfully practicing Adventist requirements. They believe that if they eat vegetarian, keep the Sabbath, and pay tithe, then God will —almost as an obligation—pour out the blessings of heaven on them.
My mother-in-law scrupulously practiced loyal Adventism, even eating vegan after being diagnosed with Celiac’s disease and needing protein from animal sources. Religiously she cooked brown rice and dried beans, sinking deeper and deeper into sub-nutrition and physical weakness. Yet she refused to eat animal products, only reluctantly eating an occasional egg when she became too weak to continue.
A few months before she died, her older brother, seven years her senior, came from another state to visit her where she was bed-ridden in a skilled nursing facility. Her brother had lived most of his life eating plenty of dairy, fats, and desserts. As he walked into her room, she said to him, “You should be where I am, and I should be where you are!”
She believed that she had earned good health and long life because she had remained loyal to the Adventist health message and to the extremes of veganism. Yet she died suffering from heart failure and a lack of nutrients that would have kept her body functioning, and her older brother survived her.
This Adventist mindset underlies this lesson’s teaching that Israel would prove themselves worthy of God’s blessings if they obeyed His commands. Yet the issue was never Israel’s worthiness nor God’s obligation to bless them. Rather, God was showing that He was working for them, and they were to honor Him as the One who knew them, shaping them into a nation of people who would trust Him.
When Jesus came He fulfilled all these shadows that God gave Israel. He identified Himself as the Bread of Life, the Bread that comes down out of heaven. “He who eats this bread will live forever,” Jesus said (John 6:58).
Jesus identified “living water” as the Holy Spirit whom “those who believed in Him were going to receive” (John 7:39).
Even more, Jesus identified Himself as the one in whom those who believe would find their sabbath rest:
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”—Matthew 11:28–30 LSB
Yet Adventism has grabbed the shadow of rest in Christ and eclipsed the One who actually has done everything necessary for eternal rest and security.
Have you seen who Jesus is?
Bring your doubts and fears and sins to Jesus and trust the One who died for you, who who was buried and, on the third day, shattered the curse of death by rising and bringing life and eternity to light! Trust the One who has already completed everything necessary for your salvation. Enter your your eternal rest in Christ—and LIVE!
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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