Exodus 16

       Greetings to you all in the name of our victorious King and Christ!  Hope you all have a great Friday and weekend.  It has been a pretty great week.  Tuesday night Logan, my buddy from college, Taylor, my roommate from college, Liam, Taylor's one year old son, Erin, and I all went to the Cardinals game.  It was a great game and the Cards won.  Then Wednesday we had our golf meet.  I played at the number four spot but did not play nearly as well as I did Monday. The course was a beautiful course way outside of the city.  It was in a low clearing surrounded in the hills covered with thick woods.  There were a bunch of giant beautiful homes out there, so it much be a rich area.  The course is long, flat, and almost no trees.  However, it had very narrow fairways and hazards everywhere it wasn't fairway.  I did have the pleasure of meeting a snapping turtle in one of the small creeks, a small gardner snake in the tall grass, and saw about fifteen deer out in the pasture surrounding the course. It was lightning almost the entire time we were there, but they let us play through six holes before they finally called it on account of the weather.  We had some pretty major storms in our area that night.  I don't have a lot planned for this weekend other than hopefully golfing tomorrow, just for fun though.
       My thought for the day is the next chapter of Exodus and finding the Gospel in the chapter. This is one I could flush out much more fully, but since it has to be only one page I had to make it kind of brief.   Here is my paper on the Gospel in Exodus 16:

         The obvious theme for this chapter is God feeding His people with the bread of life.  However, I want to look at a more subtle Gospel theme for this chapter.  The theme I want to look at is salvation comes in the morning.

            The Israelites start complaining about how they are starving to death.  So what does God do?  He gives them what they need; food.  When does He give it to them?  He gives them the bread first thing in the morning.  The text uses the phrase “when the dew had gone up” to let us know the bread came in the early morning.  He gives them what they need in the morning. 

            This fits in the immediate context of the chapter as I just stated above because it is when the bread comes to them.  It fits in the entire Exodus narrative because the morning is an important time of the day for the Israelites.  When Moses is dealing with Pharaoh and the plagues, he always goes to Pharaoh the next morning.  In the wilderness morning is when the offering sacrifices were to be burnt.  In chapter 34 God tells Moses to come up Mount Sinai in the morning.  However, the best example of how this fits in the Exodus narrative though is in chapter 14.  As the Israelites are crossing the Red Sea, God has kept the Egyptian army in the cloud all night, but in the morning God tells Moses to stretch his hand out and let the sea return to normal drowning the entire army.  God waits until the morning to save them from their enemy and show them that they are free.  Their salvation comes in the morning.    

            This fits in the entire Gospel narrative in several ways too.  David writes in Psalm 30 that weeping may tarry for the evening, but joy comes in the morning.  Psalm 46 is believed to be Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.  185,000 Assyrians have surrounded the city of King Hezikah, and it looks like there is no hope for him and his people.  However, when they wake up the next morning all 185,000 Assyrians are dead because the Lord uttered His voice and whipped them all out.  Then of course the greatest example of this is Easter morning.  Jesus walked out of the tomb, risen from the dead, first thing in the morning.  He then appears to the disciples and the woman letting them know He is indeed alive.  He is our salvation who comes in the morning. 

            I cannot try to say that the eschaton will be in the morning, but I would not be surprised if it was.  What I can say is that our joy still comes in the morning because every morning is a fresh start to new day.  God gives us what we need in the morning, and that is our forgiveness and New Adam which allows us to try to live each day as best we can for His honor and glorification.