“He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live” (Deut. 8:33And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. (Deuteronomy 8:3)).
No one is led into the place of weeping without getting some joy. Israel was already God’s people: He leads them into the wilderness to humble them. He makes them hunger that He may give them manna. He leads them into trial that He may give them something better.
If in the midst of the leeks, onions and fleshpots of Egypt God had given them the manna, would they have rejected all else because the manna was better? No. While the flesh is surrounded by that which suits it, it is fed thereby and rejects better things. Day by day, hour by hour, God is leading us to that condition of hunger that He may give us something better, not discernible by the natural mind, but satisfying.
When I have tasted the manna, there is a reality about it; it is not faith any longer. If I am hungry in the wilderness and am fed and braced up by the food, do I not know it? Can power come into my veins and I not know it? It might be a matter of faith that we are to have the manna tomorrow, but it was a matter of feeling and reality that they had eaten it today. As we eat and are strengthened, let us say, I know that man does not live by bread alone. We feed on Jesus the living bread, the Father’s gift, and we may say that we are miraculously fed from heaven every day by supernatural food. Thus we know man “doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.”
What think you of possessing in measure now all that we shall possess in the day of the Lord? Pain of body and of heart would appear very light, and we could say with the Apostle, after enumerating things that would drive some mad, “These light afflictions, which are but for a moment.” Why do we not thus speak? It is the right of all who have the Spirit.
Outside the sanctuary, until the Lord comes, there will be troubled hearts and diseased souls, but it must not surprise us; it is all alike an opportunity for the display of God’s grace which spreads itself abroad to meet the misery. Every want that pressed on the Lord Jesus always gave an occasion in His soul to the cry of faith.
J. N. Darby