“The manna ceased on the day after they had eaten some of the produce of the land, so that the sons of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate some of the yield of the land of Canaan during that year.” (Joshua 5:12)
The daily appearance of the Manna in the Wilderness was nothing short of miraculous. The Manna itself is a reminder that, regardless of whither our Lord shall lead us, He will provide for all our needs when we faithfully walk in His will. Even if He must employ inexplicable and miraculous means, God will never leave us without. The Lord is our Shepherd, we shall know no want.
Even so, this passage in the Book of Joshua reveals that God, though capable of operating in His Universe without any limitations on behalf of those who are His own, seems to prefer the ordinary, the mundane, and the visible over the extraordinary and sublime. Within the pages of Scripture we find no instances of a miracle of God performed without distinct purpose and seldom is a miracle implemented when other, more conventional methods are readily available. Our Lord is a wonder-working God possessing unfathomable supernatural abilities, yet He does not frivolously execute miracles for the entertainment and amusement of His creation. Neither will God endlessly bolster a superficial and tenuous faith with a ceaseless cavalcade of astonishing acts of Divine power. Our faith is to rest on the Person of Christ and what He has done for our Salvation, not upon His ability to impress us with His wonders.
God poured out the Manna from Heaven because no other sufficient source of food was available in the barren Wilderness through which the Children of Israel passed into Canaan. If grain had been plenteous in that land, we may be certain that God would have directed His people to partake of it. But it was not. Thus the Manna began to appear daily in the camp and continued to do so as long as it was necessary. The time came, however, when the Hebrews entered into the Land of Promise and ate of the yield of Canaan.
In our own walk with the Lord, our flesh continues to crave the sensational, the spectacular; our fascination with the strange and wonderful seeks to be gratified. But it is not the miraculous and supernatural which needs to be emphasized in the Body of Christ today, it is the preaching and study of His Word. Many believers are contented to keep their eyes fixed on the sky, waiting for the Manna to fall in their midst when all the while the Lord is wanting them to eat the “natural food” to which they already have access. God cares too much for our spiritual growth to forever spoon-feed us that which satiates our curiosity yet leaves our souls growling with hunger.
To eat the yield of the land, that is, to come before the Lord in an attitude of prayerful expectation as we open our Bibles even as He opens the eyes of our understanding requires effort and work on our part. But that is the way that God intends for it to be. Remember, the generation that first partook of the Manna was that same generation which perished in the Wilderness. Apparently the supernatural provision of daily food was not enough to subdue hearts bent on rebellion.
Finally, let us consider that the cessation of the Manna in no way meant that God was no longer working tirelessly on behalf of the Hebrews. For in the very next verse of Joshua we have the revelation of the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus as the Captain of the Hosts of the Lord. Neither was the end of Manna the end of God’s miraculous intervention for the Israelites because the conquest of Jericho is related in the following chapter. God’s powerful, wonder-working hand is always laboring for the welfare, safety, and provision of His people, either visibly or invisibly. We do not see the Captain of the Hosts of the Lord marching with the Hebrews around Jericho, but surely He was there among them. It was He Who would cause the walls of the city to collapse.
When the Holy Spirit speaks through His Word to a heart desperately seeking answers and to know Him better, is this any less of a “miracle” than a physical sickness being healed? When the Word of God brings light to a heart plagued by darkness, is this less of a work of the Lord than speaking in an unknown tongue? And when the Lord Jesus Christ turns on the light of understanding in a person who has rejected Him time and time again, the Gospel penetrating a lost soul through the preaching of Scripture and bringing the life of Salvation where before only death reigned, is this less significant than even an actual bodily resurrection would be?
To God goes all glory. In service to Him,
Loren
**Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible (NASB) © The Lockman Foundation and are used by permission.
[If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ or you are not certain where you are headed when this life ends, I invite you to read the article “Am I Going To Heaven?”]
