Not By Bread Alone (Exodus 34:27-28)

"So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water" (Ex. 34:28a).

Like Elijah and Christ after him, Moses spent forty days and nights in intimate communion with God. During that time, he did not eat or drink, being sustained only by the power of Jehovah. Matthew Henry observes, “When we are weary of an hour or two spent in attendance upon God and adoration of Him, we should think how many days and nights Moses spent with Him, and of the eternal day we hope to spend in praising Him.” Moses knew for a fact that man does not live by bread alone.

This truth is often lost on us today because we are so dependent on worldly comforts. We forget that we live and move and have our being through the Lord God, and that our lives are sustained by His power. If He chose, our lives (and the whole universe!) could end in a moment. We should regularly thank the Lord for sustaining us, for giving us life, and for keeping us alive for His purposes in this world.

When Moses refrained from food and drink on the mountain, God supported him by His power. The one who made the body can nourish it without ordinary means. And while we might think this was difficult for Moses, and maybe it was, he was sustained by communion with God. Like Jesus, he had meat to eat that the world knew nothing about, for it was his meat and drink to hear the Word of God, to pray, and to dwell in His glorious presence. The abundant satisfaction he had in the Word of God and in the presence of the Almighty made him forget his body, and its needs and desires. God fed Moses with things that are greater than food and drink: He fed him with His light, law, and love, with the knowledge of Himself and His will.

Though we are not called to fast for forty days, we are reminded by this extraordinary account that the kingdom of God is not composed of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. The less dependent we become on the delights of this world, the better prepared we will be for the pleasures of heaven. This does not mean that we become ascetics and forsake the bounties of God’s creation, but it does mean that we keep them in the right perspective. Feasting on the righteousness, grace, and love of the Lord is of greater worth than feasting on the delicacies of this world. We should, therefore, never allow the latter to stand in the way of the former.

Are you more concerned about meeting your physical needs than your spiritual needs? If you have children, are you feeding them spiritually by teaching them the Word, praying with them, and worshiping with them, or are you mainly focusing on meeting their physical and developmental needs? Meditate on Matthew 4:1–11.

Making Time for God (Exodus 34:21-26)

“Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest” (Ex. 34:21).

God commanded the Israelites to rest once a week, even in the days of harvest, the most busy time of the year. All worldly business had to give way to holy rest, even when it seemed as if there wasn’t time for it. We need to make time to come away from our worldly concerns and to spend extended, intimate time with the Lord. The more we are consumed by our affairs, the more our hearts are drawn away from Him. This happens especially during those times when everything seems to demand our time, when work is piled high, when our families demand our attention, when the church is calling for us to help in one more ministry. During these times we are tempted to coast along, barely keeping our heads above water, finding little or no rest in the Lord because we don’t take the time to be with Him. In passages such as the one before us, we are reminded of how much we need to take time, even a little every day, to rest in the Lord, to meditate on His Word, to commune with Him in the quiet solitude of the closet. It is too easy to forget the importance of resting in Him. Before we know it our hearts have grown cold, our patience toward others has dwindled, and our ability to cope with the demands of life has been lost. By resting in the Lord we may avoid these pitfalls and find the strength to do our work well, to love our families, and to serve His church.

God also told His people that they had to appear before the Lord, the God of Israel, a command He had given previously. In all our religious approaches to God, we must look upon Him as the Lord God, infinitely blessed, great, and glorious. Only when we approach Him as the God of Scripture can we worship Him with reverence and godly fear. He is the God who made a covenant with us, and we can be encouraged to trust in Him and to serve Him joyfully.

When you step away from your busy schedule to spend time with the Lord, focus on who He is. You can only do this by reading and meditating on His Word. When you open the Scriptures, think about the various attributes of God, meditate on what He has done for you. Focus on Him, not only on what you need to do to serve Him. Only when you truly know Him can you trust Him, rest in Him, and serve Him with joy and delight.

Do you have a set time when you can step away from your duties and spend time with the Lord? Do you often feel overwhelmed by all your activities and responsibilities? Take some time out, even if it means cancelling something, and spend time in prayer and in meditation on the Word. Make this a holy habit.

Feasting Before the Lord (Exodus 34:18-20)

“The Feast of Unleavened Bread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, in the appointed time of the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt” (Ex. 34:18).

Here is a repetition of several commands given previously, particularly those relating to Israel’s solemn feasts. When they had made the golden calf, they proclaimed a feast in honor of it. Now, so that they might never sin in that way again, God charged them with the observance of the feasts that He had instituted.

When we sin against the Lord, we are setting up something above Him to celebrate, be it ourselves, another god, another person, a habit, or an activity. Whatever it might be, we are saying to ourselves that this one thing, in that moment, is more important than our relationship with the Lord. And though we do not make a pagan feast as the Israelites did, we make a sinful feast in our heart wherein we celebrate the joy we think we derive from that which we have set above God.

The folly of this is that true joy, true feasting, can only come through a relationship with Jesus Christ. But we deceive ourselves as we think—at the moment when we choose to sin—that this thing will bring us greater happiness than anything else. We think that indulging the flesh will bring us greater joy than obeying the will of God. This is where sin is so deceptive. It promises happiness, joy, and feasting in the heart, but in the long run it only brings bitterness, pain, and emptiness. We think we are feasting on good things, but it is all an illusion, and we wake up one day to find ourselves starving.

True joy only comes in Christ. It is at His table that we are filled, and it is in His house that we find true, joyful, and abundant feasting. Instead of wasting our gifts, our time, our resources on things that have no lasting value or are a direct affront to the Lord, we should bring our resources to Christ, put them into His service, and use them for His glory. Only then will we know what it means truly to feast in the delights of heaven and to be filled with the fruit of righteousness.

Christ has promised that all we need is at His table. He has prepared an abundance of spiritual nourishment at His feast. Isaiah 25 tells us that on Mount Zion the needs of all the people will be satisfied, and there will be a feast “of rich food … a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines.” Do not go to the world for fulfillment, and do not seek feasting in sin. Seek Christ, for He alone gives what is best and satisfies the hunger of your heart.

Where can you find fulfillment and spiritual nourishment? Are you trying to fill yourself with empty things, with things that don’t satisfy? Are you turning to sin, thinking it will meet the needs of your heart? Turn to Christ today, read His Word, pray for His Spirit to satisfy your soul with good things.

Renewing the Covenant (Exodus 34:10-17)

And He said: “Behold, I make a covenant.… Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst” (Ex. 34:10a, 12).

Having reconciled His people to Himself, God graciously renewed His covenant with them. Israel had broken the previous covenant, but it was God who renewed it, promising to bless them by driving away their enemies and giving them the land He had prepared for them. God’s part in the covenant was that He would do great marvels that had never been seen before in the world. He would dry up the Jordan, make the sun stand still, knock down the walls of Jericho, drive out the Amorites. God promised to pluck up His enemies in order to plant the choice vine He brought out of Egypt. Nothing would stand in the way of establishing His kingdom.

Israel’s part in the covenant required the keeping of two precepts. First, they were to worship no other gods. They were not to give divine honor to any creature because—and this is the reason given by God—they would put themselves in peril of judgment by the hand of a jealous God. Just as a husband is jealous for his wife, so the Lord is jealous for His people. Jealousy is called the “rage of a man” (Prov. 6:34), but it is also God’s holy and just displeasure. If Israel were going to be God’s people, they would have to worship Him alone.

Second, they were to make no graven image or molten god. They were not to presume to worship the Lord by images. They had already fallen into this sin and were prone to it. So God warned them not to tempt themselves by following after the ways of the surrounding cultures. To protect them from this sin, God erected “fences” around these two precepts. The Israelites were to take heed of themselves, they were to be aware of their weaknesses and guard their hearts against this sin that entangled them. The best way to do this was to remove temptation from their midst. When they entered the land God provided them, they were to make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land, nor were they to marry or to work with them. They were to remove all their idols, or high places, and they were not to eat their sacrifices. So prone were they to the sin of idolatry that even the slightest temptation had to be removed. Any time we have a tendency toward a particular sin, we should take steps to remove temptation from us. Otherwise, we open ourselves up to falling into that sin again and violating the stipulations of the covenant of God.

How do you take heed concerning those sins to which you are most prone? Make a list of those sins with which you have repeatedly failed. Beside each one, write down things in your life that tempt you toward this sin. Take steps to rid yourself of those temptations. Repent of the rebellion at the root of your repetitive sins.

A Response to Grace (Exodus 34:8-9)

“If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance” (Ex. 34:9b).

Moses responded humbly to God’s revelation of His glory in the proclamation of His divine perfections of power, mercy, patience, goodness, and justice. He spent no time waiting to show God the reverence and honor that He deserved, but “made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.” Worship is the only proper response to God, and it should never be delayed because of earthly concerns or personal fears. If we are to give God His due, we must not suppress the truth, rather, we must humble ourselves and exalt Him with words of praise and acts of worship.

Moses recognized that he had found grace in God’s sight, and on the basis of that grace, he prayed a most earnest and affectionate prayer. He prayed for the presence of God to go with His people into the wilderness, for he knew, even though the rest of Israel didn’t, that their safety and their success depended totally on the strength of the Lord. This should be one of the main subjects of our prayers: a confession of our total dependence on the Lord and of our desire for Him to be with us. We should not fill our prayers only with concerns about what we need in this life, but we must express our desire to be with the Lord, and confess our hope that He will be with us in all we do.

Second, we should ask God to pardon us of sin. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, part of that prayer was a request for pardon: “Forgive us our sins, even as we forgive those who sin against us.” This idea is repeated in 1 John where it is written that we all sin and need to come before the Lord, confessing our sins to Him. If we do this, He is faithful and just to forgive all our iniquity. Confession of sin should be a part of our daily prayers because we fall short of the glory of God by sinning in one way or another every day. Like Israel, we are a stiff-necked people who are totally reliant on God’s mercy and grace.

Third, we should include in our prayers, as Moses did, a request for the privileges of a peculiar people: “Take us as Your inheritance.” God has already promised to make us His inheritance, to bring us into His kingdom, and to give us eternal life. Such a promise should encourage us to pray that the benefits of salvation be applied to us. We have the promise of these things, of pardon and of glory, but we should also continue to pray for these things as an act of faith.

Spend some time in prayer today. Using Moses’ prayer as a model, worship the Lord. Thank Him for the grace He has shown you. Ask Him to be with you in all you do, and to give you the grace to abide in Christ. Confess that you are sinner, and ask God to forgive your specific, known sins. Pray that you enjoy the promises of salvation.