Please turn in your copy of the scriptures with me to Deuteronomy chapter 8.

Just as a way of reminder, we are listening in to Moses’s farewell address to the nation of Israel.  

The book of Deuteronomy is in many ways a sermon preached by Moses to re-explain the law to the new generation of people going into the promised land.

Deuteronomy is literally translated second law, and it’s not a new law, but the second presentation of it, if you will.  

Moses has been their faithful leader, chosen by God, who went into Egypt and redeemed this people from Slavery.

And after leading them for 40 years, he is now about to send them on, without him, into the promised land.

Last week we looked at verse one and two and we were reminded to not forget our father’s commands.

As any good father would, Moses does not want the people to go into the land and not continue to obey the Lord’s commands, because all of these laws and rules are really put there for their protection, and prosperity in the land.

Today we are going to look at the next verse, and I have entitled this sermon, “Remember how he humbled you” for we will read in verse three, that Moses reminds them of how God did humble them, and why he did it.

But let us begin in verse one and read this section in context.

Deuteronomy 8 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

8 “All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers.

2 You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

3 He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.

4 Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. 5 Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.

6 Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills;

8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; 9 a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.

10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.

Let’s pray

So... let us begin with verse 3 which reads:

3 “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

Here in this verse, Moses, who again is giving his farewell address to the nation, is giving his people a healthy dose... of reality.

He brings them back, way back... to one of the earliest moments in their travels these past 40 years in the wilderness.

This moment where God humbled them by providing manna, a food, which came out of thin air.  

We read about the whole story in Exodus chapter 16, which is also the first event that happens directly after their celebration song towards God when he closed up the Red sea on Pharaoh and his army and washed all their enemies away.

So in their timeline, these people are roughly 45 days into their traveling and find themselves in a very uncomfortable situation.  

For after a long and hot day of traveling, the chef of the family goes to the igloo cooler to feed their little nomadic family… but they have no food.  

Is there anything as bad as that?  If you think there is something worse it is because you have forgotten the family vacations where the children are crying there eyes out because they are “starving” while you are driving down the road.

So questions begin to fill the minds of the people of how they are going to survive in such a harsh wilderness without any food.

Can you imagine leaving the lush soil of Egypt next to the Nile, where a man can grow practically anything he wants and now by contrast, they are in the hot and practically lifeless desert.

No Nile, no water, no soil, just dust and sand everywhere the eye can see.  

It must have been disheartening for this people.  Perhaps they really wanted to follow God into the promised land, but as they feel the hot sun and as supplies run low… enthusiasm for an adventure is being replaced with fear of the future.  

Now I want to be kind, so perhaps they are able to brush their fears aside as they encourage each other that Moses knows where he is going.

Perhaps they convince each other for a few days that the green land of promise is just over the next sand dune.

But eventually, even the parents are saying, “Are we there yet?”

And finally, the people, so overcome with hunger, begin to question Moses to his face saying, “Have you brought us here to die?”

This is the story we see in Exodus 16 turn there with me.

16:1 “Then they set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt.

2 The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

3 The sons of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Can you hear them say, “Moses, it would have been better to die fat and happy than to have death by starvation!  We are in a land where food is nowhere.  There is only sand everywhere you look!”

**I understand why the Bible does not contain a lot of dialogue, for if it recorded every conversation... the Bible would be too big to handle, or too big to carry around for that manner.

But I wish, I really wish that God would have inspired Moses to write a little bit more of what the people are saying, because you get the idea that these people are not just afraid that they might die, but rather it is a known fact that they will die.

Again, picture no food anywhere, no plants for miles of traveling.  No water, no seed to plant because there is no soil.  And you can’t plant because you are traveling.  You can’t plant and stick around even if that plant would grow fast enough to eat it.

And because there are no plants, there is also no big game to hunt.  So you can’t eat meat even if you wanted to.  

There is just no possible solution, and the people don’t think that they are hopeless, they know that they are hopeless.

Have you ever felt that way?

When you were in a situation totally barren of any good thing.  

For example: You are totally incapable of getting a job, totally incapable of getting to the job even if you could land a job.  

You are unable to even eat, there is no money, you are totally broke, you are contemplating your next move while depression crushes your spirit to pieces.

And then in a moment of sheer frustration, you shake your fist at the highest authority you can find, even if it is God, and demand an answer for why this suffering took place in your life!

You are at your lowest point ever.  This would be like the bottom of the barrell.  This would be the end of the rope.  You are saying to yourself, not even God could fix this situation in my life.  I am too far over the edge and I am moments away from losing my grip on this cliff.

I am beyond repair, I am too poor, am I too far into my addictions, I am beyond hope.

Two years ago, one of my childhood friends was saying all of these things.  He had made a life out of poor choices.  He was an alcoholic who had been just arrested on his second DWI.

Knowing what this would mean for his future.  Knowing that he was facing jail time.  Knowing that he had lost his license and so on, he was at the bottom of his barrell emotionally.

He sat at his desk weeping.  He was also holding a gun in his lap.  And in that moment, he began to contemplate God.

He cried out to God something like this, “God, if you exist… I need to know right now!”

That same night, I could not sleep.  I tossed and turned and finally got up.  I went on to facebook and messaged my friend.

“I know I keep inviting you to church, but please come today!”

That was the same moment my friend was sitting at his desk.  That was his God moment.  

I would never encourage anyone, ever, to do what he did.  Sitting there with a gun was the most dumb thing my friend ever did.

But, God humbled him, by answering him directly through me.

Now God did for him what he thought was impossible.  He was beyond the point of really believing God would answer him.  

But, when he did, it shook him to his core.

God used it to humble him by saying, “I am the God who can do anything, and I do exist.”

When I think about these Israelites, that is what I think of.  These people are looking around saying, “Even God couldn’t feed us in this wilderness!”

But… he did.  Listen to the rest of the story in Exodus 16

11 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 12 “I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel; speak to them, saying, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

13 So it came about at evening that the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew evaporated, behold, on the surface of the wilderness there was a fine flake-like thing, fine as the frost on the ground.

15 When the sons of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.

Now flip over to Deuteronomy 8 again:

3 “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

Now just Imagine that.  Just let that sink in…

God brought them to hunger, he brought them to a low point of overwhelming odds against them so that they would know God.

And when God intervenes he doesn’t just back up a dump truck of Raman noodle soups, or a million boxes of instant mashed potatoes - but with food only ever expected to have in the land of Egypt.

That is both so loving and so kind.  God brought his creative power to the front line to give the people he loves GOOD things.

Romans 2:4 reminds us “that the goodness of God leads to repentance!”

These people are being shook to the core, being humbled by the fact that what they considered the best of the land of Egypt… meat and bread… God was going to give them that “best food” in the most impossible place you ever thought was possible to have it in.

And it was not only bread, but angels bread, which was said to taste like wafers dipped in honey!  Amazing.

So here is an application for us:

God can do for you, what you thought was impossible!  He has humbled a whole nation of of people, so don't doubt that he can humble you.

These people thought that they were dead because…. they were too focused on what they knew, what they saw, what their limitations were, rather than on what God, could, do!

Friend, if you believe in God… Is there anything that God cannot do?

“For nothing will be impossible with God.” Luke 1:37

Nothing….

The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, [and] there is nothing too hard for thee: ~ Jeremiah 32:17 KJV

God spoke the world into existence, God spoke bread and meat into existence, and if he so chooses... he can imaginatively create a solution for your life by just “speaking” it into existence.

Yes! He is that powerful… He is God.  A God who chooses to humble men whenever he sees fit and for his own purposes, and for his own glory.

So that we may live our life based on what he is capable of doing, rather than relying on ourselves for our own good.

The perfect model of this kind of walk, this kind of faith, was Jesus Christ.  Turn with me to Mathew 4.

4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. (same situation)

         -I find it interesting that Jesus fasted forty days and Deuteronomy talks about 40 years, and Exodus talks about the Israelites grumbling at around forty days in the wilderness when they got hungry.

3 And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” 4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”

That is our verse in Deuteronomy, Christ quotes it.

Now, where the Israelites failed because of their grumbling and complaining and limiting of what God could do... and likewise had to be humbled, Christ of course succeeded.  

Christ was already fully aware, and fully ready to trust in God to take care of his immediate needs even though he was fully capable of turning those stones into bread.

In other words, Christ modeled the perfect example of humility.  To fully submit to God the Father for our needs.

Quite often, these are the tests we continue to fail on.  We may think, for example, that every open door is God’s will.  And that it is OK to do it all on our own… But it may not be.

Christ had an open door.  He had the ability and the reason, but the motive would have been impure.

You see, a man who relies on himself, and on only what he sees... is a godless man.  

That is a man who needs to be humbled and humbled quickly before he dies believing in a lie, a lie that presumes that life is only what you make it.

Life is not what you make of it, Life is only found in Jesus Christ!  And life in this world is only complete, only makes sense, when he runs your world, and guides all your decisions.

Friend, God created your life.  God created your world, and God can change your world by just speaking change into existence.  

If you are his, and you are not seeking his will, in every area of your life, he will humble you.

He will bring you to himself by taking you to your knees if need be.  

He will starve you if need be.

He will remove your health if need be.

If you are his he will make it clear that your life lived in your own power has become unmanageable, and that only he can bring…  sanity into your life.

Verse 3 piggy backs on verse 2 by saying - you cannot live on bread alone, but on a diet of spiritual nutrition that comes from his mouth, from his word, found in this book, the Bible!

I think that it is even more interesting that Christ speaks of manna again when he teaches us how to pray.

Mathew 6

9 “Pray, then, in this way:
‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 ‘Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread.
12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Here in his prayer Christ again shows us the perfect reliance on God.  Your will be done, and give us our daily bread.

That daily bread is the example of manna that we read about.  We need that daily dose of living bread that sustains us while we are living in the wilderness.

I don’t know if you realized it yet or not, but we have not made it to the promised land yet.  We are like those in the wilderness being taught and disciplined by a loving father.

And we need his daily bread in our lives to strengthen us, and keep us going as we follow him wherever he leads us.

That daily bread comes through reading the Bible and accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, for he writes in:

In John 6:35

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”

You see, we can live for a short time, maybe a 100 years on morsels of bread.  But you cannot live forever without eating the bread of life.

Jesus Christ is this bread of life, and by believing in him, that he died to pay for your sins, and believing that he rose from the dead, and trusting in him as your Lord and savior, you will have eternal life.

As we wrap up then, my big idea to you is simply this:  Remember how he humbled you.

James 4:10 “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”

Perhaps today is the day you turn your life back over to the will of God.

Perhaps today is the day where you can admit that you are foodless in a barren land, or you were foodless in a barren land until a miracle showed up on your door.  That is God, give him the praise, and be humble!

If you need a miracle today that will save you from your current emotional crisis, I am here to tell you… God is a God who can surprise you with his goodness!

He is a God worthy of praise!  For when we are in perfect harmony with Him and living for Him, there is a peace that passes all understanding that will fill your heart.

Make your peace today with a good God, A loving God, who wants to humble you with his goodness!

The requirement to having a relationship with him - is humility.

He opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble!

Come to him today and admit that you need his love!  Admit you need his goodness!  His saving ability and be fed with his daily bread, his divine truths, that will sustain you into eternal life!