Most of us try to be health-conscious, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture tries to help us out by telling us how many servings we should have per day per food group. For example, we're told that we should have at least six servings a day from the grain group.

But here's the problem: Take a bagel for instance. It's about six inches across, and an inch and a half thick, and weighs almost a half-pound! It’s not one serving; a bagel is about five or six servings by itself. Yet when we eat a bagel, we think we're being health-conscious.

In fact, when we eat just one bagel, we've pretty much had more than enough to cover the USDA minimum daily requirements.

This is "portion distortion," writes Lawrence Lindner in The Washington Post. People think they are eating like birds, but according to the government's definition of portion sizes, that's true only if those birds are vultures. This may be a large part of the reason for our expanding American girth.

Consider the bare facts. A serving of pasta, the government says, is a half-cup, cooked. That comes to about 32 strands of spaghetti, a mere four twirls of the fork. Other government-defined servings: 10 French fries, one- sixteenth of a frosted cake (about two fingers wide), and four to five ounces of wine, which would fill roughly half a teacup. Who eats those amounts in a sitting? Some couples consume an entire one pound box of spaghetti in a single meal.

So I guess we have something else to grumble about. It looks like the government should let someone with an average appetite decide how big a serving of something is – or at least base serving sizes on something realistic, something that won’t leave us hungry or skew our ideas of how much we really are eating.

Our text finds us in the wilderness with the people of Israel. This is the first taste of freedom most of them have ever known. The Israelites, these descendants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been in Egypt so long that the entire population had been born as slaves there.

In one of the most astounding displays of ingratitude in the biblical record, just one and a half months after being freed from captivity in Egypt, Israel began to complain to their leaders about traveling conditions, and even insisted that Moses and Aaron were trying to kill them in the desert by starving them to death.

They were hungry and the memory of meat and bread in Egypt clouded their memory of slavery and oppression. They didn’t remember the pain of the whip on their backs. All they could think about was the pain in their stomachs. They didn’t remember the tortures of slavery; they could only think about the fleeting pleasure of a meal.

Israel longed to return to Egypt, where the food was plentiful. They couldn't bring themselves to entrust their survival even to the God who had set them free. So they grumbled. They grumbled against Moses and Aaron. And of course, in doing so, they grumbled against God himself.

This first experience of doubting in the wilderness was not greeted, however, with a wrathful response from God. It seems that God had, all along, planned to provide miraculous provisions for these travelers.

But the Israelites are challenged to live on the portions of quail and bread that the Lord gives them in the wilderness. Every evening, quails appear and cover their camp -- that's their serving from the meat and poultry group. And every morning, there is a layer of fine, flaky stuff called manna, which Moses says is the bread that the Lord is giving them to eat -- that's their daily serving from the grain group.

It was enough to live on, but it was also a strictly regulated portion. When some of the people attempted to stash some manna away for the next day, it would breed worms and become foul. And when others attempt to gather on the Sabbath -- a practice forbidden by God -- they discover that there is nothing there for them to gather.

All of which raises the question: Why are we so reluctant to accept the basic portions we are given? Why are the Israelites -- and each one of us -- hungry for more than we really need? This overly active desire to acquire raises issues of trust, contentment and moderation.

It's a trust issue, for starters. We tend to gobble more than our fair share when we fail to believe that God will take care of us tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. Think of it as the "Poor-College-Student-at-the-All-You-Can-

Eat-Buffet" phenomenon. Maybe you remember when you were a student, eating tuna fish straight out of the can and cooking up 25 cent boxes of unnaturally orange-colored macaroni and cheese. You used to absolutely pig out whenever you went to a wedding reception, buffet dinner or all-you-can-eat restaurant. You went way overboard, because, you had wasted your food money and because you were about out of money, you didn't believe that another good meal was in your near future.

Unfortunately, some of us haven't outgrown those displays of graceless gluttony. We still pack away obscene amounts of food and drink. Because we do not believe that God will be as good to us tomorrow as he is being to us today, we max out our credit cards, and buy the biggest, best and smartest of anything we can afford. We want to have as much as we can get, right now.

We forget that God provided the Israelites with manna for 40 years, one day at a time, resting only on the Sabbath, and that Jesus promised we won't be left hungry, thirsty or naked as we pursue the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

While there is no certain way of knowing what manna was, the rest of the description of this odd substance makes clear that it was, at the very least, a powerful instructive tool for fostering human dependence upon God. Verse 4 even states that this "bread" was designed to test how well the Israelites could learn to obey God.

Manna was the ultimate in perishable food. It had a very short shelf life. One had to strictly follow the instructions that were given on how to gather it. They could gather it only in the morning and eat it that day only. This meant that every single day they had to rely on God providing manna the next day! No amount of pre-planning, hoarding or storage on their part would help. Only God's daily provision secured their lives.

But the daily appearance of the manna was not the only miracle in this situation. The second miracle was that God made it so that on Friday, enough manna could be saved without going bad for the people to have food on the Sabbath! That day, and that day only, the supernaturally appearing food would supernaturally endure for a second day.

God also allowed some manna to be saved in a jar so that future generations might have a lasting remembrance of God's sustenance in the desert. In a way, the manna was designed, just like the Israelites, to depend on God for its very existence. If God willed it to be preserved, even if that preservation required miraculous intervention, it would last. If God willed it to vanish in the heat of noon, it would melt away without a trace. It was the perfect object lesson for dependence upon God for survival.

In the Sinai desert, God fed his people with bread from heaven so that they would know that "I am" is the Lord their God.

Over a thousand years later, Jesus himself feeds a congregation in the Judean desert so that they would know that he was the true bread come down from heaven. But they get it wrong and look for him because of the free food, not because of who he is and the miracles he performed.

He confronts them by saying; "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. Truly, truly I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

Jesus tells the crowd that unlike the manna that their ancestors had eaten, he is the true Bread of Heaven whose consumption will bring an end to hunger and that whoever believes in him will never thirst.

Those who survive on manna will ultimately perish like the manna itself. Only Christ is the imperishable food that makes one imperishable. Reliance on either, the temporary or the eternal, requires absolute reliance upon God and reliance on the truth of God's promises.

As we sojourn through this desolate world of sin, we indeed hunger and thirst for righteousness. This congregation and all the children of God, who have come through the Red Sea waters of Holy Baptism, have been delivered from the enemies of sin, death and the devil. They have been swept over by a cleansing flood.

There is no going back into slavery or servitude, no matter how enticing the memories might be. Instead we are fed and filled with true meat and drink, the bread of God who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

Your deliverance has been won. You are given life Jesus’ suffering and death. There on the cross, Jesus endured all the wrath of God for your sin, he himself wandering, hungering, thirsting, suffering, dying – paying the wages of sin. There is your life, your journey, your cross and it has already been taken us as Jesus was lifted up.

Your grave has already been slept in too. For three day Jesus was there. But then he rose to life again and by his resurrection, we are assured to rise to new life in him.

The bread God provides for us today is the bread of comfort in the face of earthly trials. It’s the true food of grace that sustains us in the day of our wanderings. It is the bread of God that gives life to the world. It is God’s grace and mercy found in Jesus alone. And the size of the serving is just the right size.

Know that God’s promises are true. He has not forgotten you; no matter how hungry you might be for food or righteousness, no matter how far you have wandered or how you have grumbled for former days. God hears our grumbles and answers us according to our greatest need.

Now hear his gracious voice as he speaks words of comfort – declaring all your sins forgiven, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.