"Bread from Heaven"

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 16:1-6; John 6:26-34

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Well, it may have come as a surprise to not open to Exodus 16, but rather John 6 this morning.
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And while we are holding ground in Exodus 16, and we'll take that up next week as we continue on in the narrative of Exodus, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to draw out some of the things we've hinted at over the past couple weeks.
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We considered this provision that God has made in the wilderness for His people. And as Jesus says here in John 6,
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Moses did not really give the bread from heaven. The Father, in giving the
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Son, has truly given the bread from heaven, and we want to reflect on that together this morning.
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It's a wonderful way to look at the Gospel through the lens of the Exodus event. And so with that,
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I've been now reflecting for a couple weeks on it, as we had Pastor Jason Austin preach last week, and gave me a little more time to have some thoughtful reflection upon Jesus being the bread of life.
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And I hope that you will give a genuine hearing, especially if you're unsure of your relationship with the
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Lord this morning. Perhaps there's been some wooing, some drawing, perhaps there's been relative disinterest.
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You don't know if you're in or you're out, or perhaps you know that you're out and you're just sort of here, appeasing mom and dad, going through the motions.
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I hope you'll perk up your ears and listen to what the Lord might have to say to you this morning. John 6 brings us in the immediate context to the
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Lord giving a miraculous feeding. A little boy has some fish and some bread scraps.
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That's not enough to feed 5 ,000, but that's the size of the multitude. And it corresponds to this miraculous provision on a smaller scale than perhaps
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God providing manna in the wilderness for His people, but no less miraculous, and of course, emblematic of who the
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Lord Jesus really is. He is the Lord, the same Lord who provided for the Israelites in the wilderness is here providing for the 5 ,000.
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And then as John 6 continues forward, we have a further demonstration of who this
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Lord Jesus really is. He has exercise of dominion over the wind and over the waves, and that great discourse of the
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I Am, who causes all the disciples to be filled with a greater fear than any storm could have wreaked upon their minds.
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And then as we move even further into John 6, we come to the so -called bread from heaven discourse, beginning in verse 26, as we read,
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Jesus answered and said, Most assuredly I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.
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Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the
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Son of Man will give to you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.
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Well, here in John 6, just like in Exodus 16, the signs, the activity of God is centered around the need and the hunger of His people.
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So we have signs and we have hunger. We have the hunger of the Israelites and God's provision of bread from heaven.
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Here in John 6, we have the hunger of this great multitude and the provision of bread from heaven.
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And Jesus says, you're not seeking me because you saw the signs, hence that's why you should seek me.
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The signs correspond to who I am and what I'm doing. But you're only seeking me now because I can meet your need of hunger.
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You ate of the loaves and were filled. That's what you want me to continually do for you, like the toddler
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Israel in the wilderness, just wanting a full stomach, murmuring and whining whenever the hunger pains begin to set in, missing the larger point of what
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God is doing and what God has purposed. And so the episode in John 6 is mirroring
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Exodus 16, signs and hunger being brought together. In response to Jesus' charge, verse 28, they say, well, what can we do?
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That we may work the works of God. Jesus answered and said, this is the work of God, that you believe in whom he sends.
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So Jesus is impressing, as we'll see later this morning, impressing upon them the need to believe in him, to come to him and to believe in him.
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Therefore they said to him, what sign will you perform then that we may see it and believe you?
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What work will you do? Our fathers ate manna in the desert. As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.
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But Jesus said to them, assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give them bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven.
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For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives his life to the world.
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Then they said to him, Lord, give us this bread always. So here in John 6, we have one of the great
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I am sayings. I am the bread from heaven. John has these
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I am sayings as a testimony dotted throughout the narrative of his gospel to who
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Jesus is, central ways that we can understand the person and work of our Savior. Jesus said, verse 35,
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I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger.
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He who believes in me shall never thirst. That's the central claim that John is putting forth in this discourse.
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Jesus is the bread of life. Whoever comes to him will never hunger. Whoever partakes of him will never thirst.
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So what we're going to do this morning is really survey this, analyze this in three steps, three movements.
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The first thing is to consider hunger in a biblical, perhaps theological way.
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The curse of hunger. And then corresponding to that, the blessing of hunger. We want to consider the curse of hunger and the blessing of hunger.
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And then bringing it toward application, we'll consider your appetite, we'll consider your appetite.
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So first, the curse of hunger, John 6, 27, do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the
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Son of Man will give you. Now, these words do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life.
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Labor, bread, everlasting life. These words, these themes draw us all the way back to Genesis 2 and 3.
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These words are interconnected with the fall of humanity in Adam. Adam, of course, fell in the midst of boundless abundance.
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Remember that every tree he looked upon was filled to the brim with fruit.
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Everything was pleasing to the eye and ready to meet all of that need. He was surrounded with bounty of God's goodness.
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But only after the fall are we introduced to what we could properly call the curse of hunger, the curse of hunger.
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Genesis 3, 18 and 19. As a result of the fall, God pronounces this curse.
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Both thorns and thistles, the ground shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the herb of the field in the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.
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Man's hunger had not always been cursed. It was a hunger that was fit for the abundance of what
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God had created. If you could go back to Thanksgiving a few days ago, it was the kind of hunger that filled you with joyful anticipation.
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There wasn't a weariness in your hunger. When you woke up, you actually gladly skipped breakfast. You wanted to increase the joy of that feast yet to come.
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And that was the kind of hunger that Adam and Eve enjoyed in paradise. Their hunger was connected to the abundance that surrounded them.
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And it delighted them to be hungry because that hunger was the way they could access all of that beautiful provision from God's own hand.
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Let's go try this fruit. Let's go try these, you know, wonderful things. What are we going to name these,
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Adam? And so they were blessed to have this hunger that corresponded to abundance. But as a result of the fall, hunger is now according to deprivation.
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Now there's a hunger that accords to need. If we could put it this way, there's a hunger unto death rather than a hunger that corresponds to life.
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Thorns and thistles now shoot up from the ground in place of fruit, in place of bounty. I'm a genuine
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Scotsman. I love thistles, but thistles apparently are a result of the fall. Thorns and thistles come out of the ground.
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In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread. So here we have this picture of the fall, the rebellion of man that puts a curse upon hunger and this exasperating labor that will now finally bring forth bread.
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In the sweat of your face, in the toil, in the misery, you shall eat your bread.
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So that's the curse of hunger. And as I say, it introduces this larger theme of a hunger unto death.
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No longer is there a blessed hunger, but now there's a cursed hunger. In the ancient world, of course, hunger was a genuine threat to life.
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The threat of famine is something we've seen all the way through Genesis and even into Exodus. The threat of famine was a constant plight.
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It still is in many parts of our world today. If we go back to this nomadic existence that occupy the
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Israelites for such a long stretch of their history, if we can imagine getting back to the large chunk of the ancient populace being at a subsistence level of agrarian labor.
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And you realize, as I had opportunity a few weeks ago to speak with someone, sacrifice was not like some scene out of Old Yeller.
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Oh, this is the animal we've always loved, our little lamb. It's so sad that we have to kill him now. That's not the sacrifice.
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It's not merely the death of the animal and everyone's so sad because they had this bond to this animal.
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That's not the sacrifice. It seems like that to us when we go buy our meat on styrofoam trays in the grocery store.
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But if you were a nomad wandering through the wilderness, the real sacrifice is that this blemishless animal is now being cut off from all that it would produce otherwise.
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You're scraping by and you need that animal for clothing year by year, milk and butter year by year, breeding year by year.
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So to cut off that animal is to cut off all the future progeny of that animal. That's your first.
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That's your best. That's without blemish. That's what you want to breed. That's what will give you increased security, stability.
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And to sacrifice that, that's a real sacrifice. So the functionality of hunger in a pre -fallen world was unto abundance.
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But the functionality of hunger after the fall is a deprivation unto death. Now we have hunger pains and only through great toil and misery do we eat bread.
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That's a result of the fall. Now, in the midst of this fallen world, God has nevertheless provided for his people and we see that God continues to provide for all of humanity in this very way.
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It's not Christians only who find that his eye is upon the sparrow. He gives reign to both the just and the unjust.
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And Paul, the apostle, can say, as he does in the letters to Corinth, for the present hour we both hunger and thirst.
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Or in 2 Corinthians, in weariness and toil and sleeplessness, often in hunger and thirst.
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But even he would find that God's supply was always sufficient. He knew what Jesus had taught.
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Life is more than food. The body is more than clothing. God will provide for our needs. Having food and clothing, he says to Timothy, with these we shall be content.
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God's able to provide in the midst of a fallen world, a world cursed with hunger as a result of the fall, a hunger unto death.
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And yet God is faithful to provide. David says, I've been young. I'm still young.
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One day I'll be. Hopefully no one fell off back there. I've been young.
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I'm still young. But when I'm old, I'll testify with David. Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread.
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So God is faithful to provide even in the midst of a fallen world, even despite the curse. And therefore we receive it all with thanksgiving, something we did,
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I trust, a few days prior. My God, as we recall, shall supply all your need.
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And yet, because we're accustomed to this manner of hunger, this manner of deprivation, this manner of how we eat and how food comes about, especially in the
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Biden economy, we really feel the pinch of bringing forth bread by the sweat of the face. It's perhaps too easy for us to look at the world around us, see the conditions that fill the plight of man, dire need, deprivation, hunger unto death.
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And we normalize it. We see this as something that must have always been the case for humanity. We lop off what it had been like prior to the fall.
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We think this is just hunger. This is what hunger has always been like. This is what food supply has always been like. This is what eating was always meant to be.
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We're always meant to have a deprivation and a need and a toil. And therefore we rob the effect of the fall.
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And we slight or marginalize the dysfunction of living in sin.
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Only when we recover this understanding of hunger and the fall, can we even approach what
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Jesus says in John 6. I am the bread of life.
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Whoever comes to me shall never hunger. Here we find the
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Lord's desire to answer the curse of hunger. And if we take time to notice in the
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Gospels, I mean, you could dive in and probably come up with a dozen examples of this.
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But if you actually take time to look through the Gospels, you'll find that the Lord is always desirous to feed his people.
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Always desirous to feed his people. I think, again, because we're not reading from Genesis forward, because we're normalizing post -fall rather than being filled with anticipation for pre -fall, we normalize destitution, hunger.
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We just read it as normal human experience. We miss the theological significance of Jesus desiring to feed people.
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But I'm convinced the Gospel writers see it as significant. That's why they record it. It's not for nothing that in Mark 2,
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Jesus can say, as long as the bridegroom is with them, they cannot fast. If you're around me, Jesus says, you're feasting.
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Why is Jesus so merry? Why is he charged with being a glutton, a wine -bibber? He who feasts with tax collectors and prostitutes.
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He's the life of the party. Water can't stay water around him. It must become wine. Why is that the case?
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Well, he even defends his disciples in this way in Mark 2. As long as anyone's around me, they cannot fast.
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They must be filled. There is no deprivation, no need when
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I'm in the presence. When I'm removed from their presence, then they'll fast. But when
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I return, they shall feast. Remember when Jairus' little girl is raised up?
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Another beautiful Markan sandwich. And Jairus' little girl is, no pun intended there,
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Jairus' little girl is raised up. And all the hired mourners who had been lamenting and wailing and weeping, you know, these sort of hired wails of agony, now all of a sudden are stunned into silence and wonder.
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Here, this little girl who had been dead is now set up, and she's alive and well. And Jesus says something.
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Do you remember what Jesus says in response to that? Get her something to eat.
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Out of all that could be said in that moment, he doesn't point to himself, he doesn't say, in many other things you shall see if you, he doesn't make it some grandstand to be able to gather all of the crowd into his sort of emissary.
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Rather, he simply looks at this little girl's need. Hmm, you've been sick, you probably haven't eaten in a long time, make sure she has something to eat.
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He's more concerned than Jairus or anyone else in that room that this little girl will not be hungry.
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There's theological significance to that. Get her something to eat. Luke 22, I've greatly desired to eat this
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Passover with you. I've been preparing and waiting and anticipating this feast.
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I can't wait to eat with you, Jesus said. Or after his resurrection, John 21, 12.
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I'm convinced in some people's houses here this morning, this is probably the most quoted scripture in anyone's household in our church.
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John 21, 12. Come and eat breakfast. You probably quote that daily.
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Didn't you know you were quoting scripture when you said that? John 21, 12. Very biblical for you to come and eat breakfast.
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Jesus is concerned not just to appear to his disciples, but to eat with them. Come and eat.
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You're hungry. So you consider this in light of John 6, and here again, we have the miraculous feeding of the multitude.
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That's what sets up the whole discourse in John chapter 6. Jesus is the one who shows concern for their hunger.
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We read John 6, 5. He lifted up his eyes and seeing a great multitude coming toward him, he said to Philip, where can we buy bread so that they may eat?
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You see, everywhere throughout the Gospels, there's this correspondence to Jesus having a desire to feed. He doesn't want people to be empty, to be hungry.
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This is not what human beings were meant to be like. The hunger was meant to be anticipating joy, feast, abundance, not deprivation or weariness or need.
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Matthew 15 gives us this window into Jesus' desire. Great multitudes, this is a parallel, of course, great multitudes came to him, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, many others, and laid them down at Jesus' feet and he healed them.
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And so the multitude marveled when they saw the mute speaking and the maimed made whole, the lame walking, the blind seeing, they glorified the
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God of Israel. Jesus called his disciples to himself and said, I have compassion on the multitude because they've continued with me now for three days.
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Do you remember in Exodus 16, how long the Israelites had wandered toward Merah?
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Three days. And they have nothing to eat and I don't want to send them away hungry.
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I have compassion on them. They have nothing to eat and I don't want to send them away hungry.
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When you understand this larger theme running through Scripture, you realize Jesus isn't just concerned about the need of their physical stomach.
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There's something much deeper that Matthew and Mark and Luke and John are getting at when they record
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Jesus' compassion on the crowds and when he says, I don't want them to be hungry.
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It's not what God made them to be. Man wasn't meant to have a sweaty face and be begging for scraps.
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Man wasn't meant to have a hunger unto death. And I don't want to send them away hungry.
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Now Exodus 16 is the backdrop for all of this because his disciples respond, where could we get enough bread in the wilderness to fill them?
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It's almost like the rebuke is waiting there in the moment. Have you not read? Haven't you read the account of Exodus?
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Where are you going to get enough bread in the wilderness to fill the people in need? Well, the God of Israel, God of Israel specializes in feeding in a miraculous way those who have a hunger unto death.
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So Jesus in the discourse here in John 6 is saying, there is no bread in the wilderness, but there is bread from heaven.
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There is bread from heaven. So brothers and sisters, we see our lost estate as early as Genesis 3, we see our lost estate in terms of hunger.
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It's not the only way, but it is a way we look at what it means to be fallen, what it means to be lost, what it means to be cut off, what it means to need salvation, hunger, a hunger unto death.
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And therefore salvation can be seen in terms of bread, food being given so that life would be preserved, food given so that there would be salvation and strength and life.
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The Lord has compassion on those who have nothing to eat. He is not willing to send them away hungry.
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That is the Lord's desire to answer the curse of hunger. Now, the second thing
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I would draw out before us is the blessing of hunger. We talk about the curse of hunger. What about the blessing of hunger?
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There is something that we could call a blessed hunger. And this takes us to another teaching of Jesus.
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Luke 6, Luke's version of the Beatitudes. We read,
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Jesus lifted up His eyes toward His disciples and said, Blessed are your poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
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Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled.
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So there is a blessed hunger. Hunger. Blessed are you who hunger now.
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There's a blessed hunger, not because of what hunger is, but rather because of what hunger will lead to.
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That's the flow of the Beatitudes, right? It's not a blessing to be poor, but what that poverty leads to.
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Blessed are your poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. It's what you will inherit that is the blessing. Blessed are you who hunger now.
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It's not that the hunger is a blessing, it's what that hunger leads to. If you're hungry, you will eat. So blessed is your hunger.
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It will draw you to the one who is bread. So many of the redemptive promises of God, here you could easily find several dozen, redemptive promises of God are given in the language of food or nourishment.
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Hunger being blessed. Hunger being answered. Isaiah 49, which depicts
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God's people as a flock. They shall feed along the roads. Their pasture shall be on all the desolate heights.
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They shall neither hunger nor thirst. Neither heat nor sun shall strike them.
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He who has mercy on them will lead them. John takes up this language,
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Revelation 7. He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger nor thirst anymore.
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The sun shall not strike them nor any heat. The lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them.
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So salvation, the image of redemption is depicted as God, the shepherd of his people. Jesus, the good shepherd, leading them to pasture.
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What? Leading them to food, leading them to eat. Why? Because if they don't eat, they perish.
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Again, one way of understanding what it means to be lost is hunger. One way of understanding what it means to be saved is eating.
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This is God's response to those in need. It's to those who are afflicted. There is a blessed hunger, again, not because of what it is, but because of what it leads to.
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It leads you to partake of the bread of life. And this is the greatest blessing. Even hunger, spiritually speaking, is one of the greatest blessings that God could give you insofar as it leads you to feed upon Christ.
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It's kind of like if I could riff on Spurgeon who said the greatest blessing a Christian can have in his life is assurance of salvation.
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The second greatest blessing is to not have assurance, to have doubts. Why? Because that will lead to the first.
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Doubt will make you wrestle until you actually come to peace and assurance. Well, it's the same way with hunger.
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The greatest blessing you could possibly have is feasting upon Christ. But the second greatest blessing
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God could give you is a spiritual hunger that makes you restless, as Augustine would say, until you find your rest in him.
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Hungry until you're feeding upon him and hungry for nothing else. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled.
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A woman of Canaan came from the region and cried out to Jesus saying, Have mercy on me,
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O Lord, son of David. My daughter is severely demon possessed.
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He answered her, not a word. And his disciples came and urged him, saying,
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Send her away. She's crying out after us. He answered and said,
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I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and worshipped him.
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And she said, Lord, help me. But he answered and said,
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It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to little dogs.
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And she said, Yes, Lord. But even little dogs will eat the crumbs from the master's table which fall.
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In Matthew 15, you have this Canaanite woman. And she comes to the
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Lord because of this overwhelming need. Her daughter is demon possessed. She has absolutely no recourse.
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This is far above anyone's ability to help, to provide aid, to provide care.
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There's no physician in the world that she could hire for any price that could deal with a situation quite like this.
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All she does is go to the one who she has heard about, the one who works miracles, the one who is the
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Lord. And this Canaanite woman, this Gentile, comes in the midst of Jesus' restricted mission to Israel at this point in Matthew, right?
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Matthew 28 opens the floodgates to the nations with the Great Commission. But at this point, the mission has been restricted to the children of the house of Israel.
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You only have occasional Gentiles coming into that matrix. And this is one of those instances.
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She comes with this overwhelming need and she comes to the right person and she comes with the right faith. Have mercy on me, that's the need, that's the hunger.
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Have mercy on me. Oh Lord, son of David. She gives him the messianic title.
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You are David's son, yet David's Lord. My daughter is severely demon possessed.
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Notice the first response is a non -response. There's a hunger, there's a hunger.
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She's come, she's come out of the region of Syrophoenicia. She's come a long way. And she's come crying.
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In fact, the disciples are annoyed she's been crying after anyone and everyone that can get her to Jesus. And she comes crying.
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And what's the first response to this overwhelming hunger? It's a non -response. Jesus actually lets that hunger build.
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So he restrains himself. He answers not a word. Let me tell you, there's many people who come hungry but because he answers not a word, they leave hungry.
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They go to waste away. They don't let that hunger build to an even more overwhelming level of need than they thought they had when they first came.
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They come half interested, half curious, half hungry. And because Jesus answers not a word to them, they don't come back again.
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Well, not this woman. He answers not a word and now she's starving.
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The disciples begin to urge him, send her away. And then he gives the reason that he should not receive her.
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I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So here's not only now a non -answer, now it's a rebuff.
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You've come all this way. You've come with a great need. You've come calling me Lord, calling me son of David.
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You've come crying. But I've only been sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
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And what is her response to that? Does she finally swallow that hunger pain and drop her head and begin the long journey back to her demon -possessed daughter?
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Now, what do we read? Verse 25, she worships. She worships.
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She falls down and she worships. And part of her worship is this,
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Lord, help me. It's almost like the Holy Spirit has given her more insight than perhaps anyone else in that inner circle, even the disciples.
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She's truly understood something about who Jesus is. I know you don't mean to turn me away.
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And so at the great risk of embarrassment, humiliation, shame, she's opening herself up for rebuke, maybe even a violent turning away from the hands of these grubby disciples, the dirty dozen.
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But instead, she puts herself at great risk. She jeopardizes her position.
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She loses her dignity. She drops down her worship and she says, Lord, help me. I'm starving.
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I have a great need. And as we've seen throughout the Gospels, Jesus is always presenting salvation in terms of food and hunger.
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It's not good to take the children's bread and to throw it to little dogs.
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Jesus now is even, if that wasn't enough of a rebuff to draw out her hunger, to draw out her faith, now he's even insulting her, as it were.
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You're a Gentile dog. You don't deserve the children's bread. You're not of the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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But then this woman's response, captivating response. But even if you let little crumbs fall, you are my master and I sit underneath your table waiting for whatever you'll give.
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Even a little dog like me will sit by the master, will sit by the
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Lord, the son of David, and wait for crumbs to fall. A crumb would be enough, Lord, if it's your bread, if it's your provision.
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So we see the woman's cry, Lord, help me. We see her faith, son of David, the master's table.
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We see the overwhelming need, the hunger, help me. And Jesus says, I have bread for you.
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And this is part of his response. Oh, woman, great is your faith.
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He's amazed, we read. He's amazed. Oh, woman, great is your faith. And here's the key to it all.
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Let it be to you as you desire. Let it be to you as you desire.
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She didn't come half hearted. She didn't come half hungry. She came hungry unto death.
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She had to eat. She needed the bread. She needed the Lord to provide.
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She needed the Lord to do a great work. And the Lord allowed that hunger to build, that anticipation, that need to grow.
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She was dropping to her knees in worship, crying out for an answer that did not come right away. And Jesus' response,
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I think, is so important, so vital to everything we've read. Let it be to you as you desire.
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In other words, it's according to her desire that she receives from the Lord. She desired greatly.
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She desired at her own dignity, at her own pride. She desired at great risk.
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She desired casting off all other hopes, all other trusts. She desired so greatly,
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Jesus said, let it be according to your desire. According to your hunger, you will eat. Blessed are you who hunger now.
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You shall be filled. That is blessed hunger. Put as a banner on your walk, brothers and sisters, let it be to you as you have desired.
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Have you desired weakly, faintly, half -heartedly? Let it be to you then, in that very way.
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Let God be to you half -hearted, fainting, weary, marginalized, neglected. Let it be to you as you have desired.
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Thinking of salvation in terms of Christ being bred and our souls being starved ought to bring us to worship in a way that says,
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Lord, fill me again. I'm so hungry that my spiritual body, as it were, is beginning to shut down in numbness.
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I'm that starved, Lord, fill me. According to my desire, meet me. I'm hungry now, so bless me and fill me.
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That is blessed hunger. Let me give you another example. Luke 15. Luke 15.
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Remember, of course, the great prodigal son, the story of the prodigal son.
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And something that, again, just reflecting on this and understanding this is so thematic to Scripture, especially to the gospel account, what is at the core of the prodigal son, the parable of the prodigal son?
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In other words, what is the reason that that distant prodigal, that rejecting, willful, stubborn, cruel prodigal son finally comes to the end of himself and slinks back to the table of his father?
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What is it? What's the mechanism? What's the reason? What's the basis for him to finally be brought to the end of himself and return?
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Hunger. Hunger. He would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that swine ate, but no one gave him anything.
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And when he came to himself, right, when he finally hit rock bottom, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare?
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But I perish with hunger. You see, overlay that with John 6, do not labor for the food which perishes.
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For the bread which gives everlasting life. So the prodigal son comes to the end of himself when he realizes that he is starving and he would even eat swine pods, whatever swine pods are, and I have no idea what swine pods are.
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He would eat pig muck. That's how starving he was. And if you're a prodigal and you're off in the far country, you'll be reduced to eating pig muck before long as well.
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You would wish you could eat pig muck. It's all the world can offer. It's all the far country has. Only the father's table has a feast.
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Only the father's table has bread. And the father's hired servants, he says, they have bread enough.
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Those that have stayed with the father, those that are in the house of the father, they always have bread enough and to spare.
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They're they're met that that need for hunger is met. It's fulfilled by God. Here I am cast out away from the house of the father in the far country.
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And what's the result? I'm perishing with hunger. I will arise.
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I will go to my father. I will say to him, Father, I have sinned. And what happens when he does that in short form?
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He's clothed and he's sat and the feast is spread before him. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled.
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That is blessed hunger, that is blessed hunger. It's that gnawing need to be full that compels us to come.
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And with it, we see so clearly and obviously the futility of all other attempts to be filled.
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We look around at our finest ambitions, at the best the world seems to offer. And we can't help but at the
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Lord's table, see it as pig muck, as swine pods. We recoil from it when we're in the presence of the father, when we're actually eating the bread from heaven.
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But there must be that response. There must be that help me, Lord. There must be that father. I have sinned.
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There must be a reckoning with my stubborn pride, my rebellion, my hesitancy. I must reckon,
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I must account for my genuine need. That's what he requires.
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It's all that he requires. It's what he draws out of the woman. It's what the prodigal son is reduced to recognize.
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I'm starving. I'm starving. I'm hungry unto death. All the fitness, as the hymn puts it, all the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him.
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Don't try to gather up what you can. Just come to him. Eat, live. All he requires is you recognize your hunger.
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Recognize your need. Recognize that he's awakening your heart.
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He's attuning you to his provision. His hand, as it were, is outstretched to you so that you can outstretch your hand and receive what he's providing.
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That's what it means to come to him, to believe in him. In the wilderness, as we said in Exodus 16, an
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Israelite actually had to go out and partake. That's what it means to come and to believe.
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And that's why Jesus says, I'm the bread of life, he who comes to me. You actually have to come.
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What good is it to recognize you're starving? You're hungry. Nothing can satisfy you in this life.
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You're empty. You're depressed. You're miserable. In the sweat of your face, you're going through the hustle of the world and it's not giving you anything sustenance or nourishing or helpful to you.
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You're perishing in your hunger. What good is it to you to recognize that if you don't return to the master's table?
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What good is it to recognize your need or your hunger if you won't come and believe on him who is bread? This is a sad reality.
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Thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come. Thousands make a wretched choice.
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They would rather starve than come. Such is the effect of sin. Such is the pride of fallen man.
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I'd rather dwell in thorns and thistles and pig muck and swine pods than go back to my maker and to call the one who made me my
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God than to serve him rather than serve myself. Thousands make that wretched choice.
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They would rather starve, and they do starve unto death, than come and partake of the bread of life.
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It's a personal act of faith. I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger.
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He who believes me shall never thirst. These things are put in parallel. To come is to believe.
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To believe is to come. As we said a few weeks ago from Augustine, believe and you have eaten.
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Believe and you are eating. Blessed are you who hunger now for you shall be filled.
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So as we come to a close now, I want to ask about your appetite, your hunger.
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You remember that curse of hunger from Genesis 3, in the sweat of the face, you will eat bread until you return to the ground.
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And of course, that begins to snowball as we move toward Exodus. Now it's
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God's own people who by the sweat of their face under the whips of the Egyptian taskmasters are eating their bread, sweating, bleeding, dying for bread.
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They're in chains. They're in bondage, working to the toil, working fingers down to the bone for bread.
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But God saves them. And again, corresponding to this theme, how is salvation presented?
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God saves them and says, I'm taking you to a land that is so bountiful, it's practically flowing with milk and honey.
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The very opposite of toiling for the bread of affliction or the bread of sorrow. And yet, as we saw in Exodus 16, what was their response to that promise, into that provision, breaking off the chains, giving them bread from heaven, promising them a greater abundance yet to come, not something that had to be scooped daily, but something that would be everlasting.
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His presence in this land of bounty, a return to paradise, a new heavens and a new earth. And what was their unimaginable, unfathomable response to that?
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We saw it in verse 3, O that we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full.
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So the bread of affliction, the bread of toil, the bread of slavery, the bread of pain, of sweaty faces, of misery.
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They said, don't you remember how great that was? Don't you remember how wonderful it was?
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It would be like the prodigal being filled with that fatted calf, having stains of grease and oil on that beautiful robe, and glistening off the golden ring, and thinking, ah, that pig muck was so good.
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Do you remember that pig muck? It's that kind of almost irrational response.
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We had never come across them ever eating bread to the full, ever sitting by pots of meat in Egypt.
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Maybe initially when Joseph was under Pharaoh, that was true for God's people. But in 400 years after, that was not the case at all.
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They had cried out from a pit of misery. They were in anguish. And yet, as soon as they're rescued, their hunger pains have begun to delude them.
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As they're in the wilderness, their hunger has produced a false imagination. And so you see the point
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I'm getting at. We're in the wilderness of this weary life, and we have hunger. We have genuine hunger, both physical and, more importantly, spiritual.
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And that spiritual, physical complex of hunger, it drives us to delusion. It drives us to not be thoughtful about what
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God has promised, and where we are, where we're going. It drives us to have a false imagination about the world, the flesh, and the devil.
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Pig muck begins to look appetizing. Swine pods begin to look wonderful. That's the effect of this delusion of hunger.
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If only I could go back. Remember that Snickers ad campaign?
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You're not you when you're hungry? There's a modicum of theological truth to that.
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I don't want to give the ad agencies too much credit here, but there's a modicum of insight theologically there, covered under chocolate and caramel and peanuts, as it were.
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The insight is this. When you have a hunger according to the flesh, the appetite of the flesh, right, physical and spiritual, it drives you away from your identity in Christ.
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It drives you away from who you are in Christ. We are meant to be conformed by His Spirit into His image, and we can only do so insofar as our lives correspond to this.
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We do not live on bread alone. But on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
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Hunger pains make us think we must live on bread alone. And what kind of bread can we find?
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What kind of bread does the world have to offer? In other words, now we have this false understanding of who we are.
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We need bread. We need what the world has. We need what life has to offer. We need what my flesh demands.
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I can't live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. I must live according to the dictates of the world.
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Look how many have their stomachs filled with all that Babylon has to offer. When our hunger and more importantly, the satisfaction that we give to our hunger is not oriented and centered upon God, we're no different than the
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Israelites in Exodus 16. No different. We're thankless, infantile murmurers.
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You're not you when you're hungry. You're not you when you're hungry. Of course, this is why
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God has allowed us to be in the wilderness like the Israelites. He's trying and proving this work of grace in our lives.
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Deuteronomy 8 corresponds. The Lord humbled you. He allowed you to hunger. He knows how to provide for you.
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That doesn't mean you don't take steps. I know many in this congregation have taken some steps. If the economy really goes upside down, if there's really some need somewhere in the your crates of freeze -dried astronaut ice cream or whatever it is you're squirreling away.
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For me, my contingency plan right now is more being fed by ravens, by comet pond maybe.
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One way or another, the Lord is going to provide. So rather than worrying about provision,
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I ought to think about why it is the Lord has allowed me to hunger. Why have you deprived me right now in this season,
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Lord? Why am I hungering after this, thirsting after that? Why am I in need?
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Why am I unsatisfied? Why am I unfilled? Well, the
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Lord humbled you. He allowed you to hunger. And he fed you with manna which you did not know that he might make you know man does not live by bread alone.
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So in Exodus, the people are starving unto death. As we said, they refuse to acknowledge God, but he acknowledged them.
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He provided for their needs. And he provided for them, just like we've seen in the Gospels, in terms of provision of food, right?
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You shall be filled with bread and you shall know that I am the Lord your God. The curse of hunger met with the blessing upon those who are hungry.
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Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
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Are you hungry? Are you hungry? This morning, have you reckoned with your need?
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Have you come to the end of yourself? Do you see what you're wishing to feed upon? If you're hungry and you come saying like the prodigal father,
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I have sinned. If you come like that Canaanite woman saying, Lord, help me, Lord, meet my need. Lord, fill me.
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This is the Lord's word to you. I have heard and you shall be filled. I have heard and you shall be filled.
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As we said, not with croutons or breadcrumbs, but with bread from heaven.
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This picture of covenant faithfulness. Salvation is not a bring your own lunch kind of affair.
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God provides. We eat. We come with need. He meets the need. That's salvation. My God shall supply all your need,
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Paul says. So not the curse, not sweating faces, not toil and labor.
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Jesus already said, do not labor for the food which perishes. But what of this bread from heaven?
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What does he say? The Son of Man will give it to you. Do you see that sharp contrast?
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Don't labor for the food that's perishing. Come for the bread of heaven, which the Son of Man freely gives to you.
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He'll give it to you. If you come to him according to your desire, he'll give it to you.
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You see, it is given for you. It's why we say in Luke 22, this is, of course, the echelons of salvation being depicted as food.
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He took the bread and broke it, saying, this is my body given, given for you.
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So what is Jesus saying in John 6 when he's saying, don't labor for food that perishes.
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Receive the bread from heaven, which a Son of Man will give to you.
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And how is that taken up in the gospels? His own broken body on the tree. This is how he gives you the bread.
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He empties himself that you would be full. His own broken body that you would be whole.
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His own stripes and wounds that you would be healed. His own nakedness and shame that you would be clothed and honored.
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His own death that you would have life. And Jesus says, that's bread.
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That's bread. I'm the bread of life. And that life does not become bread for a weary, hungry soul unless it's been broken.
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That bread must be broken if it's to be the bread of life. It's one way to ask the question about your appetite this morning.
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Are you hungry? Have you partaken? Are you eating? Has Christ met your need?
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Has his body been broken for you? Is his bread sustaining your soul? Well, we ask just objectively, are you able to come?
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Are you even able to come and receive the emblem of that broken body? To actually put the bread in your mouth that signifies, in a greater sense, what it means to feed upon him.
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Are you able to? There's no question. There's no confusion. There's no wonder whether you're in or you're out if you're not able to come and partake.
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Don't wonder, do I know God? Do I not know God? Am I saved? Am I not saved? Let me answer it for you.
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If you're not partaking of the bread this day, you have no part with him. Are you hungry enough?
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That your soul desires to eat and to drink so you'll never hunger or thirst again.
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But even then, for those that will come up, do you come up as a routine?
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Is it at the point these many years on as a church that Charlie Brown's teacher is up doing the homily?
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And you don't even know that it's time to go up because you see everyone else stand up and go, oh, and almost like a zombie, you come down the aisle and thoughtlessly, like an animal, grab the bread or grab the cup that signifies the life and the death of our
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Savior. And you sit thoughtlessly and you put it in your mouth and you chew it and you just go through the motions, another week, another box ticked as you desire, may it be given to you.
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According to your hunger, may you eat. If we could recognize rightly what is offered freely to us, the kind of bread the
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Son of Man gave us, we would never think in that way. We would never respond to the
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Lord's Supper in that way. Of course, this bread is not enough to fill us, right?
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We have to resort to crockpots to be filled later in the day. This bread doesn't truly fill us physically.
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Frankly, it's not even the consummation of our being filled spiritually. And that's very important, too.
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As we said, wherever Jesus is, there is feasting. There's a reason Jesus in Matthew 26 says, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the day
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I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. Now you have emblems, now you have food in the wilderness, bread from heaven.
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But when you come into the land that's flowing with milk and honey, then we feast. Then we feast.
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It's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. This is not meant to be that feast. A lot like snacking or eating rolls or something ahead of a big
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Thanksgiving meal. That's what this is. It's not hungering unto death because the
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Lord is faithful to provide this bread from heaven, but it's neither the consummated feast that we await. So this bread, this meal, this emblem is meant not only to hold us over in our wilderness wandering, but it's also meant to build in us an anticipation for that feast.
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I don't know why it is when you go to a steakhouse or a restaurant, I forget the comic that pointed this out.
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He says, you know, I was making a steak at home and, you know, so I had this nice steak and I was, just like a restaurant,
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I was preparing it and as I was waiting for it, I decided I would eat a whole loaf of bread. You would never do that at home.
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But at a restaurant, you eat a whole loaf of bread before you eat the T -bone or whatever it is that they're making.
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And that's what this bread is like. It's the bread that holds you over and in doing so, it actually builds your anticipation for the greater feast yet to come.
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So you come hungry and though you're filled, it's not the kind of fullness that we await, a fullness in glory.
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The fullness of what Jesus means when He says, when you've actually truly partaken, you'll never hunger again.
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What an image for those of us who hunger after righteousness. Are you hungry this morning?
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Are you hungry? Maybe you could say as the psalmist, where is that blessedness
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I once knew? Well, so much of that blessedness was your hunger. Where is that blessedness
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I once knew? I would ask you, where is the hunger you once had? Where is your hunger?
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That's where your blessedness was. You were so hungry that you were filled. Jesus has promised as such, blessed are you who hunger now, you shall be filled.
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According to your desire, it shall be. So don't lament on where you wish you had been, if you're not working out the genuine need and hunger of your soul and coming to the one who has promised to be bread.
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We tasty, as we'll sing, we tasty, O thou living bread, and long to feast upon thee still.
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All we do here to this day is we taste. And in tasting, we long to feast upon him still.
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And that's why this blessed hunger will take up our whole life.
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To blessed hunger will be satiated, but never full until we see him and are made like him.
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And we're seated like the prodigal at our father's table to feast with all the saints who have gone on before and will come after us.
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Are you hungry? Let me give you one other closing thought. In the wilderness, we don't read this account, but in the wilderness,
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I imagine some of the Israelites experienced mirages and the promise of oasis. And with that promise of an oasis, of course, you have this excitement, this jolt.
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You think, finally, I can get there. Finally, water, coconuts, you know, whatever else is growing there.
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And then all that disappointment strikes you and crashes down upon you when you come to see that image that offered so much dissipate.
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And you realize it was a false provision. It was a false imagination of food.
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And yet it was so powerful. It was so vibrant. You went from weary and sort of salt cake to all of a sudden running with vigor, finding the strength you didn't think you had within you until you came up upon that scene and saw it disappear, disintegrate before your very eyes.
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Well, that is a picture in our wilderness wandering. That is a picture of the world. Vanity fair, but as a mirage, as a mirage, offering so much with such powerful, vibrant tones.
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And yet, as soon as we close in upon it, we find that it has nothing to offer our starvation, nothing to actually fill us with.
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The world only offers false food. It can offer a pretend fulfillment, but inevitably leaves you more empty than you had been before.
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Blessed are you if you've been spared going from pig muck to pig muck in your life. There's some in this room that came to the
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Lord years, decades later than others, and they know exactly what it means to chase after mirages, chase after the wind, to find the disillusionment and disappointment in what the world pretends is bread, and to find that it's no bread at all.
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In Haiti, after the severe earthquakes that brought about famine, some of the
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Haitian mothers would tie knots. They would take belts or they'd tie ropes, and they would tighten it as much as they could on their stomachs.
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Of course, any food, any provisions, any UN rice bags, it would all go to their family, to their children.
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As mothers are wont to do, they would take the hit for the good of their progeny. And so, one way that they tried to get by was they would tighten these belts around their stomach.
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Because having the stomach pressed in upon itself gave the brain this false sense that it was somehow full.
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So even though the body was wasting away, they'd just keep ratcheting that belt a little bit tighter. And at least for a few hours, their body had the sensation of being full.
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But in reality, they were empty. And in fact, they were only increasing in their emptiness. And I close you with that image.
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All you have before you is bread from heaven or the belts of the world.
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That's all. That's all there is. As we said from the silver chair,
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C .S. Lewis, a few weeks ago, there is no other stream. There is no other bread. All the world has is what looks like bread.
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It's just a belt. And if you commit your way to it, you'll just have to keep tightening it, finding some fullness in it.
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That's why, as one of the Puritans said, a man who has all of the world, we still call an empty man because even all of the world cannot fill a man in the way he was designed to be filled.
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Only Christ can fill that man. Are you hungry?
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Are you wearing a belt this morning? Or are you going to eat bread from heaven and be filled?
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Can you sing as we must sing? Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts, thou fount of life, thou light of men, from the best bliss that earth imparts, the best things the world has to offer, we turn unfilled to thee again.
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What a beautiful motion. From the best bliss the world has to offer, even genuinely good gifts, genuine wonders from God's own hand, the joy of new births in a close -knit family around a feasting table on Thursday.
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Even the best bliss that earth imparts, we turn unfilled to thee again. Belts or bread, that's the question.
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Jesus says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger. And our response must be, as they said,
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Lord, give us this bread always. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word.
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Thank you for sending your son to give us life by taking to himself death, even the death on the cross.
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Lord, it's a marvel to us that when we cared not for you in that far country, you had a design of mercy upon us.
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When we would feed on things that would ruin us, Lord, you would give us that which would save us. When we come back looking for excuses or reasons to feel justified,
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Lord, you strip all that away and stripping away the clothing of our existence, you exile you and robe us in your own righteousness.
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Sit us at a table. Give us bread from heaven. Do that this day,
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Lord. Let each one in this room this morning truly level with their hunger, maybe their lack of hunger.
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Lord, I personally pray you'd increase my hunger. Give me a greater hunger and thirst than I've had so that I can find the fulfillment of that promise that if I hunger,
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I will be filled. Lord, give people here hunger that perhaps they've never had before, spiritual hunger, a spiritual awakening.
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Let this institution of your supper be objective and concrete to them. If they can't eat the bread physically, they're not eating the bread spiritually.
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Indeed, they cannot. And Lord, may we as a church be those who anticipate this feast yet to come, that we fix our hope fully upon that which will be revealed on that great day, that we don't expect to find that consummated fullness in this life, but rather have every opportunity to say with all the saints,
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Lord, Maranatha, come. And may our worship, like the
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Canaanite woman's worship, be that which invites your help and surprises you with delight that we would receive according to our desire.