[Darris McNeely] There's a Scripture speaking of children and our young people in Exodus 12:26, we could turn there, that speaks to a question that our children do ask. Exodus 12:26, where Israel is coming out of Egypt and it says to the children of Israel, "It shall be, when your children say to you," which is really a question, "what do you mean by this service?" And it's speaking directly about the Passover hereafter the explanation for that. What does all this mean? What's this all about? Killing of a lamb, putting blood on the doorposts? And when they ask you that question, and they do, and we all do, in Exodus 13:8 is put in a different way, speaking more to the Days of Unleavened Bread itself. In verse 8, it says, "You shall tell your son in that day, saying, 'This is done because of what the Lord did for me when came up from Egypt,'" speaking of the Days of Unleavened Bread.

So, with Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, there's the obvious question from a child, from a young person, "Why do we do these things? What does it all mean?" And it's important to have an answer. It's important to have the right answer to anyone but especially to our children regarding the reason or the question or the whole thing about the Days of Unleavened Bread, Passover, which as we know is just a few days away from us at this time. In my younger days in the ministry, it was actually within the first year of my time in the ministry, I gave a sermon about this time of year in anticipation of the Holy Days coming up. And I spent about an hour, probably a little bit more in those days talking about the Days of Unleavened Bread to come and how to prepare for those days. And I know that I spent far too much time talking about the physical aspects of the preparation for Unleavened Bread.

I talked about cleaning that toaster out and getting every last crumb out. I talked about making sure that the freezers are all cleared out of bread crumbs, bread items, anything with leavening, reading all the labels to make sure that anything with yeast and baking soda, etc., was all out the door and gathered up and put out, and make sure that the cushions are all pulled apart from the sofa and the chairs, and everything's moved and vacuumed, and this and that. And that was a lot of my sermon. I had a gentleman there that day who was a prospective member. He had been attending with us for some time. He was a World War II vet, he was a Korean War vet, and he was a Vietnam War vet at that time. This was in the early 1970s. And he was kind of a tough, grizzled character. All right? He came by and he tapped me on the shoulder as he was leaving that day after the service and he said, "What you talked about kind of sounds like a college hazing prank," to him. Oh, I thought, "Well, you're in a bad attitude." I did not see Mr. Vaughn anymore after that, unfortunately. And I don't know whatever happened to him. But it struck him probably in the manner in which… in the emphasis that I had at the time that it sounded just a little bit off to his mind. And I kind of got defensive about it and probably gave that sermon once or twice again. But one day, about this time of year, a few years later, I was cleaning out my freezer, same freezer that I have today. I have a freezer that's over 40 years old, older than most of you in this room. Hey, I got a lot of old stuff hanging around. Make sure I get all the crumbs out and had everything out of there. And then it struck me that maybe I was spending too much time cleaning out that freezer and I was being frozen out of the deeper meaning of the Days of Unleavened Bread.

Why do you keep the Days of Unleavened Bread? Why do you put the leavening out? Why do you eat that flatbread as I was telling the students a few days ago as we were going through that doctrine? I said matzos are okay, but a matzo is really just a delivery vehicle for butter, maybe peanut butter too on there. It serves its purpose really best in that way in one sense, just on a strictly physical level. Why do we keep the Days of Unleavened Bread? A few years ago, I really started to look at the questions that a kid would ask as I was explaining it now to my teenage sons and adult sons to explain to them why we do all of this. And I want to take you today to a scripture in John 6 that I began to think about, and fall upon, and study to really get to a deeper meaning for putting out the leaven, eating unleavened bread for seven days, and doing everything that we do, so that even I myself could answer that question a whole lot better to my own mind. Because about 25 years ago, there was a major challenge to all of us about the Word of God, the Law of God, the Holy Days, the Sabbath, and I began to think as I was still teaching this, believing it, "Why do we eat unleavened bread?" It's dough and water, flour and water and some salt. What's the purpose of it? And why is it important to put out the unleavened bread, but specifically, to eat that unleavened bread?

Here in John 6 is an episode that in Christ’s ministry that is profound. It's very, very deep. It starts off in chapter 6 where He does one of His miracles of feeding 5,000 people and multiplying the food items, including the bread to feed 5,000 people, and then they had a lot of it leftover. And the people were just caught up in this miracle, some probably thought it was a trick done by this itinerant rabbi, and that's all that they saw about Christ at that time.

And then some wanted even more, and they followed Him, and came upon Him wanting what? More of what? Was it more of His teaching or was it another meal?

Well, in verse 22, we can begin to read about this and what Jesus said to them because it said, "On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except the one which His disciples had entered, and Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but they had gone away alone— other boats came from Tiberius, near the place where the Lord had given thanks— and when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, or His disciples, they also got in boats, came to Capernaum on the north shore of Galilee, seeking Jesus. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, 'Rabbi, when did You come here?' And Jesus answered, 'Well, 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.'"

He cuts right to the heart of what He perceived was their really… the real reason for them to come and to seek Him out is that they were looking, it seems, many for another meal or to watch another, "Could He replicate this? Can it be done twice?" Maybe they were of a scientific mind that they had to see that if needed… if it is something of a miracle, then you have to at least do it twice, maybe three times for acceptance on that. And it tells them at verse 27, "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him." Don't labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures through everlasting life, quite a contrast, isn't it? The food that perishes, the bread that will grow stale and then grow moldy.

We all know that that happens. If we keep it too long, the green stuff starts to form and we have to throw it out. As opposed to the bread, He says here that endures through everlasting life, which is obviously the spiritual bread, something of the spiritual dimension. And in a sense, satisfies as He says here, and does not wear us out, food that endures to eternal life. You know how it is, there are some meals, some types of food that we can eat and it will fill us up. It will kind of bloat us and we feel full for a little bit of time, but maybe within an hour, hour-and-a-half, we're hungry again because there's not enough nutrition within that food. It could be some type of fast food. It could just be thinly made soup or some other food that just doesn't have a lot of nutrition. And very shortly, we are hungry again. But even if it is good food with solid nutrition, we're still going to grow hungry within 4 to 6 hours and, you know, 12 hours anyway, and we have to eat again. And really, there is nothing that is going to completely satisfy us forever. And what Jesus is really speaking to is beyond even food at this time because, you know, life itself for us is that we have to work, we earn a paycheck, we go to the grocery store, we buy our food, then we have to go back again within a few days. And then a few more days after that and it's a cycle. And life is that cycle. Nothing really endures physically. We have to replenish what's in the refrigerator, what's in our cupboards. We have to replenish what we wear because it too will wear out. We have to buy a new car every few years. We have to paint the house. We go through cycles in just about everything that we do in this physical life because it never completely satisfies and endures. Nothing does forever. We have to replenish, repaint, redo, rework. That's just the nature of life. And Jesus is speaking to something here beyond all of that as He begins to use this object lesson of food.

And verse going on, "They said to Him then, 'What shall we do that we may work the work of God?'" He said, Jesus, answered, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him, who He said, whom He said." That is God's work, to believe He sent the Word… He sent Jesus, the Word became flesh, we're told in the first chapter of John. The eternal spirit was joined to human flesh so that others could follow through repentance, and faith, and receiving that Spirit, and have the hope of eternal life. So that humankind could have the potential or the opportunity to become a part of the God kind. This is the work of God. This is why Christ was sent. This is what the Father sent the Word for and to accomplish and this is really what He is talking about.

In verse 30, He said, "Therefore they said to Him, 'What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You?'" They wanted to see something again physical to verify what He had said. What work will you do? “Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” The story during the Exodus of what God provided for them in measure for six days, and twice the amount on the sixth day to tide them over on the Sabbath, of this wondrous bread, maybe… not Wonder Bread, but wondrous bread from heaven, that came down as "What's it?" that it literally was, that fed them and kept them going here. And they kind of referred back to that. But Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven." He skipped right over the manna story. He didn't even pick up on it. He said, "God has given you the true bread from heaven. The Father gives it," He says. Now, they begin to desire this bread, "For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” This is the bread to focus on, the One who became flesh, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. “And they said to Him” in verse 34, "Well, Lord, give us this bread then always." That sounds a whole lot better. That's going to be quite more… a bit more nourishing.

“And Jesus said to them,” to really bring it down to the point, He says, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst." He is the bread of life. And this is one of the several "I AM" statements that Jesus makes in the book of John that points back to Exodus 3, where the one who became Christ appear to Moses in the burning bush and proclaim themselves to be "I AM, THAT I AM” when Moses asked, "Who do I tell Israel has sent me?" "Tell them I AM." Jesus repeatedly applied that same name to Him in the flesh, showing us that not only was He a God in the flesh, but He was the God who had appeared to Moses in that occasion there. But He said, "You come to Me and you will never hunger, you will never thirst." In verse 36, "But I said to you that you have seen Me and you do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast him out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day."

So, a lot is packed into this particular part here. Christ says, "I am the bread of life." Again, pointing to the fact of who He really was before His human birth was divine, was the Word, was the one who was with God from the very beginning. And He begins to talk about this bread then that's come down from heaven that if we eat, we will never hunger again. When we stop to think about what this bread really is as we apply it to ourselves today as a New Covenant Christian, we automatically are drawn to 1 Corinthians 11 of the instruction regarding the Passover meal that Paul gives concerning the meal where Jesus changed the symbols of the Passover to the bread and the wine.

In 1 Corinthians 11:24, "Jesus took bread," it says there, "and He said, 'Take and eat; this is My body given for you.'" And so we connect that bread to the bread statement here, obviously, to what Jesus would ultimately do and show that that bread representing His body, that we take it the Passover service. Obviously, with unleavened bread as well, there's the unleavened bread that we focus on as well. And again, as a New Covenant Christian, we take that unleavened piece of bread on the Passover service to represent Christ's broken body for us and then we eat unleavened bread for the seven-day period. And so, that's the bread that we focus on. We don't focus on manna. We're not doing that. Why do we do it? Why do we it, why do we eat that, that bread at the Passover? Well, Christ said… Paul writes, "To proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." That's the whole purpose and reason for that.

In verse 39 here, He said, "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day." Jesus took very, very seriously those that the Father had given to Him, those that had been called in His ministry, His disciples, and the close disciples that were surrounding Him during His ministry. In John 10, Jesus says, "That I am the Chief Shepherd. My sheep hear My voice." And He does not like the scattering of the sheep. A lot is said in Scripture regarding that. But verse 39 tells us that we as His disciples are very important to Him. You are very important to Christ and to the Father. Having received that calling, having accepted that calling, having come under the blood of Christ through baptism and in faith accepting that, we are very important to Him, and it is not His will that He loses any one of us, which speaks to the love that we should have one for another, the deep love that we should have for one another and growing in that nature of a sincere affection for one another in our lives.

I love that, frankly, given the diversity of our backgrounds, of our personalities, of our interests, and who we are, that type of love can only come from God through His Spirit to keep us united, to keep us together, to keep us a part of the spiritual body, but also demonstrating in very tangible ways with each other in our lives, in our conversations, an affection, a care, a grace through our words, our actions that draw us together and keep us together. Now when you see the camp video like we do every year, every few years, I guess one is produced, but there's a very nice one that's been done this year. But one of the things that I noticed going through it that is common to every camp video we've had and indeed common to our whole camp program, it came out, again, in one or two of the comments I caught, and that is the camp just builds relationships. The camp builds relationships among our young people, among themselves, to their counselors, and to the adult staff that endure to this very day. I'm looking back now 25 years. I mean, I'm privileged to work with, in this building every day, young people. Yeah, they're young people, they're younger than me, but they got kids, too. But we work together in the early years of the United Camp program.

You know, I always said as a camp director that it really didn't matter where we had a camp program, you know, to get an ice camp facility is important with lakes and woods and all of the facilities. But I learned after the very first year that I was a camp director, I realized, you know, I could set this camp up in the middle of a mall parking lot and they would come. And they would have fun because they would be together. And in the early years of the program, it was really important to get everybody together and heal up from the period of the mid-1990s. But it was built on relationships, and it still is. I'm glad we have these nice facilities, and many of them are just absolutely superb that has been made available for us. But it's about the relationships that are developed. And it's about our relationships with one another when it's all said and done, and they are very important to Christ.

And we should love one another. And brethren, we should not seek to scatter. We should not seek to divide. That should not be in our vocabulary. That should not be among our plans. God hates division, just like He hates divorce. And He has a lot to say about the scattered sheep. Christ was touching on it here in verse 39.

Well, let's read on in verse 41. "The Jews then complained about Him, because He said, 'I am the bread which comes down from heaven.' And they said, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, 'I have come down from heaven?'" They couldn't make that connection. They were just looking at Him as a physical flesh and blood person. They knew His parents. You know, that's the kiss of death to say, "Oh, I knew you when you were a kid. I knew your parents." And again, if there's any authority or if there's any supervision involved there, then that, you know, supposedly just kind of cuts through all of that and the gates, the authoritative aspect of the relationship, "I knew you when," or, "I remember this." That's really what they were saying. They couldn't get beyond that to understand the depth of His spiritual teaching and that He had come down from heaven, what had been given to them. They were complaining.

Christ came from the Father, the Father sent Him, and they were given to Christ. And everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him, it is to Christ that we look to have and have the security that we need. They were complaining as they talked among themselves. And later it says they were murmuring in verse 43 among themselves. And later it says, like down in verse 52, they quarreled among themselves over another thing that He said and they grumbled, which is what the Israelites did when they came out of Egypt under Moses, but you would ask, why were they grumbling at Christ or about Christ or what He said here? When you carefully look at these words, the Father doesn't grumble about Christ. The Father doesn't quarrel about Christ and what He has sent Him to do. Why did these people? Why indeed would we? We shouldn't. That is not what this is a part of.

Picking it up in verse 43, He said, "Don't murmur among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws Him; and I will raise him up at the last day.” A well-known verse to us. “It is written in the prophets, ‘That they should all be taught by God.’ Therefore, everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” They work together, the Son and the Father. There's no division. There's no competition. They work together. "Not that anyone has seen the Father," Christ said, as He said several other occasions here, especially in John, "except He who is from God; He has seen the Father." Christ, the Word was with the Father and became flesh. This follows on from what John 1 tells us.

Verse 47, "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life." So He gets back to the center of His whole talk here, which is this bread of life. "Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, they're dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread, which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." Very direct, very straight teaching. Eat this bread, eat this bread, and we will live forever. This is the bread of life, Jesus says that He is.

Now we take the Passover every year to remember the death of Christ and the means by which we have the opportunity to enter into life, the life of the Spirit. And it is important we distinguish between that and the life that we have in the flesh. That is part of this depth of understanding and teaching about Passover, Unleavened Bread, the bread of life, Christ, and His life, and His body, and all of this that is a part of the symbolism and the ritual that we take part in during this time of year, we have that opportunity to enter into life. Eat this bread, you will live forever.

It's the life of the Spirit. It is the life of the Spirit of God that we are taking in in this whole process. The essence of God in us, His very essence, His Spirit in us brings that divine life of God to our human physical life as it joins with us. All described in Romans, the eighth chapter, in a wonderful section that describes how God's Spirit works with our human spirit, how we are through baptism and through the laying on of hands, we receive that Spirit, but it comes into our life and we begin to taste the life of the world to come and the age to come. We begin to then take on the divine nature, as we receive that Spirit and we allow it to grow, to develop, we use it, we are led by it in this light. We put off the human nature and we take on the divine nature. And it's a lifelong process that really begins with our calling and with our baptism, which we then remember as also part of this Passover service. It is a rededication to that commitment we made at baptism. It is a renewal of the covenant we made with God through the blood of Christ and His sacrifice at our baptism. We renew that every year after a period of examination.

But we are taking on these symbols that are extremely important to us. We don't have a lot of rituals in the Church of God. And when you stop and think about it, we anoint people for sickness, we lay hands and anoint or bless our children, we lay hands on someone when we ordain them. We do that when we have the ritual of baptism, immersion, and water prayer, laying on of hands for the receipt of the Spirit, that's another ritual that we have. We have our traditions, in terms of our services, the way we conduct our services but in terms of the spiritual rituals that we see from Scripture that we do, we don't have a lot. And when we come to Passover and Unleavened Bread, with the Passover service, the foot washing, and the taking of the bread and the wine, and then putting the leavened out and eating unleavened bread for seven days, these rituals are from Scripture that has deep spiritual meaning that we take part in that are very, very important.

As I say, we don't have a lot in the Church, but the ones we have, we should pay attention to and understand because they are extremely, extremely important to this whole matter of eternal life before God and take them in a way that each year we renew a deeper meaning and not take it for granted or just kind of slide into it as it were. That's not what is necessary.

Going back to verse 53 here… verse 52, says, the Jews quarrel about them saying, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" Well, Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood…" So, again, a direct reference to what we do on the Passover service. "Unless you do that, you have," He says, "no life in you." And He is speaking to the Spirit life, the life of the Spirit. "Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

And so unless we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood in the symbolic matters that we do at Passover service, we then, He said, we have no life within us. But because we do through His Spirit and we renew that commitment with the symbols of bread and wine, we are reminded of this deep, profound Spiritual reality, that God's Spirit, His life, the real-life that is most important is in us. And that's something that I think is part of the preparation thought, a bit of prayer and thinking about to recognize that that is the life that as God's Spirit is in us, that is ultimate life. That is the real life. Now we pinch ourselves and we know we hurt, we're physical. We need sleep. And then, again, we need bread and other, you know, liquid to sustain this physical life. And there's no question about that. And we enjoy that and we recognize that. But we recognize that it's not reality. Reality is where God and Christ are. The spirit realm, the spirit dimension, however, you want to phrase it, that's where… that is reality. And God gives us the essence of His nature, His spirit, and that is life. And it is the earnest if you will. It is that which then begins to help us put on the divine nature and leads to this life that He will raise up at the last day with the hope of eternal life.

These are the deep, profound truths that we are working with during Unleavened Bread, during the Passover service as we focus upon these symbols. They are all the symbols of the spiritual reality that we have. He goes on in verse 55, "For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him." We eat His flesh, we drink His blood. And we know what we do on Passover and that's when we do it, and we know that they are symbols. We know that they are not literally the flesh of Christ, nor literally the blood of Christ. It is symbolic of both. But Jesus says that when we do that, it represents and shows that He abides in us, He lives in us. He will say to them on the night before His death, He will say, "I will come to you. I will come to you." And He does. He did and He does through the Spirit. This is what is being said here. The bread and the wine, they are the symbols of the spiritual reality that Christ is in us by the eternal Spirit. He has come to us and He lives within us.

In verse 57, "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so He who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven— not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever." And He said these things in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum, on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.

And so, what He is showing us in verse 57, "The living Father sent Me." The Father has blessed us with Christ. It is His will. It is the Father's will and purpose, as Paul will write to the book of Ephesians 1, "It is the Father's will and purpose in Christ to grant us redemption and forgiveness through the blood of Christ." All things ultimately in heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical dimensions will be brought together in Christ. This is the profound relationship that we are drawn to. Christ laid down the path to salvation for us through Him in this whole process.

Some listening to this here could not understand and they left Him. It says they departed from Him at this point. It was too hard. It was too hard. And so He turns to His disciples and He said, "Will you too leave me?" And it is Simon Peter in verse 67 who gives the answer for the 12. He answered and he said, "Lord," in verse 68, "to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." His teaching, all that He was showing them and representing to them points to the knowledge of eternal life. And they were expressing the faith that leads to salvation and the importance of it. It's a profound passage that speaks to the very depth of what we do on Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. So what have we learned as we've gone through this? Let me sum it up with four points here. Number one, we eat unleavened bread… and this is to answer the question that I posed at the beginning, why do we eat unleavened bread after reading this? Well, number one, we eat unleavened bread for seven days to follow God's instructions. That's very clear.

When we read back in Exodus 12 and 13, but specifically in Exodus 13:6-7, we eat that by God's instruction. Very plain, very direct. Exodus 13:6, "Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day, there shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days. And no leavened bread shall be seen among you, nor shall leaven be seen among you in all of your quarters." When the Israelites initially left Egypt on that night, they didn't have time to even allow it to be raised. And it became unleavened because they didn't have time. They were thrust out and thrust out suddenly, we're told in the Scripture here. But then it becomes that object lesson that God implanted within this festival that we understand and we carry on and we do it because we're told to do it. That's pretty straightforward. Second reason, we eat unleavened bread for seven days to picture the unleavened life of Jesus Christ within us.

We've just read in John 6 that we eat His flesh, we will live forever. “I will abide in You.” And we eat… If we look at that piece of flatbread that we either bake ourselves and some wonderful recipes or probably in the new cookbook that you can buy for $13.98 or however much it is, $12 or $15, or whatever… I think the money this year goes to the ABC International Student Fund, which is a pretty good cause to fund students coming at ABC. So, that's my plug for the ABC cookbook there. But I'm sure there's some very good recipes in there. We've got one from… You know how many cookbooks we've bought and put together of unleavened bread over the years in 46 years in the ministry? We've got a whole rack of them at home. But we're going to add one more I think just to support the current class of that. There's some good recipes for that. But whatever it is, it's unleavened and it should represent and it does represent the unleavened bread of Christ within us.

Look at Galatians 2, the unleavened life, I should say of Jesus Christ within us. Galatians 2:20, flagship verse, kind of a core thought when it comes to all of this and everything. Paul writes, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Paul is speaking here to the life that he lives. It is the life of Christ that lives within him. And by that Spirit, God does live within us. It is the Spirit of the Father. It is the Spirit of Christ. It is the Spirit of the family of God if you want to look at it that way. It is that and everything, but it is God within us. And when we eat that unleavened bread for seven days, that should be the thought we are focusing on that we have that life… we're putting that life within us. We need that life. That is the life that satisfies. That is the life that was the spiritual vitality of God that nourishes and satisfies the human needs, the longing, the inadequacies that we feel, and gives us everything and all things that we need in our everyday life and in the life of faith that we are called to on the path to the Kingdom of God.

Now, thirdly, we eat unleavened bread to be reminded that the only way to put out sin, the only way to put out the old man, which is the reason that we put the leavening out of our quarters and out of our homes is to picture putting out sin, but we know that that's a physical action. But when we eat them, the unleavened bread, the lesson I take from that is that the only way that I can put any sin out of my life, the spiritual sin that does… very easily beset us all, to put off my old man, as Colossians 3 tells us, the only way that I can do that is by putting on Christ, letting His life live within me, and in a sense, pushing out the old man, putting out the bad air if you will, with the good air that comes in. It's an analogy that I heard years ago and it still fits. You put out the bad air by putting in the good air. All right? We put out the old man by putting in Christ, putting on Christ.

In Romans 13, Paul says this. Romans 13:11, he says, "It's high time to awake out of sleep; now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.” Another way of saying, let us put out the bad air and put in the good air, or let's put out the old man and put on the new man. "Let us walk properly," in verse 13, "as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy." Those are the things we are to put off. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, put it on. Like the humility that Peter will talk about in 1 Peter 5 that we put on. And we have to put it on one piece at a time. And some pieces might be a struggle for us to put on because we don't want to put off the old. We don't want to give up something about ourselves, something about our nature quite yet. And we're not yet to the point where we can or want to maybe. “But we put on Christ,” is what is being said here “and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” We eat the unleavened bread so that we can put out sin, to teach us that that's how it's done.

When I eat that bread, that unleavened bread, even with the butter and the peanut butter and whatever else I might put on it, maybe a little jelly occasionally or whatever else we might have, I think that's the lesson I remember, that I need Christ in me to put off the old.

Fourthly, we eat unleavened bread to remember Christ's life. The Spirit is the key to fulfilling the righteous requirement of the law. Here in Romans 8, Paul speaks about the righteous requirement of the law that must be fulfilled in us. Romans 8:1 tells us, "There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” As we are led by God's Spirit, as it is a part of our life, that nature of God in us, that, "The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus," he said, "has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin; and He condemned sin in the flesh."

We cannot keep the full spiritual dimension of the law without God's Spirit within us. This is what the Scripture shows. And when we receive that after repentance and faith, baptism, the laying on of hands, then we receive that nature of God within us, and we have then the ability to begin to keep the spiritual dimension of the law that Christ defined in the Sermon in the Mount and other places. But that is “that righteous requirement of the law” that verse 4 speaks about, “that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” God's Spirit in us gives us the ability to keep the righteous requirement of the law. There is a requirement to keep the law, that that law extends into the spiritual realm, you know, that Jesus spoke to and allows us then to begin to internalize that as it is written upon our heart. Unleavened bread is a reminder then that it's Christ's life within us, that perfect, sinless life of Christ through His Spirit that helps us to fulfill the righteous requirement of the law that verse 4 speaks to here.

So brethren, why do we eat unleavened bread? Why do we go through the ritual of putting it out? Why do we eat it for seven days as God teaches us? I think these Scriptures help us to answer that for ourselves and to provide an answer for our children, when we explain it all to them, as they are able to understand it year by year, as they mature and to develop so that they understand the fullness of the meaning of the bread of life, and all that that pictures and all that means. It's deep, it's profound. It is the essence of our life and it is what we should focus on as we prepare ourselves over the next few days to take that Passover and to keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread.

So, tomorrow, in the McNeely household, part of the ritual on our Sunday is to go into the freezer, same freezer that I've had that revelation all those years ago. We've got a freezer that's as old as our oldest kid. It's about 42 years old and it's still working. It's a Sears freezer. It may outlast all the last Sears stores when it's all said and done. And we'll clean it out. We'll spend what time that we need to do it. But while I'm doing it, I'll be thinking about some of the spiritual lessons as we begin to prepare for what I think is my 58th Days of Unleavened Bread. Number 58 for me. For some of you, I know it's more than that, and we're still here and we're still doing it. And that is good. And we will keep the days and we will keep the Feast according to what God says. And once again, as I do it by example and have the time to spend with my children and grandchildren during the Days of Unleavened Bread, then I will be able to teach my children, "This is why we do what we do."

[Steve Myers] Another one of our little ones came up to me before church today…and I’ve started this whole process of things. I’ve got to stay on my toes, because they are pretty sharp little ones, I’ll tell you. One little one came up and said, “Mr. Myers, do you know why the baker goes to work?” I said, “I don’t know. Why does the baker go to work?” And they said, “Because he kneads the dough.” So I immediately came back and said, “Why doesn’t anyone want to work in a matzo factory? That’s a crumby place to work!”

It’s good to have fun on the holy days. We have been so blessed. It is interesting, sometimes, the way we describe these days. We have our own little acronyms for things, sometimes. You know these days, what do we call them? If you have to write it out – I don’t want to write out “Days Of Unleavened Bread.” I’ll just write, this is: the DUB, right? D-U-B. Days of Unleavened Bread. We’re rub-a-dub-dub…. The Feast is FOT – the Feast of Tabernacles, right? I think we love acronyms. Maybe KFC, or BFF or whatever it may be...LOL. I got kind of confused when I first saw this one. It was like, somebody is writing me OX OX OX OX. So it’s like, “What is that?” So somebody had to explain to me about hugs and kisses and that sort of thing.

How about ROI? What about ROI? In business – and I think in spirituality – it’s all about ROI. Now, it’s not about R-O-Y, but R-O-I, instead. What is the value of ROI? In business, it’s all about Return on Investment – R-O-I. Do you think God worries about the value of ROI? The value of His Return on Investment? In business, if you don’t get a return on investment, what happens? You’re out. You shut down. You’re not going to make anything. You go out of business. You go bankrupt. So, if you invested $100,000 in your business, and you worked and you did everything you could to make money – that $100,000 is that capital that it took to start – and you work and you work, by the end of the year if you have $110,000, that’s pretty good – better than nothing. That’s a return on your investment – about a 10% increase. That would be a 10% ROI. And 10% by today’s standards, I suppose that’s a little better than putting it in a savings account. You might get 1%, if you’re lucky, and you do that. So 10% – alright, that’s not so bad.

But you know, there’s a big difference between an investment and a donation, isn’t there? A donation you just give it and you don’t expect anything in return. But an investment, you expect something back.

Now, has God invested in us? Absolutely. We just came through the Passover and we were reminded of 1 Corinthians 6:20 where it says:

1 Corinthians 6:20 – For you were bought with a price. You were bought with a price. And so we could say God expects a return on that investment. Right there He says, Therefore – because we were bought with a price, He expects with that investment there should be a return. He says, glorify God in your body and your spirit which are God’s.

So, in a way, God owns us, and He expects a return – expects some spiritual growth. So we could say, “Alright, how are we spending that investment?” How are we spending our life? Since we are owned, and our life has been bought for a price – God owns us – and the store that we manage – our life – we’ve got to manage that company. We’ve got to manage our life – that store. And Passover certainly reminds us that, if we are a true disciple of Christ, our life must be the right kind of investment.
 
So, let’s think about that for a moment. Let’s think about the value of that return on God’s investment. Let’s think about the spiritual ROI and look at a couple of lessons from a particular story that’s found in the Bible. In fact, it’s a bread story – not necessarily one you might associate with the Days of Unleavened Bread, but one nonetheless that has interesting lessons that certainly apply. In fact, this particular miracle of Jesus Christ, is the only one that’s found in all four Gospels. It’s the only one in four – other than the resurrection. It’s the only miracle of Christ that’s found in all four of the Gospels. Do you know which one that is? It’s feeding the 5,000 – the story of feeding the 5,000. So, if you will, let’s turn over to Matthew. We’ll look in Matthew first. So turn over to Matthew 14 – is where we’ll begin.
 
Matthew 14:6-7 – When Herod’s birthday was celebrated, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod.  Therefore, he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask. So, what would the dancer ask for?

V-8-10 – So she, having been prompted by her mother, said, “Give me John the Baptist’s head here on a platter.” And the king was sorry; nevertheless, because of the oaths and because of those who sat with him he commanded it to be given her. So he sent and had John beheaded in prison.

So we have a terrible, awful, just horrendous banquet. A big party had taken place and horrible results came from it. This is a little bit of a precursor to what Jesus Christ would do. John the Baptist dies at the hand of Herod. His whole administration was filled with leaven – filled with evil, filled with jealousy, and he kills the prophet – kills John the Baptist – in a way, foreshadowing the death of Jesus Christ. So we see that, by this banquet, it sets up a number of other situations. In fact, verse 13:

Matthew 14:13 – When Jesus heard it, He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself. But when the multitudes heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities.

So here we see, a little bit later Jesus Christ goes out into the wilderness. We’re not exactly sure where this is. The place is not specifically given. In fact, the last location mentioned in chapter 13 is Nazareth. It doesn’t mean it was there, but somewhere out in a place that was deserted. It could be solitary – a desolate place, a lonely place. Christ departed there. It seems that He’s a ways away from the lake where this boat was available.

Matthew 14:14 – And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude…. So, people had followed Him here. They had heard of some of the miracles that He had performed. It says:

Matthew 14:13-14 – When the multitudes had heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities. And when Jesus went out, He saw that great multitude and was filled with compassion for them and He healed their sick.
So Jesus takes pity on them. He was moved. This word here literally means had compassion or He had yearning bowels. He was just heartsick, as we might say, or He had a stomach ache over the fact that these people were without a shepherd. They had no direction. Their life was going nowhere. They weren’t even into the business yet and had no direction. In fact, if you hold your place here and turn over to Mark, you’ll see a little bit more of the story – Mark 6:34. We see the compassion of Christ is explained here a little more in Mark. Notice verse 34.

Mark 6:34 – And Jesus, when He came out, He saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them –why? –because they were like sheep not having a shepherd. They were lost. So He began to teach them many things.

It’s amazing! As Christ departs to this solitary place, instead of getting frustrated with the people who just showed up, He had compassion on them. He pitied them. He was moved to compassion for them. And what did He do? He preached. He taught. And He healed them.He healed them.
We could say that He filled their needs. But there were more needs that needed to be filled as well.

V-35-36 – When the day was far spent, His disciples came to Him and said, ‘This is a deserted place. The hour is late.  Send them away, that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread; for they have nothing to eat.

This is kind of interesting because we find Jesus Christ in this situation where they’re in a secluded place and there is no food. There are no KFCs around here. There’s no fast food anywhere near here. So the disciples say, ‘Send them away because the hour is late.’ That phrase, the hour is late, or the evening is far spent, is the same wording that is used just before the Passover, when Matthew uses that phrase, when it was evening – Matthew 14:15. That is the exact phrase that is used here. And I don’t think it’s by accident. I think we’re supposed to be thinking in those terms. What was Christ’s purpose? What was He about? What was He doing? Here He is meeting the needs of the people. He cares about them. He’s sacrificing His time. He’s sacrificing His opportunity to relax, to serve, and to give and to teach and to heal, so we see some Passover implications that are mentioned here as well.

So, in this deserted place, when the hour is late, they say, “Send them away,” but Christ does something different instead – verse 37

Mark 6:37 – But instead He answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ And they said to Him, ‘Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give them something to eat?’

They didn’t get it. How in the world would this be possible? We’d need 200 denarii. That’s a roman silver coin that’s a little over a troy ounce. So we’re talking about big bucks. In fact, if you were to translate that amount into modern terminology, a denarii would be what an agricultural worker would earn for a day’s work. So what do you earn for a day’s work if you have to pick the beets, if you have to take care of the cotton? Well, an agricultural worker today, here, is going to work for minimum wage. You multiply that by 10 hours in a day, that’s $72.50. Take that and multiply it by the 5,000 men, plus women and children, that would have been there, and we’re talking 200 denarii would be something like $14,000. “Where are we going to come up with $14,000? How are we even going to buy enough bread to make that happen?” But what does Christ say? Did you notice what He said? What did He tell them? “You give them something to eat.” It’s our job. It’s our responsibility. Christ didn’t say, “Let Me do this miracle and I’ll handle it.” Did you notice that? He said, “You give them something to eat.” I think, by extension, that’s a lesson of ROI. Talk about return on investment! God expects return on investment. He expects us to do our jobs.

Can you imagine what this world would be like if everybody just did their jobs? You know what it’s like where you work – or where you worked, if you’re retired. People do their jobs? Hardly. Hardly. If everybody actually worked – maybe even half the time they’re supposed to be working – could you imagine the productivity we would have? Christ is saying “Do your job. It is your responsibility.” Jesus made it very clear. He regarded this task of feeding the people their responsibility. Yes, He was going to give them the means to accomplish that job, and He would never assume that they could do something that they couldn’t do – that was beyond their capabilities. God never lays on us a responsibility that we are not capable of fulfilling. How do we know that? I think there’s one verse that reminds us of that. Didn’t Paul write to the Philippians?

Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And who is going to strengthen the disciples – to make sure that they could give them something to eat? You see, we are required to do our job.
 
Ephesians 6:10 – Be strong in the Lord and the power of His might.

Boy, these Days of Unleavened Bread remind us of the awesome acts of God and the powerful amazing things that God can do. But those people still had to walk out of Egypt. He didn’t whisk them out on some magic carpet or anything, did He? He didn’t do it that way. They had a job to do. They had a responsibility to fulfill. We do too. We’re to be strong in the Lord. We’re to be strong in the grace that is Christ Jesus. Are we strong in grace?

2 Timothy 2: 1 – You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 3:16 – [that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to] be strengthened with might by His spirit like the inner man.

That’s our job. He’s given us a job to grow in grace and knowledge. He’s given each of us a job to preach the Word, to live that Word, to warn the world, to live for God. Every one of us have a responsibility to set the right example. We’re to live the Days of Unleavened Bread, aren’t we? We’re to live sin free! Every day as we remember no yeast – no donuts at the Dunkin’ place this week. Sorry, can’t do that! Every time that thought comes to mind, we go, “No way! It’s my job to remember what goes into my mouth – it should affect what goes into my brain. I’m not going to be allowing sin in my life. That’s my job, it’s my responsibility. I have to live the Days of Unleavened Bread. I have to live and be the kind of husband God expects me to be. That’s my job. I’m supposed to be the kind of father God expects me to be.” And if you’re a mother – the kind of mother God expects you to be. He says, “You give them something to eat. I’ve given to you. Now it’s your turn to fulfill the responsibilities that God has called you to. Raise good families. Be the kind of people God wants us to be. Be strengthened.” We can be strengthened –Philippians tells us – through Christ.

Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. In fact, that’s an interesting phrase, because it’s a present tense kind of verbiage there in the Greek, which means, Christ is continuing to strengthen me. He continues to strengthen me and by His constant, renewed strength I am able to act. I am able to do my job. I am able to fulfill the responsibilities that God has called me to. And I wholly and I completely depend on Him for that spiritual power. And so God has given us that power and now He says, “You give them something to eat.” I think that’s the first lesson of ROI – of that spiritual return on investment that God expects from us.

Of course, sometimes we’re like the disciples. What was their initial response? “No way! We can’t do that. We don’t have….” What did they say? “How can we go buy 200 denarii worth of bread? We don’t have that. How can we give them something to eat?” Their answer was almost like, “Whoa! We don’t have anything! There’s nothing!” But, He said to them, verse 38:

Mark 6:38 – But He said to them, “How many loaves do you have, go and see.” And when they found out they said, “Five loaves, and two fish.”

And all too often, I think, we end up like the disciples at times. Do we ever find ourselves this way? When God calls and He gives us a job to do, do we say “I don’t have what it takes. I don’t have enough to do this job, God. I can’t grow! I can’t accomplish that. I’m too old for that sort of thing. I’ve already done my time God. I’ve already served. Well, God I’d love to but, you know, I’ve got issues. I’d really like to, but God, you know how busy I am. I just don’t have the time. Isn’t it somebody else’s turn to take care of that? Maybe we should let somebody older take care of that job. Or maybe somebody younger should take care of that job, because after all, I don’t know if I know that much about the Bible. It’s not my gift. It’s not my talent. Well, I’ve got way too much on my plate right now.” And so we can go down the list of excuses, like the disciples did. We don’t have the money. There’s no way, we can’t do it. See, Christ didn’t say, “Oh, okay. Well then just don’t worry about it.” No, He held them to that responsibility. They were unaware – they were unaware – that they had the resources to do that very job. They had the resources to fulfill the command of Jesus Christ. They didn’t know it. They didn’t realize it. But they did have something. In fact, after looking around a little bit, “Okay, we do. We’ve got five loaves. We’ve got two fish. That’s what we’ve got – not much.” But Christ’s point is pretty clear, isn’t it? When you take what I’ve given you in my business, I’ll take care of distribution. Isn’t that what He told them? I’ll take care of distributing. You find that I’ve given you what you need to accomplish the job. So He said, well how many loaves have you got. You’ve got five loaves and two fish.

V-39-44 – Then He commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in ranks, in hundreds and in fifties. And when He had taken the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heave, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and the two fish He divided among them all. And look at this miracle through Christ. So they all ate and were filled. And they – the disciples – took up twelve baskets full of fragments and of the fish. Now those who had eaten the loaves were about five thousand men.

You see, Christ responded that the disciples shouldn’t doubt – that through Jesus Christ, they’ve got the resources – that even with so little, He could do amazing things – amazing things! He could take that serving…well, what would this be? Maybe 650 calories, 55 grams of fat, 130 grams of carb… yeah, it wasn’t an Atkins diet – not an Atkins diet here – 35 grams of protein and they could eat as much as they wanted – absolutely as much as they wanted. And it wasn’t just a little feat. It was an awesome miracle! In modern standards, have you ever thought how much food did He actually create? I mean it’s unbelievable when you really think about it – 5,000 men? Probably add a woman and maybe a child per person. Alright, now we’re talking about 15,000 people – 15,000. So, if every one of them – forget the fish for a moment – let’s just talk about the bread. If each one of them, they ate as much as they wanted…so they didn’t each have one little slice. If they each ate a third of a loaf of bread – these people are hungry! – you’ve got to have 5,000 loaves. So you start doing the math. 15,000 people times a third of a loaf per person, you need 5,000 loaves of bread! Does that sound reasonable? Okay, something like that.

Alright, how much would 5,000 loaves of bread, how much space would that take up? That would fill more than a semi full of bread. You could pack that whole semi full of bread and still have some left over – not even talking about the fish. So could you imagine Christ making a semi load full of bread appear from...yeah, from the five that were there. I mean, that pointed without a doubt that Christ was the son of God. This is the Christ. And when they picked up the fragments – there were twelve baskets – they had more left over than what they started with.

Talk about a return on investment! Do you think God expected something in return? He expected them to do their job. He expected them to distribute what God – what Jesus Christ – did! And so it’s an amazing thing. Even when it seems impossible, God can do awesome things.

In fact, sometimes we’re put in our life in a situation where it doesn’t seem like we can do it. It seems like there’s no way! There’s no way that this is going to happen. “I’m doomed to fail. I can’t accomplish that.” Have you ever felt that way? I have. What does that cause us to do? What should it cause us to do? Well, hopefully it helps us to realign a little bit and realize that I’ve got to totally depend on God. It forces us to! The disciples had no way to come up with this much bread. It forced them to rely on Christ and then the miracle came.

Have you ever thought about it like that? Maybe you’ve seen that in your life. When you are forced to totally and fully depend on God, who gets the credit when it works out? God gets all the glory. God gets all the credit. And I think, sometimes, He’s got that divine strategy – maybe, we could call it. You see it over and over in the Bible. We see that same scenario play out over and over. And when we’re in desperate straits, and there’s no way out, there are no other options, we can’t find any human way to get out of this situation, or make it right, or get out of this health difficulty, or this challenge, we cry out to God! We put our trust and our faith and our hope in Him. And when we are delivered, nobody else can get the credit but God. Christ was focusing the disciples on that very fact.
 
Doesn’t Passover do that for us? Who gets the credit for bringing us out of sin? Well, God does. God does. And now we have the responsibility to stay sin free. Let’s go over to Romans chapter 8 for just a moment. Romans 8 – it’s a reminder of the return on investment that God expects. In fact, today someone reminded me it’s tax day. Oh boy. I did hear a story about this guy who opened a pizza place. He opened a small little place, and sure enough, the IRS audited him his very first year. He looked at his tax return and he had reported an ROI – a return on investment – of $80,000 for his first year. They said this isn’t possible. He said just leave me alone! I worked like a dog. I put everything in the business. My family helps out. I hardly closed at all during the entire year. I got a lousy $80,000 for all my hard work for my entire family. The IRS says, “Hey listen, it’s not the $80,000 we’re worried about. It’s all these deductions. You listed six trips to Bermuda for you and your wife. The guy thought about it for a moment and says, “I forgot to tell you I deliver!” Well God expects a return on His investment, as well. If we look at Romans chapter 8…look at the beginning of the chapter there. Here’s our responsibility to do our jobs:

Romans 8:1 – There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And we’ve been given that Spirit. We’ve been baptized. We’ve been cleaned up at the Passover. He’s washed our feet. We are clean when we repent before God. And so He says stay that way. Stay that way.

V-2 – For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

Skipping down to verse 9 he says:

V-9-10 – But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

And so God has given us a job that, sometimes, seems overwhelming. It seems like we are wandering in the desert sometimes and that we have the challenge of hanging on to hope. And yet, God says we can have that hope. He has invested in us and He says we can walk according to the Spirit. And so He says, well that’s what we need to do. He’s given us what we need, and so let’s accomplish that task. He’s given us the resources. In fact, what we need, I think, is what the disciples asked for. It wasn’t right here in the story of the breaking bread or the feeding of 5,000, but you know, there was a time when the disciples came to Christ and they said, “Increase our faith – increase our faith.” I think that’s, maybe, a lesson we could take from this return on investment that God expects of us. We ask Him to increase our faith. Because when you look at that story, it wasn’t just a story about feeding 5,000. That’s not just what the story was about. Part of the lesson of that story was opening the disciples’ minds – that they could see – changing people’s lives.

Certainly it was an amazing miracle. But, maybe, even a more powerful miracle was the perspective of the disciples – the ones who were doing the feeding. What do you think their perspective was? Do you think it changed the way that the looked at things. Do you think it helped set their frame of reference – that now their vision could be different? Their faith could be expressed through Jesus Christ, since Christ carried that out. They could have a deeper faith. Certainly it worked. When they were able to see a huge return on investment, they could change their perspective and their faith could be that much deeper. It could be the same for us. It can be the same. I think the Days of Unleavened Bread help us to deepen our faith and our trust in God. It helps us to do the work of God. We are the hands, aren’t we? Aren’t we the feet that accomplish God’s will? Aren’t we the eyes and all of those parts that do the task?

As we think about that, it makes it very challenging, because sometimes life looks like this bread problem. Unleavened bread is certainly a reminder of that. It seems like the easiest things to spot are the things we desire – the bad things. There are the donuts and the pretzels. They’re everywhere aren’t they? Maybe you’ve noticed that before. Everything – maybe things you’ve never thought – have baking soda in them – and sodium bicarbonate. It’s everywhere! Yet, just because it’s everywhere, does that mean we shouldn’t fight it? Just because sin is everywhere, does it mean we don’t try to overcome? You see, if we ask God to increase our faith, we have to come to the conclusion that just because something seems impossible, “Boy it’s going to be impossible to come out of sin! I can’t be sin free, so oh well, why try?” You see, it’s easy to feel that way, but just because something’s impossible isn’t an excuse for not trying. Sometimes we may feel that way. Well if you can’t do it why bother trying? It’s not worth the effort. But what would have happened if Moses had that perspective? The Israelites would still be in Egypt, wouldn’t they? How about if Jacob had that same perspective? “Well why bother hanging on to Christ? Why hold on and wrestle?” Imagine if Joshua felt that way. Jericho would still be standing today. If David felt that way, Goliath might still be terrorizing the Israelites. So you never know how God can work something out.

I think, as a reminder, we can increase our faith and remember the job that goes along with that. Because when we were baptized, we signed on for that. We signed on and we said we had faith in Jesus Christ. We had faith in His sacrifice. We accepted Him and His sacrifice as our Savior. And as we did that, we know faith tied in with belief, tied in with obedience is something God expects. He expects a return on His investment, so we should never have the sense that it’s impossible for us to obey God. Even though, wow, we may lack what it takes, but that’s what the disciples thought. Because there are so many of those passages that say that God’s faithful to give us whatever we need when we ask. You see, God is great at supplying what is needed.

That’s another business thing: supply and demand. When we ask, God gives it. God supplies it. When the disciples realized they didn’t have the means – that it came through Jesus Christ – they were able to accomplish the task. We can, too. We can, too. We can grow in our faith. We can ask God to increase our faith, especially during the Days of Unleavened Bread. As we eat unleavened bread, we can be reminded of that. “I need to ingest Jesus Christ. I need to eat of Him. I need to ask Him to continue to live His life fully in me. I need to ask Him to do that. And as I see all the bad things around me, I can ask God to help me to see what it represents – what it symbolizes. Help me to see the sin in myself so that I can overcome that through God the Father and Jesus Christ.”

An easy way, is right now sometimes, we’ll find ourselves – especially this week – having a little leftover time. Do you ever find that? It doesn’t take that long to eat a matzo, does it? They crumble up pretty quick and are everywhere. You’ll probably end up with a little extra time – maybe at lunch, maybe in the evening. I think you can increase your faith by reading the Word. Read it and heed it. That’s what God’s Word is here for, to read it and heed it. It’s an easy thing to increase faith as we pray and ask Him to intervene in our lives, and as we read the Word. If we don’t take any time this week to read God’s Word, how can we increase our faith? So God says, “Faith comes by hearing”, hearing the Word of God. In fact, James talked a lot about that. We heed it. We do it. We live it. We’re doers of that very Word.

God certainly can increase our faith, so let’s step back during these Days of Unleavened Bread and really read and heed the Word and allow God to increase our faith at this very special time of the year. As we do that we can certainly thank God that He is working in our life. God is an amazing God. When He provided the bread, when He provided the fish, did He ever say, “Alright now everybody, you only get a little piece?” Have you ever had that happen? It’s like getting the candy bars – you know, the fun size candy bar? They’re not very much fun. They’re only about that big. That’s not a fun size. God didn’t provide the fun size, did He? Everybody ate as much as they wanted. We’ve got a generous God who is willing to pour out everything for us. We’ve got a God of abundance. He’s not just a little God. He’s the greatest of all. He is amazing, and He measures back to us far greater than even we can imagine. I think that’s kind of the law of this divine investment: that God pours out abundance on us. We should never think, “Well we don’t have what it takes. We don’t have it.” Because, wait a second, we can thank God that He is so generous, and that He is going to give us whatever we need to fulfill His will. In fact, we see this back in the book of John. If you want to flip back to John, let’s notice as the story goes on. Let’s notice the story here in John 6:22 – notice how amazing our God is.

John 6:22-27 – On the following day – so right after feeding those 5,000 men, plus women and children that were there – when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except the one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but His disciples had gone away alone. However, other boats came from Tiberias – so they came from Galilee – near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks. When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into boats and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?” So He miraculously ends up on the other side. Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you – that is the word Amen – this is absolute fact, this is the truth – you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

So as we begin to understand the amazing lesson, it becomes a clearer connection with unleavened bread – that God has performed a miracle in our lives. And because He’s performed this miracle, it is a miracle that should endure – He says, to everlasting life. We’ve been given the Spirit of God. As we look at this we see this lesson of food. They were looking for physical food. They were looking for a handout. They were looking for a free lunch. But we know “there ain’t no free lunch.” And as we might go without food for a little while, we might feel faint – we might start to get a little weak or a little sleepy. That might happen. In a way, we almost start to die. That might happen. We start that process, if we don’t eat at some time, we begin to realize very quickly that life is temporary and we have to eat to stay alive. Perhaps Christ is leading to this key lesson from feeding the 5,000.
 
Look at verse 47. In verse 47, we have a section of scripture we read at the Passover. It falls right in line after feeding the 5,000: Christ says again, “Amen.”

John 6:47-58 – Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat?’ They were getting it all mixed up with this miracle they had seen before. Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven – not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”

Unleavened bread reminds us of this very fact. We partook of the bread and the wine at Passover. Now we continue to feed. But what do we feed on? It’s a reminder – this whole week – perfect completion of seven days – that we feed, not just on unleavened bread – that’s just symbolic. That’s not the important lesson. Yes we do that physically, but it better remind us of something spiritual. It better remind us of the return on investment that God expects of us – that we are to eat of Jesus Christ. And we’re to eat, just like that 5,000 men did – to eat to the full, to be filled up with Jesus Christ. We can make it our goal to eat of that bread – because that’s where eternal life…we have Christ living in us – and more fully and more completely. As we go through day after day after day of unleavened bread, we can be more fully dedicated in every way to be filled with Jesus Christ, because God has provided even more than we need, more than enough to live by Jesus Christ.

Unleavened bread reminds us He expects a return on investment, because we’ve been bought and paid by that very bread and wine – the blood and body of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. We can fulfill our responsibilities, because God is going to make sure we can. He’s going to give us all the resources we need through Jesus Christ. So we can be ready to accomplish the task at hand and allow the bread of life to fill us and feed us and then we can feed others as well. Our faith can grow and we rely more and more on Him. We can have the strength, as we’re strengthened through Jesus Christ – as we read – and as we heed the Word of God, we can face anything and everything that comes. As we do that, there will be no doubt that by these Days of Unleavened Bread, we will give God a spiritual return on His investment.

[Darris McNeely] As we know through the announcement, again, today and certainly with all the news that has been on going this week with the terrible tragedy of hurricane Harvey in Houston hitting there as it did about a week ago, and then just grinding away for a period of time over Houston, and Corpus Christi, and the Gulf Coast of Texas. And with the instant news that we have, we're eyewitnesses to all of that today in our modern society, and we vicariously grieve and take part in that. And it has been another one of those wallops that the coast of America has taken.

As we all know, I'm not going to take a lot of time to talk about it. But you've seen the pictures, and there are so many stories that emerge from something like this to people helping one another, people pitching in regardless of where they're from, ethnicity, race, whatever things for a period of time, everybody pulls together to help one another out. And there's a lot of remarkable stories.

One of the favorites of mine, I guess, I saw it, again, this week and you will see it along the Gulf Coast it seems when something hurricane comes in I just… I love to see the Cajun Navy swing into action from Louisiana, and these guys with their fishing boats pulling into to just cruise and help people. And it's kinds like our own Dunkirk in our American story right now with the citizens putting together a flotilla to rescue other citizens. That's just one story of what takes place.

Houston will recover. There's certainly a great deal of damage, but Houston is a very, very wealthy area, it's the fourth largest city in America and a great deal of wealth in that city, and it is a vibrant can-do city. But there are certain things and certainly, the deaths are tragic, and some things will not be replaced, and people's lives will be uprooted.

But anyone who's ever lived through something like that, and I've lived through a flooding situation years ago in Eastern Kentucky and know a little bit of what that's like when floodwaters come in, and then when they recede, and what you have to deal with afterwards, there's a great deal of physical damage. There's emotional and psychological damage to all who are involved in that that take place. But with help, with aid, with prayers, with God, people can and do recover.

You know events like this remind us of the fragility of life on this planet. Natural disasters occur around the globe on a regular basis, whether it's a hurricane or a typhoon as it may be called in Asia and other parts of the world, tornadoes, earthquakes, and resultant tsunamis along coastal regions, volcanoes that will occasionally erupt and loss of life and property. This is a frequent occurrence on the earth, we understand that.

Even on occasion, there will be a meteorite that will come through the atmosphere, and so far at least in our lifetime, those that have happened have crashed in not populated area so the loss of life has not been there, but they are very powerful forces that sometimes intrude from even outer space. So planet Earth is rather fragile in some ways. And the power of nature is awesome.

Jesus Christ has something to say about this that we should know. I'd like for you to turn back to Matthew 7 because just as we here in the Midwest have been spared from something like this while our brethren and fellow citizens have had to deal with the brunt of this particular hurricane. We can pray and certainly help as we can with aid, with help, with money.

But, I think, as we all look at this, there's anything else that will occur where it is not directly impacting us. There should always be something we learn along the line of what Jesus said here in Matthew 7, beginning in verse 24, at the end of His sermon on the mount where He had given a great deal of detailed basic teaching about Christianity, about being as a disciple, His first major discourse that is recorded in the Gospels.

And in verse 24, He said this at the end to conclude everything about what He had taught, "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them," all the teaching that He had given, to hear them and to do them, right? Remember that, it's more than hearing, it's more than sitting in a classroom, it's also doing and taking it and applying it “and does them,” He says, "I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock."

And that rock we can know from other scriptures is certainly our best understanding and interpretation of what that means beyond actually building upon a rock, and the solid foundation is the fact that Jesus Christ is that rock, a rock of salvation and a rock for life.

Verse 26 it says, "But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine who does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house and it fell. And great was its fall." If we go to Oceanside in California, or we go to Panama City Beach, we all like to rent for a week a condo on the beach, but we also know that when hurricanes come into those regions, it's those houses that are on the beach that will also take a brunt of beating because the foundation is on sand. But nonetheless, they have the best views for us to enjoy.

But Jesus was making a very strong point here that is important for His disciples. And we are all His disciples to understand. So I said at the beginning, He said, "You hear my sayings and you do them. You will be a wise man," He said. What Christ really is saying, if I put it in my own words here, He's saying, you will be tested, life will test you. Events, circumstances will test you.

And when you're tested, it is not what you know but what you apply. It is not what you know but what you apply. And that's my theme today. We will be tested in the classroom of life not on what we know but on what we apply based on what we are taught. And that's what He was telling His disciples.

We've started a new year here at A.B.C., and the students will be put through the Bible as we have in our curriculum. We come to Sabbath services and we have sermons and messages on a regular basis, the Holy Days will have its unique message for us all to consider as we come into the fall Holy Days at A.B.C. We've fairly rigorously test the students to see how they are learning and even the effectiveness of our own teaching. And even test results will modify some of our teachings so we get the message across.

It's not so much that we find out what the score is, but are we being effective teachers? That's part of the testing as well. But as we tell students on a regular basis and as we all should know in our life, it's not what we know. At the end of the day, it's not the scores on the test or where we rank in the class, it's what we apply.

That will be the ultimate test. Now, Christ’s disciples were an accomplished group of people. They were capable, they were smart, they were self-sufficient. They were fishermen, they were carpenters, they were businessmen, they were reliable. They lived in a culture that taught them to not to rely on their wits, and their strength, and their talents, and their abilities, it was their job.

If there was a job to do, they look to their own resources to get it done. That's the way they were. They couldn't run to Walmart, they couldn't run to Menards, they had to manufacture and fabricate what they needed in the fields, on the boats, in their sheds, and their little shops as they had them, and they had shops, but they had to be very, very self-sufficient. And they had to learn self-reliance.

But Jesus was teaching them not only to build on that with the knowledge of the Kingdom of God and what He was bringing, but He was also teaching them to apply what they had. He called His disciples, and in this case here, He was sitting in an outdoor classroom situation. He trained them for three and a half years, the core 12 as well as others that were with them. And His textbook was Himself, and His teaching, life was His syllabus.

He used the examples all around of the fields and of harvests and others to make cogent illustrations as of deep spiritual principles. And they were all His students, in other words, they were all His disciples at His feet for that period of time, learning. And even Christ would give an occasional pop quiz. He would occasionally test them to see what they were learning. All meant at every instance to teach a very valuable lesson, an insight.

One day, He taught them that they had to rely on Him, and it wasn't their self-reliance, it wasn't their skills with tools and with navigation on the sea, or their abilities to produce something that was going to get the job done, He was teaching them something else. He was teaching them that being a disciple was not about what you knew but what you applied.

Let's turn over to Mark 6. And let's look at an incident… actually, we're going to look at two incidents here that took place in Christ’s ministry in Mark 6. It is, first of all, beginning in verse 30, the feeding of 5,000 people in a miraculous occurrence.

Now, this is an interesting miracle and story from the Gospel accounts. It is a literal feeding, a potluck meal, if you will, of Christ with His disciples. But it is the only miracle apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the only miracle that is found in all four of the Gospels, the only one. So you can find a parallel account in Luke, and in Matthew, and in John.

But here in Mark 6, we'll read it here, and each one of those other episodes will… our versions we'll add them just a nuance here in a dimension there to the story. But the essence of it is here. I read it from Mark's account because Mark includes something that happened right afterwards that ties into this as Jesus was teaching His disciples.

Let's begin in verse 30. "The apostles gathered to Jesus and they told Him all the things, both what they had done and what they had taught." On occasion, He would had sent them out and delegated them to go out. "And He said to them, 'Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.’ For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.” This is on the northern shore of Galilee in the area of Bethsaida, the city there. “And so they departed to a desert place in the boat by themselves.”

“But the multitude saw them departing, and many knew Him and they ran there on foot from all the cities. They arrived before them and they came together to Him.” Drawing in a large number of people. “And Jesus, came out, He saw a great multitude and He was moved with compassion for them, because they were like sheep not having a shepherd.”

“And so He began to teach them many things.” That's not recorded in detail, like, we have back in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 what He went through but we can well imagine that He built on that and perhaps a repetition in some ways, and other matters, but He began to teach them. This was an outdoor classroom, a teaching situation of Christ going through parts of the word, the law and as He was delivering it to them. “And the day was far spent,” the day went on.

And, you know, as you know, as certainly our students learn when they come in to A.B.C., you spend the day sitting, and teaching, and learning, that is tiresome. I do not know if I could sit for seven hours listening as we put A.B.C. students through. They do it. It's remarkable that they endure that. I mean, you know, it's hard enough for us to sit through an hours sermon once a week in services, right? And so I have to always keep watching that clock, it's amazing. We would position this clock, right? They're a big bright white, black, numeral clock in this hall back there, and I guess we're supposed to pay attention to that.

Teaching can be challenging and difficult. Listening, learning is taxing. And He said to them after “the day was spent, His disciples came to Him,” verse 35, “and he said, ‘This is a deserted place, and it's already late in the day. Send them away, the other multitudes that they may go to the surrounding country and villages and buy bread for they have nothing to eat.’" And there weren't any fast-food drive-ins real close by. “And He answered, and He said to them, ‘You give them something to eat. You provide it. You do the job.’"

They've come, they're part of what we are doing and they've come because of us, “And they said to Him, ‘Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread…’” that was a large amount of bread to buy, “'and give them something to eat?’ But He said, ‘How many loaves do you have? Go and see.’" So they had to dip into their own supplies and kind of take a look and see, and they found. And they came back and said, "Five and two fish." Five loaves and two fish, not very much. Barely enough for even 12 of them, 13 of them, but certainly not for all that was going to be found there. That's the resources that they had.

Now, this is a lesson for us beyond just food, and fish, and bread. This is a lesson as to what we have. Christ was teaching them something. He was saying, "You go take care of this. Look to your resources, you're capable reliant men." They weren't that far from the sea of Galilee, some of them could have gone out, chartered a boat, and brought in a haul of fish perhaps. Then at the time, "You look to it. You take care of it. What do you have? What's in your cupboards?" And there wasn't much.

And so “He commanded them” in verse 39, "make them sit down in groups on the grass… green grass. So they sat down in ranks, in hundreds and in fifties.” This is a large amount. Now it is marked here as 5,000. Some commentators say that the actual numbers that 5,000 represents only the men. And the children and women that could have been as many as 10,000. This is what some commentators say but the Scripture tells us 5,000 and we'll just stick with that. And that's obviously quite a large potluck supper to deal with.

And they sat down, in verse 41, "When He had taken the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples who sat before them; and the two fish He divided them all." And so He sent this out, and when you look at the other accounts, the disciples were the ones who came then to Jesus and took the baskets of food that began to multiply and we're not given the full account of what amazement they must have had as they saw all this take place, but they had to then take that and deliver it.

They came to Christ, they received it, and then they delivered it, and distributed it that afternoon to the thousands of people who were gathered there. They didn't have it themselves. They had to go to Christ to get it. He had the bread. Begin to make the connection spiritually.

Christ, in John 6, the other parallel account of this in John's account, He goes on to give them a very strong message about Him being the bread of life, the true bread that came down from heaven. And He made it a very strong object lesson, one of the most profound of all the Gospel teachings. They had to go to Him to get it because He was the bread of life. He was not only feeding these thousands physically but He had already fed them spiritually.

When you, kind of, break down the message that Jesus did and what He did among the villages of the Galilee, and Judea, and His ministry, He essentially walked into a village, preached the gospel and He taught them. And occasionally, He even fed people and He also healed them. You'll find those three elements being the key matters of what He did in His ministry. He fed them, He taught them, and He healed them. He taught them truth. He taught them about the Kingdom of God. He taught them who He was. He taught them about the Father, He taught them many things, and He fed them.

And when He fed them, it wasn't just to… He certainly had compassion upon them, but He was also always making a much, much stronger spiritual point from this as He gave it. Verse 42 tells us that “They were all filled. And they took up the twelve baskets full of fragments and of the fish. And those had it eaten the loaves were about five thousand people.” The disciples had found that their resources were small, and they had to rely on Christ to provide the food to feed them.

There's a very important spiritual lesson for us. In the Church today, as Christ's disciples carrying on His work and what we have to do, we look to our resources at times, you know, they're pretty meager, pretty meager. We're a small church, we can talk about that all we want but the fact is we are a small church. We look and look at our budget sheet and it's balanced, and it's handled very, very well, very capably. There need not be any concern that of waste and of profligacy, and the handling of the resources, the tithes and offerings they are provided for the operation of the United Church of God.

But, you know, $18 million is roughly the budget and few million in reserve. And that's good, and we're grateful for that, but again our resources are meager. I mean, J.J. Watts just raised million dollars plus just like that with his Twitter account, okay? President Trump gave $1 million out of his own pocket, didn't do a dent, didn't dent it at all, and that's great, both to be commended, and any others as well.

We look at ourselves, we're small and we have meager resources. We plan, we create strategic plans, do our work. And at the end of it, in one sense, by comparison, we've got five loaves and two fishes. We too often look at what we don't have rather than what we do have. The times in some of our discussions, we can only see a half-empty glass rather than a glass that's half full or more.

We should be able to see that the fields are ripe for harvest and gear up and go after it. But if we look at this particular teaching, we've only got five and two. We're going to have to go to Christ to see it multiplied as only He can multiply it. That's one of the big lessons that I take away from this particular story. There are many, many more. As I said, John 6 and His teaching about Himself being the bread of life is profound. And just looking at how they had… the disciples had to go to Christ.

You know, the best strategic plan I've read in recent years to doing the work of God, that's right here. This is the best strategic plan I've read. I've read others, but this is the best. This is the best. And that's where we're going to find the mind of God, the will of Christ, the head of the Church as we look to that. And it's an important lesson to remember not only for us in the United Church of God as we seek to do our work in our mission as disciples, but also even as we look to God in our own personal lives. Because after all, this sermon this afternoon is not so much about the larger entity of the United Church of God, but it's about you and I. Because it's not what we know, it's what we apply. It's not what we know, it's what we apply.

Let's go on in the story here, verse 45. This is why I chose Mark to read this story from because of what happens here after afterwards as Mark records it, "Immediately He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He sent the multitudes away. And when He had sent them away, He departed to the mountain to pray." So they were out in a boat a ways offshore. "And when evening came, the boat was in the middle of the sea; and He was alone on the land."

If you've ever been to Galilee, you can know that there on the Sea of Galilee, it's a large inland body of water. But there's something about the Sea of Galilee because situated just below a plateau and a set of mountains, and a long range that comes in from the Mediterranean ocean, and at times, some wind's coming off the Mediterranean and swoop down through the passes of the mountains bordering the western edge of the sea of Galilee and can create instantaneously a storm on that very small inland body of water, and that's what happened here.

That a storm came up in that evening in the middle… while they were alone, and “He saw them straining,” in verse 48, "and rowing, for the wind was against them. And it was about the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea, and would have passed them by. And when they saw Him walking on the sea, they supposed it was a ghost, and cried out." They didn't really… there was confusion.

The image you could come away with the disciples in this boat on a storm-tossed body of water at this moment was they couldn't even fully recognize Christ as He was walking toward them thinking that it might be “a ghost and they cried out… they saw Him walking and they supposed it was a ghost,” in verse 50, "for they all saw Him and were troubled. But immediately He talked with them and He said to them, 'Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.'"

And so He identified Himself then they heard His voice. And it seems from the account that it was at the tone of His voice, and the sound of His voice that they recognized who He was. "He then went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased. And they were greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure, and marveled."

Now, what is being said in verse 51, "They were greatly amazed beyond measure, and they marveled." They didn't fully understand initially even who He was that it was He instead of a… not a ghost, they thought it was a ghost not Christ, then they recognized it was Him. And then when He got up into the boat with them, the waters calmed and the rocking of the boat stopped and they felt safety.

But they didn't know what was going on, they didn't know what had happened. They couldn't even believe that He had actually been walking on water. It's a picture of confusion, it's a picture of fear, amazement, and marveling as they must have been chattering among themselves, talking about it, trying to figure it out what had happened.

And what would Mark concludes with here, “They had not understood about the loaves,” it wasn't the miracle on the water… the miracle first of Christ walking on the water, and then when He got into the boat that they the storm abated, but the bigger lesson was back early a few hours the previous day, when He had performed a miracle for 5,000 people with fishes and bread, they had not understood. Of course, remembering from John's account, many disciples couldn't take the strong message that Christ was giving about His body and His life through the bread, and they left Him. But these immediate disciples didn't understand.

And it says, "because their heart was hardened." A hardened heart, Mark is the only one who records it this way. They couldn't understand how Christ was doing His work, how He was and all of His teaching. They had probably nodded in agreement during the day as He taught, during that period of time on the grassy slopes, and probably understood mechanically and academically.

But just a few hours later when their faith was tested, when their ability to even see who He was and what the power that He had was being tested, they hadn't applied all of His teaching, and they had still a hardened heart. And we know from the rest of the Gospels that it would take the crucifixion, the death of Christ, and then even the resurrection and for at least one. Thomas, he had to handle Christ to believe that it was Him. And then their hearts were softened.

There were more episodes for them to go through to get to that point. But this is an incredible sequence of events to teach us something about the work that Jesus Christ is doing even today among His disciples. And we do not, brethren, want to find ourselves among those whose hearts are hardened and lacking in understanding, not really appreciating and understanding how Christ works. And so the lesson is there for us to think about.

Here, they were with the storms raging about them, and they lacked faith. They had knowledge, but they had not applied it all. They had not fully done what Jesus had even said earlier in Matthew 7 where they had heard, they had not completely done everything. In the afternoon, when the potluck meal was going on, things were calm, there was peace. In the middle of the night, when it was dark and the storm came up those rough seas.

When there's a time of calm and time of peace, that's when we should be learning, and that's when we should be preparing and building our house, our spiritual house on a rock so that when the floods come, the rains come, we endure and we stand. That was a lesson yet for them to learn. And it is a lesson that they did learn because a disciple will learn that lesson. They will be taught.

We ask that an announcement be made here just to inform all of you about our son, Ryan because so many of you have asked about him over the recent weeks and it dawned on me. I better make a general announcement about it and certainly because we had had it announced the day that it first happened about seven, eight weeks ago and texted Mr. Myers and had him announce it here.

And so we appreciate that very much, and Ryan and Stephanie do as well. Ryan gave a sermonette in Indianapolis about two weeks after the initial seizure that he had. And he used the quote from the heavyweight boxer, Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson is supposed to have said, at some time that, “Everybody's got a plan until they get hit." “Everybody's got a plan until they get hit.” And, of course, he got hit on a Sabbath morning a few weeks ago. And it got… bended their life as things like that will do. It's a new normal. And they've learned a lot and will continue to learn a lot.

We all have plans and sometimes we get hit and it's how we react after we get hit. When the rains come and the floods come, that's then the test for us. It's not how much we know, it's how much we've applied. That's what it comes down to, and every one of our lives. And that's what Jesus is telling us. That's a big, big lesson. As you know in the Church of God, in the United Church of God in recent weeks and months, a few people have been hit. A few people have been hit hard, and they got back up.

Everybody had a plan until that instant when something happens. And that's the nature of things. That's the nature of life. It's a hurricane of life. It's a tsunami that can suddenly arise out of nowhere and swamp us and change everything, and suddenly, you're into a new chapter and in your life.

Now none of us, brethren, by ourselves will be able to stand through any trial we hit by ourselves. When we hit the storm-tossed seas, we will only be able to stand and endure and be found standing still because of the comfort, and the strength, and the life of Jesus Christ in us. This is what the lesson of the not only these scriptures but many of many others show us, because Jesus Christ is the one who comforts and encourages, and goes alongside, and is our advocate.

And He is the one whose life is in us if we are in the faith. He's the one who walks on water, not His disciples. And He's the one who gets in the boat with us and calms the seas in the waters, and He's the bread of life that satisfies. And that is a lesson that we will all learn. We will all learn that in this church. By God's mercy, He will see that we all learn it. So that when a trial hits, we will learn to depend on and apply what we know from the word of God.

In John 14, Jesus promised this, John 14, this is not just a scripture for the night of the Passover, this is a scripture, brethren, for every day of the year, for every day of our life. John 14:15, Jesus told His disciples this promise. John 14:15, "If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father…” you must know the commandments, but we must also keep the commandments. We hear the teaching, we keep it.

"I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever — the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you." Now that comfort, that Helper if, in your margin, you'll see the word… it's a Greek word Parakletos. When I was growing up in Missouri, I learned it as Pa-rak-le-tos, that flat Midwestern pronunciation, but I think Parakletos is probably closer to the Greek but it may not be perfect even at that.

But it says a comforter. It's one of the most interesting words in the New Testament in the way that it is used. In 1 John 2:1 where it says that Christ is our Advocate, it's the same word for Advocate as Parakletos. Yes, it's one who goes alongside. It is one who comforts and encourages but it's more than that, it is the Holy Spirit. And if you look at what He says here on verse 17, he calls it “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you."

Very deep profound teaching as Jesus says that, "You'll not be left orphans, I will come to you," just as He came to the disciples on the Sea of Galilee when they thought they were going to drown and… capsize and drown, He came to them and He got into the boat with them to continue the teaching and the feeding that He had have been doing all along. He was their Parakletos that night.

He's our Parakletos in our nights and our times of despair, hopelessness, and fear. When we get hit, when someone close to us gets hit, Christ is our Parakletos. He is the one who encourages in comforts and helps us to stand and not fall. He is the one who helps us to get up off the mat and face it again and move forward. It's an interesting word when you study into it as to how it is used in the Greek. It's a word that is used to send and to rally people with courage and to send them forward, whether it's into battle and in some of the Greek uses of ancient classical literature, but to do so with courage, fearlessly, resolve, that's what it means, that's how it is used.

And when it is used here to describe the work of the Spirit and the work of the Living Christ in us, it's a powerful understanding that helps us understand what is available to us when we get hit. When the hurricanes of life come our way, He was giving the disciples here teaching and works to fight and to engage, to anchor them into the rock, and to His life, His life within them so that when the floods come, the rains fall, and when we would might humanly reach the breaking point, the Parakletos keeps us from breaking. Christ in us will help.

He not only intercedes for the Father, it's more than just a an advocacy role that we might imagine standing before the bar before the throne advocating. It's more than that. It's that and more. It is also Christ in us, our hope, it is Christ in us then proves as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “…that if He is in us, we're not disqualified.” Again, another scripture that is not just for Passover but for all year to know that Christ is in us: helping, encouraging, and leading us.

You know, I… Debbie and I have just really been… the whole episode is not only with my… sorry, our son's life but certainly for us. This has, you know, impacted us as well. But I will tell you one thing that has really been encouraging to see, and it's been a lesson for us with what just happened with our son. It has taught us a great deal about empathy. Empathy.

When people say, "How's your son? How's Ryan?" those who know him. They make a call and leave a message on the answering machine or send a note or, "How's your son?" We've had a few calls, we've had, you know, many, many people ask. I take the time to stop and turn full-face and say, "He's fine," give them a report, but I say, "Thank you for asking. Thank you for asking.” And it's been a lesson for us.

Empathy is very important thing for us all to cultivate. And, you know, there's some things that Facebook are good for but, you know, and some of the other trials that have hit people in recent days I've taken to pen and paper. I've taken to just trying to express a, you know, courage, encouragement, and help the people in pen and paper rather than just… it's good and it's easy just to hit "Like" or to put an emoji up or whatever, and it's all fine and good but, you know, to pick up the phone, to write a handwritten note, to stop, to take the time to say, "How are you? How's your son? How's your mother? How's your dad?" whatever it might be. It's been a big lesson for us.

And that shows, has taught me along with so many other episodes that I've been involved with through the years in the ministry about the work of God's Spirit in us, this Parakletos work that is described here in John 14 where we are not left as orphans, where we have that help of God in us through His Son.

Over the years, I've picked up the phone and on the other end was the news of a tragic car accident that killed someone's grandson. Or news that they had just received of the murder of their son. Or, in another case, a murder-suicide, and the widowed mother was just distraught. I remember one time just having to keep the phone to my ear, the cell phone, and drive 40 miles to get to her house but kept her on the line while I was driving just because she was in such despair.

And you get people's reports and news about those matters, those things that they get the phone call from the doctor that they dread, or another tragedy, news of a divorce. And what I have seen over the years is the work of God's Spirit and people to help them stand through those, and I've learned a lot from that. And still do as we all deal with the issues of our own life.

I have been eyewitness to, in many cases as you have as well, the people of God using the Spirit of God to absorb the pain, the hurt, the shock, and the grief, and just keep standing, and to keep moving forward without despair in faith because of the work of God's Spirit within them. Those are reactions of faith. People acknowledging that God is with them or that their loved one is in God's hands. And that undiminished faith is something we should always respect and seek to nurture and to encourage among ourselves. And as we comfort and ourselves act as a friends and family and comforters of each other and in our times of our time of trial, that is God's Spirit working it all together.

I've had my faith strengthened by seeing members trusting in God to heal, to hold them in His grace, to see them step up in faith and trust, and realize that their lives and their hands are in that of God, and it's a full proof of the power of the Parakletos of Christ, our advocate, working mightily in their lives. And it will continue to happen as we take the time to use the time of peace, the quiet times when the rains aren't coming down to prepare because that's exactly what will happen in these moments.

You know, when the floods come, when the lights go out if you don't have the batteries in the flashlight, it's a little bit late, or the candles in the drawer, and it's too late to get flood insurance when the flood comes, isn't it? There are some things we can prepare for and should, there are some things we cannot prepare for. We know that, too. There will be moments that are going to come that will hit us, and we will have to be prepared. And it's in the times of peace that we should be preparing, and not as Vic Kubik was saying this morning to us, "Getting involved in mischief during times of peace." I like that.

When it's times of peace, we should be preparing for the times that will come not creating mischief in our own lives or maybe in the lives of others. We should be learning because we're going to have to apply it all. The only way that you and I are going to survive a hurricane of life is going to be through the strength, and the courage, and the resolve, and the resilience, and the comfort help to the power of the risen Christ living, His life in us.

If we're living with the faith of the Son of God in us, then we will endure, and we will stand, and we will make it. And we will take the hits and we will adapt. And we'll be able to deal with it all. And no matter what it is, when it comes, it's coming to terms with that reality. It is the most important thing that any of us can do.

A hurricane Harvey is an opportunity to do exactly that. It reminds us that what we like to call normal life is fragile and must someday break apart. And if we're wise, we'll take advantage of the smaller passing storms to think seriously about the greater storms coming for us all. So that when they hit and they take us into the storm-tossed waters of life, we will have been prepared, we will have been ready, we will have been wise as Christ said His disciples would be.

Christ has called us all and He's put us into the classroom of discipleship, and He's teaching us every day of our walk with Him in our life today. It's not what we know, is what we apply.

[Scott Delamater] So here we are coming off of another Feast, it seemed to just fly by very quickly. It was a very fast seven days for I know many of us, we'd have this conversation about just how quickly it went. I think we didn't have a Sabbath in there breaking it up but here we are, we've come through another days of Unleavened Bread. And here we are at day seven of our count toward Pentecost, believe it or not. We're already one week in of the seven. Where to from here? Where do we go from here? Yesterday, it was really that big event where God brought Israel through the sea, He delivered them from Egypt, He delivered them from sin, and they celebrated. And we can read about that they had a big celebration. And then you can imagine, okay, well, now it's time to move on. Here we go.

And it's interesting when you go back and you look at the things that happened in that interim period, between that last day of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Pentecost. And when you go evaluate all those interesting things that happened, there's a whole series of them. We won't go through all of them today but I want to look at one in particular because these things are lessons for us. And we read that over in 1 Corinthians 10 if you'll turn over there. 1 Corinthians 10:1, and this is one of my favorite setup scriptures really because Paul here is telling us that all of these things that happened to them are very instructive. There are lessons that we can try out of those things and we do, and we've heard about that for the last seven days now.

1 Corinthians 10:1, "Moreover, brethren, and I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud," there was a cloud, recall, that was there guiding them and leading them. It says they were “under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” So, that event, that would have happened then yesterday, is a type of baptism. It's something that points towards baptism. There's something instructive there, so they're baptized in the cloud and in the sea. And verse 3 it says they “all ate the same spiritual food, and all drink the same spiritual drink. For they drink of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ." Says they ate spiritual food and drink spiritual drink.

When we read about them coming out, we read about some things where they ate some physical food and they drink some physical water, but here, Paul is pointing out that this is spiritual food and spiritual drink. There are spiritual things that they were consuming, that they were taking in, or supposed to be taking in there as well. So sort of make a mental note of that, we're talking about spiritual food and drink here. And so where then did they go? They've been baptized in the sea and now they move on. And where are they going from there? Where do we see them headed? Let's go look, Exodus 15.

Because all of us are also likewise on a journey, many of us have been baptized and many of you know that following your baptism, it's not always the easiest time. Sometimes, you know, you think, "Oh, I'm going to get baptized and then things are going to be great." And you find out that you get baptized and things get really challenging. And “Wait, this isn't how it's supposed to be. It was supposed to just, oh… now, I'm in it and it's good.” But you realize that you're just starting down that road. In Exodus 15:20, we see that after Moses sings a new song, Miriam sings a new song and there's a lot of celebration. And it's an amazing thing but then they do have to move on. And in verse 22, we see that they move on. “So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; and they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days into the wilderness and found no water.”

They're three days in without finding water. God allows them to thirst, He allows them to need water. He didn't provide it there on day one or two, or, you know, they're on day three. When you're getting back to the limits of human ability to go without water, He's allowing them to thirst. Verse 23, "Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah.” Which means bitter. Can you imagine the excitement? You're three days out and you don't have any water, and then you see, "Oh, look, up there. It's not just a mirage, there's water here."

And you get to that water and then you can't drink it because it's just awful, right? The commentator speculate that it was probably a very alkaline water. The water there in that area tends to be a little more on that side of things and so they couldn't drink it. It was just so bitter and awful for you that it wasn't something you'd want to drink, kind of like turning on our taps, right? Our tap water here is… But can you imagine being so thirsty and then seeing this water and going, "Wow. God has provided water." And then finding out no, He actually, He didn't provide water. “Is He just toying with us here? Is He taunting us? What's He doing? Why is He allowing this? Why is He allowing us to thirst and why is He throwing this in our face that we can't have this good water?”

Well, He explains why He's doing this. He explains why He allows this sort of emotional roller coaster perhaps. Verse 24, "And the people complained against Moses, saying, ‘What are we going to drink?’” “We can't even drink the water here." And verse 25, "So Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. And when he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and ordinance them, and there He tested them,” it's interesting that there's no mention here of God's displeasure with them. It doesn't say the people complained and God was very angry with them for not trusting Him. After all, He’d just brought them through the sea. It doesn't know… we're not… we don't know that God wasn't upset but there's no mention of that.

There's no mention that He's upset with them. He just says, "Moses, go put the water in… put this three in here and make the waters good." And He's testing them. When we are first called and we first enter into the faith, we’re first baptized, and there we are, we've come through. God knows that we're not spiritually mature at that point and He knows He's going to need to test and He's going to need to teach. And so here He says He tested them and He's teaching them. Verse 26, "And He said, 'If you diligently heed the voice of your Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.'"

He used this opportunity to teach them a lesson about obedience. He's not using this as an opportunity to say, "You wretched people, why didn't you believe Me?" He brought them and He shows them. He demonstrates that look, He's able to heal, He's able to make things well for them if they'll obey Him. He's teaching them lessons about obedience. He's testing their obedience. And we see this through this theme and this pattern over and over, that He rescues, right? When He calls us, He's going to lead us down a road that's going to include testing. And it's not going to be a super fun road. This wild ride and we get to the end and that was great. He's calling us into a life that requires obedience and He's going to test us in order to help us develop that obedience.

Let's continue in chapter 16, in verse 1. It says, "They journeyed from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed from the land of Egypt." So here they are full month out, right, the 15th day of the first month would have been the first day of Unleavened Bread. And here they are full month out, so all their boxes of matzos have run out at this point. And, you know, they're probably running low in food and provisions at this point as we find out. This is a month in. They're getting closer toward Pentecost. Verse 2, "Then the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the children of Israel, they said, 'Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.'"

They're lit bit unhappy here. And interestingly, the Lord says to Moses, "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you." This isn't necessarily the answer that any of us would expect or would think of, right? If it says, "Well, I bet here's what God's going to do. He's going to invent this bread that's going to just sort of come down and sort of materialize, and then it will melt in the day and that's how God's going to fix this problem, right?

He tends to fix the problems and teach us things along the way. And that's what He's going to do here. "The Lord said to Moses, 'Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day,'" and notice He says, "that I can test them… so that I may test them whether they will walk in My law or not." Again, He's bringing them out and He allowed the to hunger so that He could feed them, right? If we've got our own food, we're feeding ourselves. We don't quite need to look to Him and rely on Him perhaps in the way that He wants us to. And so He allowed them to hunger so that He could be the one that provided for them. And so that He could teach them, and so that He could test their obedience.

That's what He's after, that's what He wanted, that's what He wanted to see, He’s there teaching them. Let's go over to Deuteronomy 8. There's a very interesting thread here that we can continue down. Deuteronomy 8, sort of the next step in that thread, so here they've come out and they've learned this testing. By the time we get to Deuteronomy 8, we're 40 years later, this is a different generation. That generation had died off. Deuteronomy is given, at the very end of their wanderings, and Moses is teaching them and reminding them it's a re-giving and retelling. And so here he is teaching the young generation that had now grown up and they're maybe in their 50's and 60's, and their children, and he's teaching them.

And he goes back and he sites what we just read there in Exodus 16, he goes back to that example and reminds them of this example because he wants them to remember something. He wants them to remember the lessons that God is trying to teach. Deuteronomy 8:1, "Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe,” every commandment, “that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord your God swore to your fathers." He's saying He wants them to obey because He wants them to thrive. He wants them to live, to succeed. He's not just getting us out there and testing us to see if we'll do what He wants, because He just wants a bunch of people that are going to go do what He wants.

He gives His commandments because they let us live and thrive. And He wants to see them go in and live and multiply, and possess the land. Verse 2, "And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to test you, and to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not." He brought them through and gave them instructions, and then gave them opportunities to demonstrate that they would follow those instructions. He gave them opportunities to demonstrate their obedience because He was looking for obedience. And verse 3, sort of the culmination of this, "So He humbled you, and allowed you to hunger, and feed you… He fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone," not just the physical things that He was providing, right?

Those are the object lesson, “but that man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” He says “He allowed you to hunger.” Moses tells them, it's interesting, that “God let you hunger.” He lets us hunger, right? Not because He's taunting us. He lets us go into those states of lack, where we have need. We need something, right? Not so that we can go out and figure it out ourselves and provide for ourselves, but so that He can feed us. "He fed you," he reminds them. He feeds us. He brings us out. He lets us hunger so that He can feed us.

Not so that we can be fed and be full, right? Not so that we just have the physical food and the good stuff, but it's an object lesson that He may make you know, He says, to teach you this principle, to teach you this big idea that man doesn't live just by the physical things, right? It's not just in pagan society, right, you would go and you would obey, and do whatever the gods wanted you to do to try to appease the gods so that they would give you a good crop and you would eat well. That's not what He's wanting them to do. He doesn't want them to just obey so that they can get the good food, and obey so that they can have water. That's not the obedience He was after with them. That's not the obedience He's after with us.

It's not just about getting a good physical crop. That's actually a very pagan idea. He's there teaching that this isn't just about the physical, He's feeding of the spiritual food and drink. It's spiritual food. Remember, this is what Paul reminded us in 1 Corinthians. “Man doesn't live by bread alone,” by the physical things. He lives by the spiritual things. Now that phrase is very well known to most people that are familiar with the Bible, right, even people that aren't. I remember a hot dog commercial for Hebrew National I think it was that talked about man doesn't live by bread alone and then they talk about hot dogs. It's a phrase that rolls off the tongue easily, right? “Man doesn't live by bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

But consider the magnitude of that statement. You think about the magnitude of that. It means that God's Word declares everything that's required to sustain life, physical and spiritual. His Word tells us everything that we need in order to have a rich physical and spiritual life, and that's what He wants. He wants obedience to that Word, not because He's got a stem on us and He's going to make us do what He wants us to do, right? But because He gave us those things so that we could thrive and live. And we could have a rich and abundant spiritual life primarily. Sometimes that also translates into a rich and abundant physical life. His promises to Israel were primarily physical promises. "Follow My word, follow my laws and you will have this rich, abundant life."

But He offers us something even more. He offers us a rich and abundant eternal, spiritual life. And that's why He's testing us and looking for that obedience, right? It's not about that food. It's not about the food. It's about God as the provider of everything that we need in life. Sort of a side note, this is really, this is why we say a prayer at a meal. When we're going to say a prayer for a meal it's really not about the food. I mean, it's about the food but that's our opportunity to pause and recognize that in the same way that this food sustains physical life and God provides that, and it's our opportunity to pause and thank Him for sustaining us in everything, in all that He does.

It's interesting that we don't, there's not some other event throughout the day that we tend to all just sort of pause and say, "Okay, well let's say a prayer. We're about to put on our clothes. Let's pause and say a prayer." "I'm about to walk into my house, right, that God has provided for me. I'm going to say a prayer." We don't tend to do that but when we have a meal, and there's a meal sitting in front of us, the thing that sustains us physically, that's when we pause and we stop, and we reflect, and we say, "Okay. All of these things these came from God. God provides all the good things that we have in our life.” It's a really good time to stop and thank Him for that because He's the provider. He feeds us with everything that we need.

Jesus Christ understood this. Let's turn over to Matthew 3, continuing this thread, continuing this same thought, Matthew 3:16, "And when He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’" And then the next three and a half years were just amazing, right? I mean they're amazing for us as instruction but I can imagine that those were the best three-and-a-half years of His life.

And you'll notice the very next thing that happens after He's baptized is that the Spirit leads Him into the wilderness, and so just as Israel. It goes through the baptism of the Red Sea and then they are led by God into the wilderness by the cloud. Here, Jesus Christ is baptized, setting us an example and then God's Spirit leads Him into the wilderness to be tested, to be tempted to see whether or not he would obey. And here we are in verse 2, "When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry." So He goes out into the wilderness and He willingly subjects Himself to need, willingly hungers, but here He's fasting because He recognizes the principle here. He understands what God wants and what God is teaching.

And in verse 3, "Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, 'If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.'" Now, this doesn't seem like… it seems like a fairly harmless request in some way, right? “If You're the Son of God, if you have power, do this thing.” It's a small sort of private miracle. Nobody else would really know whether or not He did this. It was just, you know, and seemingly harmless, right? Just make some bread, you'll have bread to eat, you're good to go. Just use your power, use the power that you have that you were given, right? But that's not what… that's not how He saw it. Verse 4, "But He answered and He said to him, 'It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”'"

He's going back to Deuteronomy 8, which is pointing back to Exodus 16, where God is teaching the lessons about obedience. He knew it wasn't about the food, it wasn't about being fed and being full. To Him, even this thing that was seemingly small, right, it was sort of trivial thing, just make some bread. This convenient private miracle wasn't in line with His Father's will. It wasn't in line with God's Word with what was set out for Him that He was supposed to do. It wasn't in line with every word of what God had commanded and He wouldn't do it. He was fully obedient to God's Word, fully obedient, even in the little things, even in the small things. He wouldn't do it.

He set us an example then, right? He shows what God had wanted, what God intended for Israel to learn in those 40 years as they were wandering, their full and complete obedience. It points us back to that. Let's go over to John 6. John 6:4, so God had used this manna that He rained down from heaven to teach Israel, to teach them. And they learned and they extracted some lessons out of it. But Jesus Christ here is going to make a pretty amazing claim. We read this at Passover that Jesus Christ is the true Manna. He's the true bread from heaven. He goes back to that example that we read and He says, "Here's what this was symbolizing. Here's what this was teaching you about.”

And we're going to see, He does this very, very powerfully and profoundly. John 6:4, "Now the Passover, A feast of the Jews, was near. And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, and He said to Phillip, 'Where should we buy bread, that these may eat?' But He said this to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do." So here it is, it's getting toward Passover season and he has this opportunity to have this great miracle occur. And he goes on and he feeds 5,000 people with some fishes and loaves. And it's a great miracle, it's an amazing miracle but that's not where we're going to focus today. After He does that, He disappears, goes across the sea with His disciples, and all of these people come searching for Him and finding Him because they realize the magnitude, the miracle that He did and they think it's amazing. So they come and they find Him.

And in verse 26, “Jesus answered them and He 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.’" Because for them, it was all about the food. He was their meal ticket and you could, “If you go and you obey what this Guy says and follow His instructions or whatever, He's going to feed you and you'll be covered, and then you'll have a good life.” It's, sort of, it's almost that pagan thought of, "Well, let's go appease the gods and we'll have good things for ourselves and things will be good. Life will be good." He says that's not what He did that for. "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him."

He says, "You have to look for more than a handout. You have to look for the spiritual food. You have to be filled with that." Verse 30, "Therefore they said to Him, 'What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Because our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”'" Again, going back to that example. And He's going to use that example now and sort of turn it on them and say “Yes, but they didn't understand the lesson and you don't either.” We need to understand the lesson. Verse 32, "Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give 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."

Here, now, He's talking about Himself and He turns it. And they probably didn't pick up on that initially, but as they come to realize what He's saying to them, that He's talking about Himself, that He's not just talking about the manna but now He's talking about Himself. They go, "Wait a second, I don't know if I like what this Guy is saying." Because really it's a pretty audacious claim. There are people who want to say Jesus was just a good Teacher and a good Man, taught some good things. But Jesus Christ made some really audacious claims that if He wasn't God, you know, this is not the kind of thing that any human could rightly say, without being just some sort of lunatic. But He was God and He tells them He's the bread that God sent from heaven that will give them eternal life.

Verse 48, because He's telling them, "Look, manna was just a type that points to Me." Verse 48, "I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.” And not just physically dead, they were spiritually dead. They didn't understand the lessons. They didn't understand what God was teaching. They'll have another opportunity to learn those things. They are dead in every sense. “This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.” Spiritual life and death are what He has in view here because He talks about them dying and talks about raising them up at the last day. He's not talking about physical life. He has spiritual life and spiritual death in mind.

He says that He's going to raise them up. We read these things at Passover. We say, "Okay, well, we need to take of these symbols," right? "I'm the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." And so we learn about the Passover symbols that He instituted, we see that those represent Him, right? But it's not some mystical thing. It's not just, well, we show up at the Passover once a year, we take this bread and this wine, and somehow that does this magic and we're going to be a part of God's Kingdom. These aren't mystical symbols.

There are people that understand them in that way, that interpret them in that way. But we have to go beyond that, we have to go beyond just seeing these as things that we show up and we take once a year and somehow we're covered or we're good. There's more that He's teaching here. They're the object lesson. Just like manna. Manna was the object lesson, right? It wasn't the thing that saved them. Obedience to God, that was the thing He was teaching. The symbols here are the object lesson. We take that bread, we drink of that wine, those things are the object lesson for us. And then there is spiritual food that we have to be consuming, real spiritual food that we have to be taking in when we understand what those symbols are, what those symbols picture.

Are we fed and nourished by God's Word? Is that what feeds us? Is that what nourishes us? Is that our food? Is it our food to do the will of the Father? It was Jesus Christ’s food because “I have bread that you don't know about.” And His food was to do the will of His Father that sent Him. Is that our food? Is that what drives us? Is that what fuels us? Because that's what He's after. God wants full obedience. He wants full obedience to His Word. Lets drop down to verse 57, "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me." And He's not just talking about feeding on Him once a year at Passover. We have to do that. We understand that. That is a symbol that we absolutely need to take.

But if that's the only time that we're feeding on Jesus Christ, it's not enough. It's not going to be enough. Are we feeding on Him continually, daily? Or do we feed on other things? There are a lot of things in this world that we can feed on and it's easy to get sucked in to. And we can really get ourselves wrapped up in the politics of this world and feed on those things, right? “And that's the food that fuels me as to really get into the political scene here and try to understand it and make it right and have the right point of view on these things.” We can feed on those if we choose to. We can feed on other junk food, Facebook maybe, right? I'm not saying Facebook is wrong but it is easy.

These sites are designed, right, for us to get in and consume them, right? They're designed to keep us engaged, to keep us involved. Articles are written and blogs are written and there are all sorts of stuff that we can feed on that can be our food or that fuels us, that we meditate on. It's easy to let those things settle in our mind and be the things that we meditate on, that we feed on. That's not what He's after, that's not what He wants. He says, "He who feeds on me will have life." We need to be feeding on Him. Verse 61, a lot of people have a lot of problems with this teaching. They didn't like this idea that we had to feed on Jesus Christ. "When Jesus knew in Himself and that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, 'Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?’” “What if you see Me go back where I'm going?” “It is the Spirit which gives life; the flesh profits nothing."

So, again, He's pointing them to the spiritual food. "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” God's Word is life. He's saying the Word is spirit and it is life to you. This is the thing that you've got to feed on, His Word. We've got to be feeding on His Word and that's what will make us alive, that is our nourishment. That's the thing that leads to spiritual life. He Himself is the Word. John 1, we read about that, that Jesus Christ is the Word. That He's called the Word. He is the embodiment of His teachings, of His words.

So He teaches, He says His words are life, and then He embodies His teachings. He is the Word. When we consume that, when we feed on the Word, when we talk about feeding on Jesus Christ, feeding on the Word, they're all part of the same thing, right? We're feeding on His teachings so that we can learn obedience so that we can have eternal life, a rich, abundant, spiritual life. I noticed it's interesting because He's asking them, "Are you offended? Are you going to go away?" And in verse 67, “Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you also want to go away?’ But Simon Peter answered Him,” and notice what he says to Him, he says, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” “You have the thing that we need to be feeding on. You have the thing that nourishes us. Where else are we going to get that?"

And here he recognized the food, the spiritual food, the spiritual manna that was Jesus Christ and His teachings. So it's interesting, we sort of recap here. God allowed Israel to hunger, right, so that He could feed them. He sent bread from heaven to them which they were feeding on. They were to feed on daily, He gave them instructions about that. And with that food, with what He provided, came testing, testing of their obedience. In order to teach them just how central His Word was to their spiritual life and to their ability to thrive. Not just that they have manna and be able to eat but He's teaching them the centrality of His Word in their lives, of His commands. And Moses said, "You have to live by every word." God allows us to hunger spiritually.

Sometimes He allows us to hunger so that He can feed us. Jesus says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." And so that should be our hunger and thirst. We should be hungering for that because He wants to feed us. He says, "They'll be filled." We'll be filled, we'll be fed. Jesus Christ, the Word, right? The Word became Jesus Christ, the true bread from heaven and we're to feed on that. As we do that, just as Israel fed on the manna and it came with testing, as we do that it comes with testing to see if we'll continue to feed on that. We continue to feed on His Word and obey every word as we can, as we understand. He's trying to teach us the centrality of His Word in our lives, the obedience to His Word, to His commandments.

So I have two practical encouragements I want to get through here. Two practical encouragements that we can sort of take away from some of these things. First one, let's go back to Exodus 16. Exodus 16:19. The first encouragement is to gather it daily. Gather daily what you need. Exodus 16:19, “Moses said, ‘Let no one leave any of it till morning.’ Notwithstanding they did not heed Moses. But some of them left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them.” So they thought, "Well, this manna looks pretty good. Let's just kind of stockpile it and we'll have a little bit for, you know, throughout the week." But that wasn't how God designed it, “it bred worms and it stank.”

“And Moses was angry with them. So they gathered it every morning, every man according to his need. And when the sun became hot, it melted.” It's interesting that you couldn't hoard it, right? If you could hoard it, then you wouldn't have to go gather it daily. You could go out there and you could gather a whole bunch of it, put it in a big old pot, right, and just sort of feed on it every morning. That's not how God designed it. He made it so that they had to go work for it. It had to go out daily and work for it. Couldn't stockpile it, right? We need to be gathering His Word daily. If we're only gathering one day of the week and trying to stockpile all that, that's not going to cut it, that's not going to work for us. We need to be going out and gathering it daily.

It's interesting here that they gathered it early. They gathered it in the morning so that they could use it throughout the day. They could go and then consume it over the course of the day. They gathered it early. Remember, for us if we're going to be obedient to every word of God, we want to there in mind so that as we go throughout our day we can subject ourselves to it so that we can have an abundant life. But we need to be taking it in and the model here seems to be morning is a good time to do that. They go soak it in and so that it can be there in mind after we've slept and we've sort of have that brain reset, hopefully, if we get a good night sleep. We're able to take that in, minds are clear. We're able to take that food that we've eaten and then use it throughout the day. We're able to learn obedience in that way.

We want to have it in mind, it's a good thing to have it in the morning. It's interesting, too, that as the day wore on it melted away. If you didn't get up and go get it, and the day wore on, you missed your opportunity. You're going to have to go find some other source that day, right? And we can do that too, where we get up and we have a spiritual need, right? If we have God's Spirit in this, we have a spiritual need to be fed with this. So we're going to need that and if we don't feed it, we're going to go find some other thing and feed it, right? And it's usually not the good stuff, it's the junk food.

It's the stuff that is really easy to access in the pantry that my wife gives me grief about when I go and find that first. We need to gather it daily. It's good to gather it early. Matthew 6:11, same idea, same principle. Matthew 6:11, "Give us this day our daily bread." This is a prayer, give us this day for this coming day our daily bread. Jesus Christ encouraged daily bread, right, like manna. I don't know if He had manna in view here but He encourages that daily bread. One of them to be out daily asking God to provide for them. And Luke, he says, "Give us day by day our daily bread." It's not something we stockpile, it's something that we ask God to provide for us daily.

And this may not exclude the physical. I don't think He's excluding the physical need here, right, but do you think His focus is on the physical needs? Let's drop down to verse 31. Matthew 6:31, "Therefore do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’" As the Israelites did, they worried, they complained, "What are we going to eat?" "For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” He has these spiritual things in view here. So when He tells us "Go, seek our daily bread, feed on that daily bread," I don't know that He's saying excluding the physical bread, right, but His focus throughout the rest of Matthew is on the spiritual things, seeking the spiritual things, praying for the spiritual things.

Asking God to give us what we need out of His Word for that day, to use that day, to learn that day, to be able to grow in that day, to have to those things in mind and to be able to take them and learn. The goal here, remember, is obedience that we can have these things and that we can obey them. Let's go real quick to 2 John, 2 John 1:6, an interesting thought in this regard. 2 John 1:6, "This is love, that we walk according to His commandments." So God is love, I want to be love, you probably want to be love, right? That's what we want to be, that's where we're growing into. And He says, "This is love, is to walk according to His commandments." So when we're praying for God to feed us with that daily bread, we're saying, "I want to obey this, I want to grow in this, right? Show me your commandments, open my eyes to see them, open my eyes to understand your Word so that I can grow in it because that's love, that's what love is." That's what John says here. We have to feed on Jesus Christ, on His Word. We have to feed on Him daily, we got to feed on Him early. The Passover bread, the manna, those things are the object lessons that teach us our need to continually rely on Him.

Second encouragement, let's go back to Exodus 16. Second encouragement is to share it liberally, share it liberally. First was gather it daily and then secondarily share it liberally. Exodus 16:16, "This is the thing which the Lord has commanded: ‘Let every man gather it according to each one's need, one omer for each person, according to the number of persons; let every man take for those who are in His tent.’ Then the children of Israel did so and gathered, some more, some less.” And we read this and we go, "Oh, no, those Israelites, some are taking too much." That's not the sense here though, the sense isn’t that these people were in rebellion against God, right? Because “when they measure it by omers, he who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack. Every man had gathered according to each one's need.” So we get the sense here, they're not in rebellion.

It's not some of them were going out and trying to hoard a bunch of it and some of them are just lazy over there, picking up a little bit and just take out a little. We get to sense that they gathered according to their ability and then they shared among themselves. They distribute it so that they all had, right? Maybe they had a household went out and gathered a whole bunch for his tent, right, for all that were in his tent. Maybe somebody came along and helped him and they gathered a lot. And maybe they were just two in this tent over here and so they gathered a little. But they made sure that they all had what they needed. They all had the bread that they needed.

Let's go over to 2 Corinthians 8 because Paul quotes this scripture in this context of sharing liberally. He's talking about physical goods but there's a principle here, 2 Corinthians 8:14. 2 Corinthians 8:14, "But by an equality,” He wants equality “that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance may also supply your lack—  there may be equality. As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.’" Paul sort of telling us here that what happened back there was about ensuring equality, it was about ensuring that everybody had what they needed.

Where am I going with this? Share it liberally, right? Some of us have time, a lot more time than others to study, to be in God's Word, to really have our heads in it. Some have more distractions in their lives during the day, some of us have jobs and other things that require focus eight, nine hours a day where we don't have the time, the ability to have our heads on our work… or in the Word and to be focused on it. Some people could use a little bit of encouragement. They could use to hear that other people are thinking about these things, right? A little bit of that positive peer pressure to say, "Here's what I've been studying. Have you thought about this?" Sort of spark a little bit of that interest in them.

We need to be sharing God's Word, we need to be sharing what we study, talk about it. If you're studying something interesting, let's hear about it, talk about it, especially here on the Sabbath. To be able to say what you're learning, what God is feeding you with others so that then others can be spurred on and go, "Oh, that's really interesting. That's a really interesting topic. I haven't thought about it that way. And now I can't wait to go get home and dig in, and figure out what does it say there, right? I wonder what that is." Hopefully, you had those conversations here at church throughout the week with other people, where somebody will share of God's Word with you, you go, "Oh, this is really great." And that fire is lit again. We need to be sharing liberally.

Let's go to Colossians 3:16. As we wind down here, every young person's favorite words. Colossians 3:16, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another" this question about where the punctuation in this verse goes. It might read, in your Bible, “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns” it might not quite be the sense.

A lot of the commentators don't feel that that's exactly the sense of it. That the teaching here, the instruction is “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, be feeding on that Word. Be filled with it. Let it dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, encouraging one another.” Sharing the things that God is feeding you with with another. Sharing and encouraging in those things, right? And even if it is that we're somehow teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. We don't tend to walk around and sing to each other. But even if that were the sense here, psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs are generally God's Word, the psalms are God's Word, right?

The hymns that we know, that we have implanted in our minds, that we've been singing for so long, that you could rattle off any number of psalms that's been dwelling in you richly, maybe for decades. These are the words that He says, "Encourage one another with these, teach one another with these, share this bread. Share it liberally." Jesus Christ said, "The words that I speak to you are spirit." Again, that's one of those big audacious statements. The words that he spoke were spirit. Are the words that we speak to each other spirit? That's a pretty big claim. But if they're His words they must be, right? We can speak spiritual words, we can speak life to one another and that's the kind of words that we need to be speaking of one another, sharing with one another, especially here when we're together.

So let's feed daily on Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God. He is the true bread from heaven, with that manna was supposed to teach us about. Let's share with others, share with those who are hungry. Share with those who need it. In that way, maybe we will all be nourished, we can grow up into the stature of our fully obedient older Brother, Jesus Christ.