By Rev.
Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA
broadcast - Sunday, September 27th, 2015:
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Broadcast Notes:
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‘Spiritual Appetite’
Welcome to Good
News In the Morning, a program of words and music bringing a Christian
message of hope and encouragement to those who are looking for intelligent
meaningful and spirited approach to faith and to life.
This program is sponsored by Good News Christian
Ministries PO Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. I'm your host today, Brian
Wilkie of St. Andrew's Christian church in Rockland. As always I want to start
by thanking you our listeners. We are so grateful for your encouragement and
support. Please remember that you can always visit our website for materials to
encourage and support you in your Christian walk.
If you miss an episode of the show you can go to
our website and download the podcast or the MP3 of our broadcast. Details can
be found on our website. www.GNCM.ca
Satisfying the Right Appetite
I want to speak to you about your appetite. I hope
you all have a healthy appetite for good nutritious food, but want to speak
about a spiritual appetite. To lead into this there is a Scripture that has
been speaking to me and in my preaching to the congregation in Rockland it's
been an important message in last little while.
So from the prophet Haggai beginning at the
beginning of chapter 1 he writes,
"In the second year of King Darius, on the
first day of the sixth month, the word of the LORD came through the prophet
Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of
Jehozadak, the high priest:
This is what the LORD Almighty says: “These people
say, ‘The time has not yet come for the LORD’s house to be built.’ ”
Then the word of the LORD came through the prophet
Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses,
while this house remains a ruin?”
Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give
careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little.
You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on
clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with
holes in it.”
This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful
thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build
the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the LORD.
“You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home,
I blew away. Why?” declares the LORD Almighty. “Because of my house, which
remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore,
because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I
called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new
wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the
labor of your hands.” - The Word of the Lord
So God has chastised the people of Israel who had
just returned from exile. Well they had returned from exile a couple decades
before. They had been cast out of Israel by Babylon; they had spent 70 years in
captivity until God delivered them from the captivity. They came back and they
set about: they built the walls to protect Jerusalem and they rebuilt their
houses that had been ruined in the battles of 70 years before, they got
themselves settled in. They thought they would get going on the temple but they
got distracted. They got busy making their houses nicer, making sure that their
crops were doing okay, and trying to fill their storehouses. God gives them a
message and gives them a warning about what they're doing wrong.
Let's take a look at that the Scripture in a few
moments after we hear this music that celebrates who Jesus Christ is. This is
called Who You Are and it's sung by Caedmon's Call.
Now people of Israel were neglecting the Lord's
house, the temple, which they were supposed to build. Every time the people of
Israel drift away from God and don't pay attention to Him they forget about
justice, they forget about loving one another, they forget about living the way
that honors God and leads to their security. They keep on doing that over and
over again but this time God's not going to let them get away with it. He tells
them that they need to the need to take a look and connect the dots, because
they came to Jerusalem rejoicing, expecting things to really go well. things
did go well for a while but now things aren't going well. He says, "you
expected much but, see, it's turned out be little." He essentially tells
the people to put two and two together - think about this for a bit, try to figure
out why things aren't working out you. You plant what you plant and you don't
seem to get enough. You eat but you are never satisfied, you drink, but you
never have your fill. Nothing seems to be satisfying them and nothing seems to
be going quite as well as it should. God says, "Okay I'll tell you what
it's about: it's about your neglect of the things of God. This is symbolized by
this temple that you've refused to build, where you've refused honor me and
you've refused to put an effort into following me and doing what's right."
So God has sent drought. God has sent a failure of their crops and everything
that they wanted so badly, that they put ahead of God, is being restricted. It is
not going well.
Now the people of Israel responded: they built the
temple, they honored God. That is just a wonderful thing that they did in their
lives. But did you hear a lot of
similarity between what the Lord says to the people of Israel and what we
experience in the world today? Look around you. do you see people who are
eating but never satisfied? They enjoy food and drink but it never seems to be
enough. You see people concerned with fashion with the way they look, with
dressing up with makeup, with decorating their bodies in all kinds of ways but
they are never satisfied. We have a powerful economy. We are among the richest
people that have ever lived in history. We have toys and delights that other
generations couldn't even have dreamed up and yet we seem to be a very unhappy
generation. Money seems to just come in and go out and we find ourselves never
quite having enough. You can look around and see people who put their
priorities in the wrong place. They have appetites that just can't be satisfied.
Appetites are a good thing. I think we have to agree that if you are alive, you
have appetites. If you don't have the right appetites it's likely that you are
going to have trouble staying healthy because we need an appetite for food, we
need an appetite for drink, we need an appetite for rest and for play.
We have
all these appetites that are very important. They are our servants but they
should not master us. There is an appetite that is more important than any of
these and, of course, that is the appetite for God. God is truly the source of
our life, yes, he gives the things we need for life through the provision of
food and oxygen, water and warmth through the sun, but God is the source of all
these things. Without God all these things lose their joy, lose their savor. Lfe,
itself, becomes meaningless and purposeless. People even in the best material
circumstances can fall into despair if they don't have some significance in
their life.
So God says give careful thought, careful thought.
Think about what's most important have you been neglecting the temple of God? Now
today we're in quite a different situation than the people of Israel were. The temple is not a physical building
somewhere. Paul says quite explicitly that our bodies are the temple of God,
that God now dwells in us. When the Holy Spirit came, that's God dwelling in us.
Our bodies are not merely our homes, but they are God's temple.
While we might look around at the world chasing
after all kinds of appetites and neglecting God, yet this message wasn't
delivered to people outside of faith. This was delivered to people that were in
God's family and so we might want to point this particular Scripture it
ourselves and ask ourselves which appetites are we pursuing as we pursue our
lives.
Let's again take a short break as we listen to
something else. This song is a song written and sung by friend of mine, Stephen
Cowley. It tells about the barriers to faith that we have in ourselves and
let's remember that is not just about the unbeliever but the believer whose
faith is not yet complete because we haven't yet fully trusted Jesus Christ- we are saved but our faith is not giving us
all the benefit can in leading us in the way of Christ. So here's We Would
Not Believe in Stephen Cowley's album Dross to Gold.
How is our appetite for God? When we come to new
life in Christ we are born with new appetites. We are new creation and with it
comes new understanding of what our needs are. It is not just a thing of our
heads: appetites are a thing that involve our whole being, don't they? We can
rationalize and reason about appetites but they are a driving force in us. God
made us that way, and when he remakes us as new creations in Christ he makes us
with an appetite for Him. It is not always a challenge to pursue an appetite: that
the appetite picks you up and moves you in the direction that you need to go
and so the Christian has an appetite for time with God spent in prayer. The
Christian has an appetite for time with God spent in service. The Christian has
an appetite for time with God spent in his Word. A Christian has an appetite for
time with other believers: where the presence of God is there in a special way,
as Jesus says, "when two or three of you are gathered in my name I'm with
you." Christian has an appetite for hearing from others, for being
encouraged by others and encouraging others. That's why we gather together on a
regular basis to study the Word together to encourage each other and to think
about how we can serve God better. He's given us an appetite for those things.
But sometimes we do lose their appetite, don't we?
Sometimes for various reasons we can completely forget to eat. We can forget to
drink. We can end the day with a great big headache and realize that we hadn't
had any breakfast and we hadn't had lunch. Somehow or other we are distracted
from these important things. Sometimes emotionally we are turned away from our
appetites. Sometimes when we suffer great loss we fast, not because we choose
to fast but just because we just don't feel like eating. How is that in your
Christian life? Has your appetite for God been put aside by distractions? Has
it been replaced by an appetite for other things? Are we trying to fill the
hole in us with the wrong kind of materials? Do we fill it with experiences and
with toys and with games? Is our time filled with busyness instead of turning
to God and letting him fill his temple?
Sometimes we can ruin our appetite by taking in the
wrong things: eating junk food before dinner. Did you ever get told not to not to spoil your
dinner? Do we fill our minds and our hearts with so much stimulus, so many
ideas, so many different inputs from television and radio and the Internet and
from all around us, but fail to take what's most important?
Well I think God calls us just like he called the
people in Haggai's day to connect the dots here. Is all of our pursuing of
other things outside of God filling us? Are we satisfied, are we enjoying the
daily bread that God gives us, the bread of his word and fellowship with
believers? We can find more satisfaction if we allow God to restore our
appetite for him; if we will take more
of an opportunity to eat nutritious spiritual food and find that that we don't
actually need the junk food as much as we thought we did. Can we learn to enjoy
wholesome spiritual food? Yes we can. We do that by making sure that we don't dull
our tastes with junk; by making sure that we consider carefully what we're
doing and what the return is on our efforts. We can rebuild our bodies as a
temple of God, rebuild our life as a temple of God.
Well than you for looking into God's word with me
today, and thank you, listeners for your encouragement and support. We do thank
you because you keep us on the air week by week. Can I encourage you to support
our ministry financially? Where ever you live, your gift can help us to
continue to meet that one vital expense, the cost of broadcasting, which
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Be sure to worship in a church where the gospel is
soundly proclaimed and lived out with compassion, integrity and resolve.
Prayer:
Almighty God, thank you for your
Word. When you disciplined the people of Israel by sending a drought to remind
them of their priorities, we see that even in your discipline you are merciful;
you lead us in the right way. So please, Lord, lead us to come to the well of
living water. Lead us to the bread of life, Jesus Christ, lead us to come to
him, to trust him fully and you enjoy the life that he gives us. We pray this
in Jesus name, Amen.
Now we will conclude our program with a song by Michael Card which
speaks of a life fully devoted to God. Be
thou my vision -from the album Star Kindler.
I do pray that the Lord will hold your heart and
you would know Jesus personally and profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside deep
within your heart, may the heavenly Father surround you with his constant and
abiding and accompanying love.
Good News In The Morning is produced in the Studios
of News Talk Radio 580 CFRA.
Rev. Brian Wilkie
St. Andrew's
Christian Community, Rockland,
Ontario
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To listen to the above
broadcast, click on the following link:
