By Rev.
Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA
broadcast - Sunday, March 6th, 2016:
Broadcast Notes:
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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 thank you our listeners for your constant
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.
Today
and throughout the month of March, we want to thank Wills Transfer for their sponsorship. Wills Transfer is local
company providing full service logistics and warehousing in eastern Ontario and
western Quebec since 1945. We want to thank them for their support this year,
and in previous years.
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Missing the Manna?
Today
I want to address with you the question of who is satisfying your hunger. I am
titling this "Missing the Manna?," because the idea of God providing
for the needs of his people is expressed in the story of providing the Manna,
which occurred during the wilderness journey, as they escaped Egypt to Israel.
But Jesus referred to that story of the Manna in the Gospel of John, and so I
am reading today from Chapter 6 of the
Gospel of John:
(John
6:28–59). 28 Then they (the crowds) asked him, “What must we do to
do the works God requires?”
29
Jesus
answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30
So
they asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and
believe you? What will you do? 31 Our forefathers ate the manna in
the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
32
Jesus
said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the
bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from
heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and
gives life to the world.”
34
“Sir,”
they said, “from now on give us this bread.”
35
Then
Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go
hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I
told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All that
the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive
away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to
do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who
sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up
at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks
to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up
at the last day.”
41
At
this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that
came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of
Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from
heaven’?”
43
“Stop
grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to
me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last
day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by
God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. 46
No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has
seen the Father. 47 I tell you the truth, he who believes has
everlasting life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your
forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50 But here
is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 51
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this
bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the
life of the world.”
52
Then
the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his
flesh to eat?”
53
Jesus
said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my
flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last
day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57
Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so
the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the
bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he
who feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while
teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Now that was quite a long bit, but in fact was such a difficult teaching
the many people stopped following Jesus after he said this. They didn't
understand the meaning of it. Let's take a look at the meaning of this in a few
minutes, and let's continue to follow Jesus! But first let's listen to a song.
This is a song that speaks about God feeding us with the bread from heaven is
called Guide Me Oh Thou Great Redeemer
and it's from a collection of hymns called a Celebration Of Hymns
Manna in the desert. If you read in the book of Exodus where the people
of Israel were wandering in the desert. Of course a desert doesn't provide much
in the way sustenance especially for such allowed large crowd of people. God
provided for them by providing this thing 'manna.' The word manna means "what
is it?" they really couldn't identify it. It was a white flaky thing that
was on the ground and it was sweet to the taste. They were able to go out and
gather it, and that was what sustain them through their years in the wilderness.
Of course, sometimes they got tired of plain old manna, just as any of us can get
tired of something even if it's the best thing we could possibly have. Having
it day after day seems to bore us, seems to exhaust us. Well, they got tired of
it and asked for other things and God sometimes provided alternatives. Sometimes
he reacted with annoyance at their pettiness and their complaining. But the
fact is the bread that they ate in the wilderness did not sustain them for
eternal life. In fact the generation that refused to go into the land of Canaan,
when the scouts had returned and given a message about that land, they got
afraid they wouldn't go in. That entire generation passed away in the desert
before the people of Israel were allowed to continue on into the promised land.
The manna sustained them but it didn't give them a lasting life, an eternal
life. Yet there a few things about manna that make it a great symbol of God's
provision, God's graceful provision. Israelite people didn't do anything to
deserve that manna. They were being rescued. They were helpless as slaves in
Egypt, they were delivered across the Red Sea by miraculous sign and when they
were in the desert they couldn't make their own way. They didn't know how to provide for themselves
in the desert. God provided this manna gracefully and he did in a way that
taught them a lot about his character. For instance the manna appeared every
morning six days of the week and on the sixth day, when people went to gather
the manna, they could gather twice as much and they could keep it overnight so
that on the seventh day they could rest from that little tiny labor they'd had.
They could take a break and they still
have enough to supply them in the in the coming day. Jesus Christ, God, wanted to teach them the
importance of that seventh day rest so they would stick to it when they were
farmers and craftsmen and traders in the promised land. It was going to be
worked into them through the 40 years the desert has God made it possible for
them to take a break. In fact he made it impossible for them do anything other
than take a break and have a rest on the seventh day. The seventh day is still
a day when we should be taking time away and especially focusing on God to
renew us and remind us of the importance of God in the whole of the week.
This was one of the lessons we learned from the manna that came in the
desert. Another lesson that came from the manna in the desert was how God
provided a gracefully to all people as they had need. You see the manna was
something that people could collect but if somebody went out and really got
energetic and collected a whole bunch of manna they would find that they didn't
have any more than they needed at the end of the day. Those who were only able,
because of the weakness or infirmity, to collect just a little bit of manna, or
those having a large family to feed, they would find that somehow or other God
provided enough. It was something like that miracle that Jesus did with the
fish and the loaves when he was teaching the people. Just a few fish were
enough to feed the entire multitude with much left over. A graceful provision
and ability to give what people need when they really needed it. The manna that
they collected in the desert was also something that they couldn't keep, except
for a couple samples that were put in the Ark of the Covenant. If anybody tried
to keep the manna overnight, "just in case God wasn't going to provide it
the next day," well, on every night except the night before the Sabbath
that manna would go rotten and there would be worms in it in the morning and
would be completely inedible. God wanted the people to trust him day by day for
the provision of manna. They couldn't have a Manna Bank where they could store
up their Retirement Savings Plan of manna in the background. That was not part
of God's training of the people of Israel.
Now when Jesus says that he is the bread from heaven, it's at a
interesting turn in his ministry. The people are starting to recognize that
Jesus is something special they aren't quite sure how to identify him. Some of
them are offended because they know he's just Mary and Joseph's son. "He
can't be anything special, we knew him when he was growing up, we know his
parents, we know where he comes from!" Jesus points out to them that his
origin is not just what you can see. The mom and the dad that you find in the
town of Nazareth in Galilee. The origin of Jesus Christ is beyond that. He
comes down from heaven. He was conceived in Mary's womb by the Holy Spirit, he
is the eternal son of God. He doesn't spell all that out, but he does drop
hints that cause them to wonder. "Who does he think he is?" Now he
declares this to them in words that really reflect the kind of questions
they're asking, because they ask him for some miraculous sign that he is the
one that God has sent. When they refer to the manna in the desert Jesus turns
that phrase on them. He says. "You know what? That bread that they had in
the desert, that wasn't the bread that came from heaven. The true bread that
came comes from heaven is the bread that gives eternal life." They
respond, "Oh, Oh, we'd love to have this bread."
If you dig through the words that Jesus says here, he's really saying, "the
bread from heaven is me, the thing you really need is not a sign, not a wonder,
but it's me." Jesus is the one who has come to save and to provide eternal
life, to give us everything we need to live a new life in relationship with God.
In fact Michael Card has recorded a song that reflects this sentiment, reflects
this truth and reality, when he sings an old hymn, Jesus Lover Of My Soul. Won't you listen to that song with me now?
The crowds that followed Jesus hadn't quite figured out who he was, and
now he was saying that he was the bread that came from heaven. They were being
very literally minded because they were thinking of bread. Maybe they were
hungry, maybe it was lunch time, but they couldn't get the idea of literal
bread out of their minds. They wanted something to fill their bellies, they
want something to satisfy their bodies; Jesus had come to satisfy their souls. First
and foremost he had come to give them eternal life. When he says he's the bread
of heaven they take some offense, but he's not going to let them off with some
light pat answer. In fact he says something even more offensive to them. He
says, "Yes in fact, you've asked the silly question, 'How can I give you
my flesh to eat?' Well, I am the
life you need, I am the bread that
you need. If you want to be silly about and say that you have to eat this flesh,
then I will tell you the truth unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood you have no life in you. Now let's face it, if you’ve been
listening to the gospel throughout your life you've heard this phrase. It's
become just part of what Jesus said, and we understand something of what he
means by it, and even so we find it an uncomfortable saying. We find it difficult
and challenging and can imagine that the first people who heard this, these
Jewish listeners, were very much put off, saying that we needed to eat his
flesh and drink his blood. Well you and I know that he wasn't mean that quite
literally. Even though when he comes to the Last Supper he breaks bread and
offers the cup and says this bread is my body broken for you and this cup is my
blood poured out for you, for the forgiveness of sins.
We understand that that while we're receiving Jesus, we're not actually
eating flesh and blood. We're still eating bread, we're still drinking wine,
but we know that that at the same time as we doing this we're receiving Christ.
We're letting Christ into our lives, to actually be, to really be our strength
and our nourishment, to really be our cleansing and our life. We really do need
to have Jesus in us in order for us to live. That doesn't sound very offensive.
But the truth, the further truth behind Jesus words is this: that he
actually had to die. His body had to be broken on the cross in order for us to
gain eternal life. He actually had to have his blood spilled out in order for
us to be forgiven. We like to think that sin could be dealt with in some
subtler way, some more poetic way. This is kind of ugly, the crucifixion. It's
kind of challenging. Surely the problem isn't that bad! Surely the problem
isn't that serious that God, having become flesh, would actually have to lay
down his life in order that we could be reconciled to him.
Well, unfortunately there's no way around these words of Jesus. This is
the testimony of his life and death and resurrection, that our rebellion
against God, our sin against one another, all that we have done wrong, all that
the ways we have fallen short are extraordinarily serious to God. In effect our
rebellion against God counts as our attempt on his life, our attempt to push
God out, to kill God in order to have our own freedom and our own way.
How sad that our own freedom and our own way has led to destruction, led
to so much hurt in the world, led do so much harm being poured out in so many
directions. The only way to stop this is for God to come and offer himself. Offer
himself to take up the weight of our sin, offer himself to be the one who gets
attacked, the one who gets killed in order for us to be given forgiveness and
eternal life. It's a mystery and a mystery which the people at that time really
weren't ready to accept
The question today is whether you're ready to accept it, whether we're
ready to accept it. Many people have hunger in their lives. They're looking for
satisfaction and it doing it through so many physical means. They are trying to
find the best food, trying to find drugs, or medicines to ease their pain, and
to change their life. Many people are starving in the midst of plenty as they
look for meaning and purpose, but refuse to turn to Jesus.
Can you imagine being in the desert and seeing that manna on the ground,
seeing everybody eating of that manna and being satisfied, but perhaps you're
one of those picky eaters that just goes "oh, no, no, I couldn't possibly,
I don't know what it is. It looks weird. It probably tastes weird."
We had children like that at our table, and it's amazing to see that
people can go hungry with wonderful food all around them. Jesus is with you now. Jesus is right in your
presence and you are able to feed on him simply by receiving him, by crying out
to him. Even the person who calls out, "God I don't even know if you there,
but I need you!" That person is calling upon a God who lives to hear and
respond and to come and meet needs, and so we are able to receive Jesus, receive
this bread of life and receive a gift that will change us eternally.
I hope this message has been
helpful for you. Especially as we prepare for the Easter season that you'll
think about how God has given his life for you and how he has provided you with
the very thing you need through his death on the cross and his resurrection.
Let's pray for a moment and then we'll conclude the program.
Almighty God, we
thank you that you have given yourself. It's hard to comprehend how great your
love is. It's also sometimes hard to admit how great our need is. We are
thankful that when we cry out to you, Jesus, when we call upon your name, you
do save us.
Be with each one
who calls upon you, Lord, and reveal to them that you have given them life as
they have received you as their Savior. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name Amen.
Once again I want to thank our listeners for your encouragement and
support. We do thank you because you keep us on the air week by week. Can we
please encourage you to support our ministry financially Your gift can help us
to continue to meet that one vital expense, the cost of broadcasting, which
enables us to reach you and over 7000 listeners in the Ottawa River Valley. If
you can please make a cheque payable to Good News Christian Ministries and send
it to P.O. Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. We will be happy to send you
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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. Now to conclude our program I would like to have you
listen to a song called I'd
Rather Have Jesus sung by Winchester native, George Beverly Shea. 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:
