The Un-Wasted Life

[0:00] As we honor God's Word, again reading in John chapter 6, beginning in verse 51 and going to verse 59.

[0:19] ! I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of this world is my flesh. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

[0:36] So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, 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 feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

[0:51] For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on 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, whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.

[1:08] This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught at Capernaum.

[1:21] May God add a blessing to the reading of his Word. Would you please be seated? In 2019, the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, Youth Suicide Rate Increases 56% in Decade, CDC Says.

[1:38] 56%. The article goes on to talk about how from that age to 10 to 24, and young people, they are increasingly determining that life is no longer worth living.

[1:55] In fact, it is the second highest or second reason why young lives end so early behind accidental car crashes or different things like that.

[2:10] The article goes on to say that not only is that the case for young people, but across the board in the United States of America over the past 10 years, that those rates have increased by 30%.

[2:24] 30%. Which when we read that, we should wonder why. Why? Because after all, aren't we the richest and most powerful nation in the world?

[2:37] Isn't our quality of life and the expectancy of our life greater than any other nation in the world? Don't we also have access to endless amounts of entertainment and other things that exist, that we have access to, to bring us joy and happiness in life?

[2:59] So why are we so depressed? William Lane Craig, the Christian apologist, said, Who am I?

[3:11] Man asks. Why am I here? Where am I going? Since the Enlightenment, when he threw off the shackles of religion, man has tried to answer these questions without reference to God.

[3:22] But the answers that come back were not exhilarating but dark and terrible. You are the accidental byproduct of nature, he is told. As a result of matter plus time plus chance, there is no reason for your existence.

[3:37] All you face is death. He continued saying, In his concluding paragraph, he says, And so if there is no God, then, grace will eventually cease to exist.

[4:08] It makes no difference whether it ever did exist. Mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of mosquitoes or a barnyard of pigs, for their end would all be the same.

[4:20] The same blind cosmic process that coughed them up in the first place will eventually swallow them up. And so if there is no God, then what he's saying, there is no reason that man can find for his own existence.

[4:35] But I think as we look around, we realize that we, in fact, live in a spiritually hungry world. A world filled with people who are desperate to find meaning and hope for the life that they live.

[4:49] From the beginning, human beings were created, were told to serve and to have fellowship with God. He was to be both the object and the focus and their fulfillment.

[5:03] But by rejecting him, mankind has been left with an aching void deep in their souls. And in their misguided attempts to fill that emptiness, they have forsaken God.

[5:16] But doing so hasn't produced a peace but an increasing despair. This is not a modern discovery.

[5:29] This isn't new to our day and age. We can search the pages of Scripture and find there the wisest man who ever lived, wrestling with the reality that life without God is a wasted life.

[5:43] Solomon sought happiness and satisfaction in this world apart from God. And in Ecclesiastes chapter 2, he summarizes the futility of all of those pursuits.

[5:55] And I'm going to read the entire chapter. If you have your Bible and you want to read along with me, go ahead, and I have slides that you can follow along. Again, the wisest man in the world, King Solomon. Wealth beyond imagination.

[6:08] Everything that you would think that anyone in this life could want in order to have meaning and purpose, satisfaction and fulfillment. This is what he said. I said to my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure.

[6:20] Enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. Vanity meaning futility or worthless. I said of laughter, it is mad and of pleasure. What use is it? I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine.

[6:33] My heart still guided me with wisdom and how to lay hold of folly till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works.

[6:45] I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.

[6:58] I bought male and female slaves and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks more than anyone who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces.

[7:13] I got singers, both men and women, many concubies, the lights of the son of man. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem.

[7:26] Also, my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure. For my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.

[7:42] Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil that I expanded in doing it. And behold, all was vanity and a striving after the wind.

[7:53] There was nothing to be gained under the sun. So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king?

[8:05] Only what has already been done. Then I saw that there is more to gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more to gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.

[8:18] And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. And then I said in my heart, what happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?

[8:31] And I said in my heart that this is also vanity. For of the wise as the fool, there is no enduring remembrance. Seeing in that the days to come all will have been long forgotten.

[8:44] How the wise dies just like the fool. So I hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to me. For all is vanity and striving after the wind.

[8:56] I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool. Yet he will be master of all for which I have toiled and used my wisdom under the sun.

[9:12] This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it.

[9:26] This is also vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation.

[9:39] Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.

[9:53] For apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy. But to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God.

[10:09] This also is vanity and a striving after the wind. Solomon had everything that you could want in life, all the treasures that this world desires.

[10:20] He didn't have to work another day in his life. He was wise. He was incredibly intelligent. Yet in all of the different things that he tried to find meaning and purpose for in his life, at the end when he considered it, he realized it was not enough to fill the void in his heart.

[10:40] Then he concludes in chapter 12 of Ecclesiastes, what he finds to be true, what God reveals to him, that only in God could true purpose and meaning be found.

[10:52] He says in verses 13 and 14, And so throughout the rest of Ecclesiastes, Solomon warned against following the path of human wisdom that proves so empty.

[11:20] Again, the key word in this book is vanity, sometimes translated as futility, which appears some three dozen times. And the term expresses the futility, the worthlessness of a life spent pursuing the pleasures of this world apart from God.

[11:40] Solomon's point was that pursuing earthly goals as an ends in themselves without seeing them as means with which to glorify God leads only to emptiness and hopelessness and despair.

[11:56] But into this fallen world of disappointment, despondency, and desperation came the Lord Jesus Christ. And as he said here, he is the bread of life.

[12:08] And as he said, he's the only one who can satisfy the deepest longings of the human soul. Only through him can sinners obtain forgiveness.

[12:21] Only through him can Christians be restored in right relationship with God and receive eternal life. Only through him. And so this is the main idea for this morning's message.

[12:34] A wasted life is a life spent in pursuit of the pleasures of this world. Jesus says that the unwasted life is a life that is consumed with him.

[12:49] The unwasted life is a life that is consumed with him. In the first section of the Sermon on the Bread of Life, Jesus presented himself as the spiritual food for the famished soul.

[13:05] He's done that in verses 30 through 50. Now here he comes to his concluding section in verses 51 and 59, where he urges people to appropriate himself personally by faith.

[13:21] And so what I think Jesus is doing here, and what he does in many other places, is that he's encouraging and he's warning people, don't waste your life.

[13:33] The past couple of weeks I've been reminded again of the certainty of death and how quickly and unexpectedly it can come.

[13:45] Life is short, but eternity is forever. Jesus was constantly, again, making that point throughout his earthly ministry, constantly making that point, getting people to take their eyes off of the things that were under the sun and encouraging them to focus their gaze upon the Son of God, who is over and above it.

[14:12] Jesus does not want you to waste your life. And in this passage he encourages us not to waste it, and he does so in three ways. First of all, he makes a promise.

[14:24] Jesus makes a promise in verse 51. I am the living bread, he says, that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

[14:38] In 1886, Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story entitled, How Much Land Does a Man Need?

[14:50] How Much Land Does a Man Need? The story is about a peasant farmer by the name of Pahom, who one day overhears his wife and his sister-in-law talking, and they're discussing their lives as peasants.

[15:09] And in overhearing their conversation, Pahom is increasingly convinced that their peasant life isn't enough to satisfy.

[15:23] And so he sets out to acquire more and more for himself, and he says that if he had enough land, he would have nothing to fear, even the devil himself.

[15:36] And so he embarks on that pursuit. That's his life goal, to acquire as much for himself as he possibly can. And so through the story, through a series of developments, Pahom is able to purchase bigger properties that only increase over time, and with that they seem to increase his level of comfort, his level of happiness and peace.

[16:00] He's finally able to pay off his debts. And for time, a time, he revels in his success. He thinks he's made it.

[16:11] But his self-glory, he begins to forget the people that he loves, his wife and his children, his family.

[16:21] And one day, he comes across a shocking bargain for more land. He finds out that a people named the Bashgears will sell him as much land as he wants for a modest price, a price that Pahom is more than willing and able to pay.

[16:40] And so he, with his servant, travels a long distance to the land of the Bashgears, and there he is presented with the deal that he feels like is a deal of a lifetime. They will give him as much of their land as he wants for 1,000 rubles, which was basically nothing, especially to Pahom at this point, who was a very wealthy man.

[17:02] But there was a caveat in all of this. Beginning at sunrise, he was to take a spade with him and drag it around as much of the land as he wanted.

[17:13] But he had to return back to the start where he started from, where he began before the sun went down. Otherwise, he would lose all of that land and he would lose the money that he was willing to pay for it.

[17:29] Pahom is delighted about this deal. And he wakes up early in the morning and he begins his trek as the sun rises. The further he goes out to the land, the more he realizes how great and fertile it is, how the land that he sees before him looks better than the land that he's already marked off behind him.

[17:50] And so he treks further and further into this vast land and decides that he wants and needs more of it. So he pushes himself to cover as much ground as he can.

[18:02] And as he does so, he becomes increasingly excited about the prospects of what having all this land will bring to him. And in his excitement and desire for more of this beautiful, fertile country, he begins losing track of time.

[18:19] The sun begins to set. He realizes that he may not make it back in time and will lose all of that land and all of his money.

[18:30] And so he begins to race back towards the starting point. He regrets as he races back how he marked off so much land.

[18:45] And so as he begins to run back, he fears that, again, he won't make it back in time. And so he pushes his body to its absolute physical limits in order to make it back before the sun sets.

[19:02] Otherwise, he believes he'll lose everything. And he arrives just in the nick of time, just before the last rays of the sun are extinguished.

[19:12] But as he arrives at the starting point, he collapses. And he dies in exhaustion. In the end, Pahom is buried in a six-foot grave.

[19:27] And the narrator remarks at the close of the story that this six-foot plot of land was all the land that Pahom would ever have. And all the land that really, in the end, he truly needed.

[19:38] In other words, in the end, he would only occupy as much land as any other man. All his toil was for nothing. Pahom's love for the perishable things of this world ended up killing him.

[19:54] His love for himself drove him straight into the grave. He wasted his life. And this is the way of the world. That is the lie that it hopes that you will exchange for the truth that you only live once.

[20:10] So eat and drink and be merry and worry about death some other time, some other day. Get fulfillment by being filled by the treasures of this world.

[20:22] But this was not the way of Jesus. Jesus says in verse 51 that he's come down from heaven. In other words, in coming down from heaven, he has come not to exploit his deity but to empty himself.

[20:38] So that he can fill and satisfy us with what truly matters. He exchanged a crown of glory for a crown of thorns. He committed himself to the cross through blood-filled drops of sweat in the garden of Gethsemane.

[20:53] He possessed none of the things that this world cherishes, materially speaking. All he truly had was the clothes that he wore. He was poor in the eyes of the world.

[21:05] But spiritually speaking, he was incredibly rich. Why? Because in him is life. And that light is the light of men.

[21:17] He gave his life so that we could have real life. Eternal life. He is the bread of life who willingly gave his flesh to atone for our sins.

[21:31] The Bible says in Romans 6.23 that the wages of sin is death. In Hebrews 9.22 it says that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.

[21:42] We understand from Scripture that we've rejected God but he has sent us Jesus. How great and merciful and loving is he.

[21:54] John 3.16 encapsulates that so well. For God so loved the world. This world that has rejected him. This world that has exchanged his truth for a lie.

[22:06] That he gave his only son. That whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Christ is the bread of life for us by becoming the final sacrifice for our sins.

[22:22] The death of Christ was real. It was genuine. It was an actual sacrifice of divine justice. It was a true payment. It was an atonement in full. Not potentially paid by God through Christ on our behalf.

[22:37] Whom we are to believe in faith. Christ has offered himself for us. He has offered himself for you.

[22:48] Colossians 1.21-22. He has offered himself for you. Though as these Christians were. And I can say that is the case for me. And probably for you as well. And you who were once alienated and hostile.

[23:02] In mind doing evil things. He has now reconciled in his body. Of flesh by his death. In order to present you holy. And blameless.

[23:13] And above reproach. Before him. Jesus has given his life. So that you and I will have eternal life. And he rescues you now.

[23:23] From wasting your life. By pursuing earthly treasures. That cannot truly. And eternally. Satisfy you. The unwasted life. Is the life that feasts upon.

[23:35] The bread of life. The life that does not look to things. Under the sun for enjoyment. But looks to the son of God. Who gave his life. As a ransom for many. So how should you respond.

[23:49] To such a great sacrifice. How should you respond. To such great love. Hebrews 12. 1 through 2. I think says it. Very well. Therefore since we are surrounded.

[24:00] By so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside. Every weight. Every weight. Sin. Which clings so closely. And let us run with endurance.

[24:11] The race that is set before us. Looking to. Jesus. The founder and perfecter of our faith. Who for the joy that was set before him. Endured the cross.

[24:21] Despising the shame. And is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Don't waste your life. There are treasures of this world. That are good to have.

[24:32] Right? I'm not saying that. You know. You should go dig a hole. And live in it. The rest of your life. Or anything like that. But it's about the motivation. It's about the pursuit. It's about what you are spending your life trying to acquire.

[24:47] Jesus says consume me. And you will truly live. Your life will not be wasted. Believe in me and my promises. And trust in me. Who went all the way to the cross for you.

[25:03] Who emptied himself. Despising the shame of it all. In order to purchase your salvation. And give you eternal life. Brothers and sisters in Christ.

[25:14] The Lord knows what a tangled up knot of anxiety. Incompetence and faithlessness. That you have been. That you maybe feel like you are today. He knows that you are a sinner.

[25:26] He knew what he was getting himself into. When he substituted himself. On the cross for you. And he's determined. That you are worth it.

[25:38] Because he does love you. Now I know that sometimes in our church. And in other churches. We know that you know. We're not here for us. We're here to worship God.

[25:49] And that's true. That's true. To him be the glory. He's the only one who deserves it. But sometimes we forget in that. That we do need to be reminded. That God loves you. And he does.

[26:00] Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. And it does. And that's something that we need to be reminded of. He does love you. He does care about you.

[26:13] And he sees you. And he knows you. And he loves you. Psalm 34. 8-10 says. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

[26:27] Oh fear the Lord you his saints. For those who fear him have no lack. The young lions suffer want and hunger. But those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

[26:41] Embrace Christ. Embrace his cross. Embrace him as the bread of life. And you will be eternally satisfied. So again Jesus encourages you here.

[26:54] Don't waste your life. But trust in him. Trust in his promise. He goes on. Secondly to encourage us not to waste our life.

[27:06] By responding to perplexity. Jesus responds to perplexity. Verses 52-56. Again the Jews hear this. They're disputing among themselves.

[27:18] Saying how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them. Truly truly 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 feeds on my flesh.

[27:30] And drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food. And my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh. And drinks my blood.

[27:41] Abides in me. And I in him. So we've got to understand here. First of all. That Jesus is speaking metaphorically. Okay. This is not his advocating for cannibalism. Or anything like that.

[27:51] He was giving a physical illustration. To prove a spiritual point. As he often did. But that didn't stop many in the crowd from grumbling. As they heard it.

[28:02] And disputing his claims. About his promise to be the bread of life. But we notice here. That Jesus doesn't take back anything that he said. Nor does he dumb it down in any way.

[28:12] In order to appease this crowd. If anything. Jesus was not an attractional preacher. It says. You want to follow me? Eat my flesh.

[28:23] And drink my blood. Right? And you're thinking. Okay. Well. You know. That sounds pretty intense. But what is he saying?

[28:33] Right? That's what truly matters. He was after his true disciples. Before continuing on this point though. We need to point out. That this passage. Is not a reference to communion.

[28:45] Because the Lord's table. Had not yet been instituted by him. Those elements are meant to be taken in remembrance. Of who Christ is.

[28:55] And what Christ has done. On the cross for you. That communion is for believers. Who have believed in Christ. As their Lord and Savior. And understand what he accomplished for them.

[29:09] On the cross. It is a time of declaration. It's also a time of celebration. Of the life of Christ. The death of Christ. And the resurrection of Christ.

[29:20] And his future return in glory. But again. What does it mean to feed upon Jesus? Well. The answer to this question. Is that eating Christ's flesh. And drinking his blood.

[29:31] Refer to what he's been talking about. This whole time. He's been talking about this all the time. And clearly they had not been listening. This is what he's been saying.

[29:42] He said to the men and women. Who were gathered there. That they must believe in him. In verses 29. 35 and 47. Of this chapter. That they must come to him. Verse 35. That they must look on him.

[29:54] In verse 40. That they must listen and learn from him. In verse 45. He's talking about faith. And he's talking about committing themselves to him. And so the question for them.

[30:06] And is this for you still today. Is he as real spiritually to you. As something that you're able to taste and handle. That's what he's saying. He should be as real to you.

[30:18] As taking and eating and drinking. Is he as much a part of you. As that which you eat. Now if you're perplexed by these things.

[30:30] The Lord has answers. And the more that you seek him. The more I believe that you will taste and see. That he and his ways are true. That again the life spent pursuing the treasures of this world.

[30:41] Is a wasted life. And in so doing. You will see and you will know a love. Greater and deeper than anything. That this world has to offer you. You will know a peace that carries you through anxious and stressful times.

[30:54] You will know a hope that extends beyond the end of this life. And so again Jesus encourages you. Don't waste your life.

[31:05] But trust in him. And he does so by responding to our perplexity. When things seem to be too confusing. Or maybe things seem too good to be true.

[31:19] Encourage you to seek him. As he wants you to. Ask these questions. You can ask me. And I would love to have these conversations with you. He does not want you to waste your life.

[31:31] And then third. Jesus offers a proposition. In verses 57 through 59. Jesus offers a proposition. As the living father sent me. He said he also will live because of the father.

[31:43] So whoever feeds on me. He will also live because of me. This is the bread of life that came down from heaven. Not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.

[31:55] And Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. Here Jesus concludes his magnificent teaching by repeating and summarizing everything that he's already said to this point.

[32:06] The proposition or the invitation is as clear today. To you as it was 2000 years ago. In that synagogue in Capernaum. John Piper said the gospel.

[32:18] The one who pursues material things will die as surely. But he who eats the bread which came down from heaven will live forever.

[32:28] John Piper said the gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ the son of God died for our sins and rose again. Eternally triumphant over his enemies so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe.

[32:42] But only everlasting joy. That's the gospel. He continues. The greatest good of the gospel is not forgiveness, justification, or eternal life. As good as these are. For the highest and fullest and deepest and sweetest good of the gospel is God himself.

[32:56] Enjoyed by his redeemed people. The gospel is the good news that God bought for us. The everlasting enjoyment of God. St. Augustine was born in AD 354 to a pagan father and a Christian mother named Monica.

[33:14] Monica was a devoted woman who prayed earnestly for her son. And if you know about Augustine's story, he very much like Pahom sought the pleasures of this world.

[33:27] Very smart man. Very wise man. Brilliant person. But he sought the pleasures of this world in all the ways that people seek pleasure in this world.

[33:41] But he also found what everybody else seems to find is that those pleasures, though, are joyful. They're only joyful for a time.

[33:54] And once that time is over, it seems like they leave you with a deeper void in your heart. And Augustine experienced that. Finally, when he was in Milan, he began listening to a preacher named Ambrose, who he listened to because he was impressed by his rhetorical skill.

[34:10] But as he would go and listen to Ambrose, the more he heard the Word of God, the more it began to take root in his heart. Until finally one day, as he was out in a garden, despairing again over his life and how meaningless it felt, he heard some children playing and they were chanting, Take up and read.

[34:30] Upon hearing that, he looked and found a nearby copy of God's Word. And he began to read it. And where he turned to and where he began to read was Romans 13, 13 through 14.

[34:43] And after reading it, he placed his faith in Christ. There what he read was, Let us walk properly in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

[35:03] St. Augustine was saved. And he became one of the great theologians of the church who wrote many wonderful things. One of the things, one of the sentences that he wrote, the famous, most well-known, the one that I certainly means the most to me is this.

[35:22] In a prayer to God, he said, Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you.

[35:35] You have made us for yourself, O God, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you. So my question to you this morning, as we come to a conclusion, is, is your heart restless?

[35:56] Is your heart restless? Or does it rest in Christ? Don't waste your life. Come to him.

[36:08] Come to him and you will be satisfied. You will be filled. You will have the bread of life. And you know the joy that comes in knowing that you have peace with God through Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection.

[36:26] Come to him. You won't rest until your heart rests in him. Some closing questions of application. Again, I'll give you the fill-ins.

[36:39] I encourage you to tuck this away in your Bible or in your pocket. Come back to it later today or this week. Do some real introspection. Really think about these things and pray about these things.

[36:50] I encourage you. The first question is, what is the condition of your heart today? Are you restless or content? Now, Christian, you can get a restless heart sometimes. And I think that when you have that restless heart, it's probably because you, like Peter, are looking on the surrounding storm around you and you've taken your eyes off of Christ and you've begun to sink.

[37:12] If you're restless today as a believer, probably it's because you've taken your eyes off the Lord and you're not trusting that he will see you through whatever difficulty you're going in.

[37:24] But if your heart is restless for any reason, again, it will continue to be so until it rests in Christ. What is the condition of your heart today?

[37:37] Next, what is your greatest fear? And what do you daydream about? Now, you might ask, well, why would you ask me this question? Well, because often this has a way of indicating how you're spending your life.

[37:55] If there is a fear that you have that is a great fear, then really it means that you have not trusted in Christ or you're not trusting in Christ in his sovereignty and his plan that this life isn't all that there is, that there's more to it.

[38:10] What's your greatest fear? And then what are you daydreaming about? Well, that's how you figure out what you're living your life for. You know, you could be daydreaming about one thing this month and something else the next month, but really whatever you're daydreaming about, that's probably what you are motivated to live your today to try to acquire.

[38:31] What are you daydreaming about? That's the way to help you determine your restless situation and to fix it. Third, are you feasting more upon Christ or the things of this world?

[38:46] And that goes back into last week's sermon about just examining how much of your time you spend, you spend, and what are you spending it on, and what does it say about you?

[38:58] Don't waste your life filling it with unnecessary things. Don't waste your days when they could be used so much more fruitfully and impactfully. You have one life to live here, but your eternity is forever.

[39:13] Feed upon the bread of life. Feed upon him. And your heart will find rest.

[39:24] You will find peace. You will find hope. No matter what you might experience in this life, you keep your eyes upon Jesus, and you will be satisfied.

[39:35] Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for its instruction. God, we thank you that you are the bread of life who has come, lived the sinless life that we could never live, that your law required, who willingly died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for the sins that we've committed, taking our place, enduring God's wrath, so that we could be forgiven.

[40:04] Then rising again on the third day is proof that you are all that you claimed to be, that you are the Son of God, that your sacrifice was sufficient, that those who turn to you, that those who place their faith in you are redeemed forever.

[40:21] Lord, you give us a life that is worth living, a life that makes sense and has meaning and has purpose, a hope that is eternal. God, help us to keep our eyes focused not on things that are under the sun, but on the Son of God, that, Lord, we would come to you, that we'd feast upon the bread of life, that our restless hearts would find rest, and that we would know that one day we will be with you in your kingdom, apart from sin, forever and ever.

[40:56] God, help us to be people of your word, and be going and doing the things that you've called us to do, that you would be glorified by it. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you.