[0:00] If you have your Bible, turn to John chapter 6.
[0:19] ! If you don't own a Bible, please take that Bible home with you today as our gift from our congregation to you in hopes that you'll continue to read the Word of God and be daily in His Word.
[0:42] John chapter 6, verse 30 for 35. Would you please stand with me as we honor the reading of God's Word together? So they said to Him, For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
[1:27] They said to Him, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.
[1:42] May God add a blessing to the reading of His Word. Would you please be seated? Last week, I closed with an illustration from a book in C.S. Lewis' series called The Chronicles of Narnia.
[1:58] And I remember when I first came to that series in first grade. Every week, our teacher would sit in a chair, and she'd call the rest of us students to sit around her as she would read to us The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
[2:20] And for all I knew at that point, this was a story about four children, a lion king, an evil witch, and a hidden magical land that could be accessed through a wardrobe.
[2:34] And we couldn't wait each week for that time when she would sit us down to read us that magical tale.
[2:46] Many years later, when I was in college, I read another famous work by C.S. Lewis called Mere Christianity. Maybe you've read that book before.
[2:58] If you haven't, I encourage you to do so. In reading that book, I learned more about C.S. Lewis, the man, more about his faith. And then I soon realized that the imagery that he used in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was done so to point his readers to Jesus Christ.
[3:17] It's rich with imagery that points people to the truth of God's Word. In seminary, I took an elective class called The Theology of C.S. Lewis, where there we read many of his works, both nonfiction and fiction.
[3:37] And in that class, we picked through all of the imagery that he would use, especially in his fiction stories, to tell people the story, the message of the Bible.
[3:48] I mentioned that to reflect upon how easy it is for us to read a story, find it interesting, and then entirely miss the point that the author had for us in reading that book.
[4:06] You might focus too much on the setting. You might focus too much in on the minor characters. Or perhaps you skim through the book, reading a little bit in each chapter.
[4:17] Maybe you did so when you were ready to turn in a book report, right, that you had not given yourself time to do, and so you quickly breezed through that book as fast as you could.
[4:29] If you've done that, if you've done any of those things, it's most likely the case that you didn't fully understand the meaning of the story. The Bible is a divinely inspired story.
[4:44] It tells its story through a collection of books, a collection of stories and songs and poems, wisdom sayings, gospels, letters, and apocalyptic literature.
[5:00] And though it contains all of these different literary genres within it, it still tells one story. Collectively, these books and genres tell the true story about God's saving work in history.
[5:16] The Bible contains 66 books written by a variety of authors. These authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit who used them and their unique personalities and their context to create for us the canon of Scripture that we have today with its simple main point and plot line.
[5:41] As Christians, we recognize the Bible as being of divine authority over us.
[5:51] And so therefore, we should immerse ourselves in God's Word daily, reading it, memorizing it, dwelling upon its rich truths contained within all of its many pages.
[6:05] But though we may do so, still, tragically, at times, we may lose the point. In John 5, 39-40, our Lord addressed some people who had done this very thing.
[6:24] There He says to them, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they, it is the Scriptures that bear witness about Me.
[6:36] Yet you refuse to come to Me that you may have life. And so we see from that interaction that Jesus had with some of the Jewish leaders that it's possible to honor the Scriptures and to read them and to use them incorrectly by failing to see the big picture that God has displayed for us.
[6:57] Thankfully, though, the Bible's author, God, left us some clear clues, though, so that we can better understand the point of His story. One of those major clues comes from Jesus Christ Himself.
[7:11] After His resurrection, as He met two of His followers on the road to Emmaus, He meets with them, and this is what He said. Or they said to Him, these are, or then He said, excuse me, these are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.
[7:33] Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.
[7:50] You are My witnesses of these things, and behold, I am sending the promise of My Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.
[8:01] So here we see Jesus explains two things to these men. First, He makes the statement that all of the Old Testament, from the Pentateuch to the prophets to the Psalms, that all of it were actually written about Him.
[8:18] He is the Messiah. He is the promised one from all the way back who was promised in the early chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Second, He says that His followers will be witnesses of these things, of these truths contained in His Word to all the nations, to all people, in all places, everywhere.
[8:41] simply stated, Jesus' instruction here is that you won't understand the Bible unless you see first that the Bible is all about Him.
[8:53] From Genesis to Revelation, He is the hero. He is the point of the story. Furthermore, you won't understand who Jesus is until you understand the larger story that the Bible tells about Him.
[9:08] You see, Jesus is the interpretive key to the Bible, which means that as you read the Bible, you'll find Him everywhere. You'll find Him in the beginning.
[9:21] You'll find Him in the middle. You'll find Him at the end. And so today in the Scripture that we've read in John 6, verses 30 through 35, we see here Jesus referring to some Old Testament imagery to communicate a New Testament reality to His audience.
[9:42] But they failed to see and to understand the connection that He was making. As a matter of fact, this chapter known as the Bread of Life Discourse contains some teachings that are hard to hear at the conclusion of this lesson, of this sermon that Jesus preached.
[10:05] John records the response of many in that crowd to what they heard in verse 60 and then in verse 66.
[10:17] There it says in verse 60, when many of His disciples heard it, they said, this is a hard saying. Who can listen to it? And then in verse 66 we see the result from many, that after this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.
[10:40] This reaction was one that many still have today towards Jesus Christ. And it's a reaction that God has prophesied through His Word would occur going back to the Old Testament in the book of Amos.
[10:55] Amos 8, 11-12, the Lord declares, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.
[11:13] They shall wander from sea to sea, from north to east. They shall run to and fro and seek the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.
[11:25] I know for me personally that I hope that that prophecy could never be true of me. And so it has long been my conviction to preach God's Word as it is, verse by verse, no matter what.
[11:47] And I'd be doing a great disservice to you if I or if anyone else in any way attempted to dull the blade of God's Word, which is living and active, which is sharper than any two-edged sword, capable of piercing the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow in discerning the thoughts and the intentions of every human heart.
[12:15] This is a terrible prophecy that unfortunately describes so many today who have the bread of life available to them right now and yet who refuse to come and to receive it.
[12:30] People are hungry for the truth. People are hungry for the truth. And Jesus, the Word of God, is the only one capable of satisfying that hunger.
[12:47] Only He can satisfy that hunger that we have for truth. Who are you going to turn to for truth right now in our nation?
[12:59] Who are you going to turn to for truth? Our government, our politicians, they say one thing and then they turn around and say the opposite thing the next moment. Who are you going to turn to?
[13:10] Yourself? I'm sure that you, like me, have let yourself down at some point in time. You've been wrong about something before, I'm sure. Who are you going to turn to for truth in this world?
[13:23] The only truth that there is is Jesus Christ. He is the only one who we should turn to, not just in difficult times like the ones that we're going through right now, but in all things and at all times.
[13:35] And so the main idea of the sermon is this. Jesus Christ is the bread of life, given by God the Father, sent from heaven, who gives life, gives life, to everyone who comes to Him.
[13:53] So why is any of this important? Why is this important? Well, if you're an unbeliever, then I'm sure that you, like me, when you're hungry, you get moody, and eventually you get angry.
[14:09] And there's a word for that now, it's called hangry. Have you heard that before? I'm so hungry that I'm angry. And I believe that right now, we see a lot of anger in our world, in our country, and I believe that that anger is stemming from a hunger within people in our nation for truth, for justice, for peace, for prosperity, and a number of other different things.
[14:35] And people have sought to satisfy that hunger in many ways, some even in violent ways, but that hunger, as we've seen, is not being satisfied, satisfied, and it cannot be satisfied unless you have tasted of the bread of life.
[14:53] As a believer, you are tempted to believe by this world that the things of this world can satisfy the hunger that you may have within yourself.
[15:08] Maybe you have pursued God thinking that like the crowd, you can manipulate Him into giving you more of the world's treasures and failing to realize that He is the treasure Himself.
[15:22] And so unfortunately, in doing so, you neglect to see what He has to offer you is greater than anything that the world has in supply. Whatever the case may be, I hope that you will see today, or be reminded today, that Jesus is the bread of life, that you would come to Him, that you will continually come to Him to receive your daily bread.
[15:56] In this passage, Jesus tells us that He is the true bread of heaven. He explains what that means and provides us with five principles about His being the bread of heaven that we need to understand, that we need to apply to our lives so that our souls can feast upon the life-giving nourishment that only Jesus Christ can supply.
[16:23] So the first principle that He shows us is that the true bread of heaven is given by the Father. The true bread of heaven is given by the Father.
[16:38] And that comes from verses 30 through 32. Jesus had been talking to people who had been present, if you remember, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee.
[16:51] They had been fed by Him when He multiplied the fish and the loaves. They were satisfied that day. Their hunger had been quenched, but now they were back.
[17:04] And they had followed Him, they were back for more. perhaps also they may have been offended that Jesus had spurned their attempt to make Him their king, that He was unwilling to be a part of advancing their personal political agendas to overthrow the Romans, to establish a new kingdom there in Israel.
[17:34] perhaps they were perplexed that He seemed to have nothing to want to do with any of their plans, that He didn't look for their support in that way, that they weren't impressed, that He wasn't impressed, with their attempts to make something great out of Him, or so they thought.
[18:00] maybe they were thinking what teacher, what preacher wouldn't want a large following?
[18:11] Maybe they were thinking we have the ability to really elevate Him, to elevate His platform, to make Him look successful, to give Him strength in numbers.
[18:23] But truthfully, their interest in Jesus was not in who He was, but in what they thought they could get from Him.
[18:35] And so they find Him, and they seek to manipulate Him in order to get more out of Him. They've seen the miracle, that of feeding the 5,000, which when you add in the women and the children was more like 20,000.
[18:53] And as great as that was, these people still demanded for more. They wanted to see more. They needed more proof.
[19:04] And so that's what they do here. They petition Jesus to demonstrate that He is truly the Messiah by performing a greater feat, by performing a miracle that was on par with Moses, whom they held in high esteem, who, if you remember, served as God's prophet during Israel's wilderness, wandering, after God used Him to deliver Israel from Egypt, where they were enslaved.
[19:35] If you recall back in Exodus chapter 16, sometime after God had rescued Israel, after He had brought them out of that bondage, the Israelites' food supply ran out, and they began to get hungry.
[19:50] And as we've talked about, hungry people soon get angry, and they were angry. They were angry, and they were willing to return back to Egypt to be shackled again, to be chained again, to be enslaved again, because there they thought at least we had food to eat.
[20:11] Our stomachs were filled. So at this point, God in His grace provided for them. And He told Moses, And so each morning during that Exodus wandering, bread from heaven was supplied by God.
[20:40] It was called manna. Manna, that Hebrew word, what it means is what is it? That's what manna means. What is it? It appeared on the ground every morning like resin.
[20:51] It was white, we're told. It was flaky. It had a sweet taste to it. The Israelites would collect that substance and make wafers out of it. They would make food out of it, and they did that for 40 years.
[21:05] For 40 years, God supplied them with this bread from heaven. Returning back now to Jesus' exchange with the audience in John chapter 6, we see that the Israelites attested that miracle back in Exodus to Moses, though it was God who had supplied the bread, the bread from heaven.
[21:29] And so they seek here to put Jesus to the test. They're thinking, if you're truly the Messiah, then you ought to be able to at least perform a miracle on par with what Moses did.
[21:44] saying, in effect, something like this, listen, Jesus, what you did the other day, that was great. Thank you.
[21:56] That was delicious, but you know what? That was one meal. That was one meal. As good as it was, it was only one. Moses would do that six days a week.
[22:09] Remember, they couldn't collect it on the Sabbath day. It wasn't provided. They had to collect double on the sixth day. Moses could do that six days a week, and not only that, Jesus, he did it for 40 years.
[22:23] Pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. You say you're greater than him, and if you want us to believe that, then let's see something.
[22:36] Let's see some greater proof. We don't believe it. Jesus doesn't give in to their demands as we know. Instead, what he does is redirects their attention to the real issue.
[22:50] He does so by beginning to inform them that it wasn't Moses that provided that bread in the wilderness. That bread was provided by God.
[23:01] He was the source of it. He was the giver of it. And he states that the manna provided for Israel during the Exodus was truly a picture of him who is the bread of heaven.
[23:16] That he was the only one capable of satisfying the greater hunger, the deeper hunger that exists within every single one of us. Only he could bring the spiritual nourishment to the soul that we all so desperately need.
[23:34] And so the second principle he brings us to is that the true bread from heaven is Jesus. The true bread of heaven is Jesus. Beginning in verse 33 and beginning in verse 35 Jesus says for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven.
[23:53] And then more explicitly he says in verse 35 I am the bread of life. Here Jesus ties that Old Testament manna to himself and reveals again that that foreshadowed his coming.
[24:09] That bread met a physical need but he the bread of life the bread of heaven satisfies our spiritual need.
[24:22] Well how does or how did that manna foreshadow Jesus? Well at least in a couple ways and there are more but I just want to hit on a couple. Exodus 16 31 there we have a description of it.
[24:37] It says now the house of Israel called its name manna. Again what is it? It was like coriander seed white and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.
[24:48] So like the Old Testament that the Israelites like in the Old Testament excuse me the Israelites didn't know what the manna was just that it was something and so too likewise many people didn't understand who Jesus truly was during his earthly ministry and even still today.
[25:11] They're not sure what to do with him. He's the incarnate son of God. He came down from heaven. He demonstrated his pre-existence and his deity but many couldn't look beyond his earthly origins remember?
[25:26] They would say things like well isn't he from Nazareth? Isn't that Joseph the carpenter's son? And he wants us to believe that he's the son of God?
[25:40] They sought him for physical reasons. They failed to comprehend his teachings and his truly heavenly origins.
[25:52] Nor did they give thanks to God that he had come but ultimately they demanded and sought after his crucifixion. As the manna was white in color and sweet to taste so Jesus from manger to cross was spotless.
[26:08] As spotless and pure white as his garments were on the mount of transfiguration. When Peter, James, and John were there and they saw a glimpse of his deity that had been veiled by his flesh. Those who have been saved by Christ have tasted the sweetness of salvation through him.
[26:26] the joy that comes with knowing what Christ has done for you by taking your place and enduring God's wrath for your sins on the cross and rising again on the third day.
[26:39] And so like manna you understand you've tasted the sweetness of Christ and knowing what he has done for you and in knowing that one day you will see him and be with him again forever.
[26:52] forever. There is more again but I think that's sufficient for now. What we need to most understand at this point is that just as God provided manna to the Israelites to save them from their starvation so Jesus Christ has come to give us salvation.
[27:13] The literal manna saved Israel from physical death. The spiritual manna saves us from eternal death. And towards the end of this sermon Jesus will say that very thing.
[27:27] John 6 49 through 50. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die.
[27:41] So now we must take a turn to understand what it means for us that Jesus is the bread of life and what we should do about it. We understand that he is the bread of life. That's what he said that he was.
[27:52] Well what do we do with it? So the third principle is this. The true bread of heaven is necessary for life. The true bread of heaven is necessary for life.
[28:07] Jesus said that explicitly again verse 33. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life. Gives life.
[28:18] life. In Christ's day bread was even more essential than it is in our day. Now we know how essential bread is in our day don't we? After what we've been through with this pandemic and what we've gone through in various snow storms that have come.
[28:36] You go to Walmart or the grocery store and where is everybody at? Bread or milk. in fact as we were entering into that time of quarantine I remember going to Walmart the first time I'd ever seen there was not a loaf of bread in the store.
[28:55] And so we understand that bread is essential as much as we understand that though it was even more essential for people back during these times. Because there wasn't many other options on the menu.
[29:09] right? For us you go into Walmart there's no bread. Well there's still a whole lot of other food there that you can survive on. But for them if there was no bread that was a major staple in their diet.
[29:21] In fact they ate it with almost every single meal. Sometimes it was the main course of the meal. Without bread many of them would have died.
[29:33] And so what Jesus is saying here is that those who go without him will likewise die. They will likewise perish in their sins. Jesus was claiming to be the one who men and women could not do without.
[29:48] Have you ever tried to go without bread? Not too long ago. Seems like it's been a long time ago now though.
[29:59] Danny and I went on a keto diet. If you've ever been on the keto diet before you know that one of the things that you have to cut out is what? Bread. And you don't realize how much bread is in things until you can't eat bread anymore.
[30:14] Especially when you're somebody like me who loves pizza and donuts. And they make keto pizza. Keto pizza is not pizza.
[30:27] Okay? No offense. Yeah. But it's not the same. And keto donuts may be edible and taste good but they're not like real donuts.
[30:42] Likewise, there is no replacement. There is no substitute for Jesus Christ. There is no other way to receive life.
[30:54] Only He can give it. Only He is the bread of life. The bread of heaven. So the question that I ask you is are you attempting to do without Him?
[31:06] Are you attempting to do without Him? Do you doubt His ability to satisfy you? are you of the mind that a nice house, a nice car, a good job, plenty to eat, a loving family are enough and so therefore you see no need for Jesus?
[31:33] Listen to the words of our Savior and what He had to say in Mark 8 35-38. He says for whoever would save his life will lose it.
[31:48] But whoever loses his life for my sake in the Gospels will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
[32:02] For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father and the holy angels.
[32:20] Jesus said that a person could gain everything that the world has to offer and still suffer the greatest defeat, give up and forfeit the greatest blessing, suffer the greatest loss.
[32:41] you may think that you can do without him in this life, but one day, as we've heard Jesus said, you will realize that in so doing, no matter what treasure you've accumulated for yourself on this earth, that it will all have been for nothing and you will suffer the greatest loss that there is to suffer.
[33:11] it will come at the ultimate cost of you experiencing an eternal separation from God forever and ever that knows no end. Also of note here is that when God revealed his name to Moses in Exodus 3 14, he declared I am that I am.
[33:33] And so here, Jesus, when he says that I am the bread of life, he's employing that name of God to himself. He's saying I can give you spiritual life, I can give you the sustenance that you need because I'm not a mere man.
[33:47] I am God, I am God's son, I am the second person of the trinity. And so he is able to do for us what nothing or no other person could ever provide or do for us.
[33:59] He said I am the bread of life. Again, as bread is able to sustain physical life, so Jesus Christ offers us spiritual life.
[34:10] Later on, in John 8, he'll say I am the light of the world. To a world that is in darkness, Jesus says I am your guide. I am the only one who can help you to see. In John 10, he says I am the door of the sheep.
[34:24] Jesus protects his followers as a shepherd protects their flock and who keeps them safe from predators. He says I am the point, I am the way of salvation.
[34:39] He says I am the resurrection and the life in John 11. He says death is not the final word for those who are in Christ. Death is the beginning truly of eternal life for believers.
[34:55] In John 10, he says I am the good shepherd. Jesus is committed to caring and watching over those who are his. he'll never leave you or forsake you.
[35:09] In John 14, he said I am the way and the truth and the life. Again, for a world that hungers for truth, Jesus says I'm the source of it. I can give you the truth that you so desperately need.
[35:25] And he's the only way back to God. He is the only hope for salvation. And then he says in John 15, I am the true vine. By being attached to Christ as a result of our salvation, his life flows in us and through us.
[35:41] As a result of that, we bear fruit for him that honors the Father. You need Jesus more than you need anything else because only he can give you life.
[35:55] And he gives it to you now and he gives it to you forever. forever. The fourth principle that Jesus shows us here is that the true bread of heaven is suited for everyone.
[36:08] It's suited for everyone. Again, he says for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. To the world. Not everyone can eat anything.
[36:22] Some people have an allergy to some foods or their digestive systems do not work well breaking down certain kinds of foods but not so with Jesus. He is the Savior and the only Savior for all of mankind.
[36:36] He is the Savior of the world. He doesn't belong to one race, one nation, or one tribe. Anyone who turns to him for salvation will be saved.
[36:49] And then the fifth point is that the true bread of heaven should be eaten daily. It should be eaten daily.
[37:00] Verse 35 he says, whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. Though we must come to Christ for salvation and that salvation cannot be taken away from us, still he tells us, implores us to continually come to him so that we can become more like him as a result.
[37:26] When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, remember he told them to pray to God to give us this day our daily bread.
[37:38] And so each day we see that we need a daily ration of this bread from heaven, of this bread of life. This world is not capable of satisfying our souls and what they long for.
[37:54] And so Jesus tells us to come to him every day, daily in prayer, daily in reading his word. This is something that he says that we need to partake of every day.
[38:08] Now think about it. If you only ate one meal a week, you would be in poor health, your mind wouldn't be sharp, your emotions would be off-kilter, you'd be lethargic, you'd be wimpy, you'd be off-kilter, you'd be wasting away and eventually you would die.
[38:38] And here's the thing, tragically, so many Christ followers feed upon this life-giving bread, this bread from heaven, only once a week when they're in church.
[38:56] And, you know, when you come to church, you should have that expectation that I'm going to be fed from my Sunday school class, from the worship experience, from the sermon.
[39:07] but just as we know that you cannot survive physically on one bread a week, what makes you think that you can survive spiritually like that as well? Now, yes, the Lord keeps us and sustains us.
[39:18] Thank God that he does that. But think about the fact that if you only ate one meal a week, you would suffer. The Lord wants you to come to him daily, daily.
[39:33] And so no wonder that the church to me, and I'm sure it does to you, seems to be in such a weakened state today in our nation. Could that be the case because we do not come to our Lord daily for the bread that he has to give to us?
[39:52] We try to make it on one meal a week. We recently, in our association meeting, Monty, our DOM, had a lesson about our iPhones and how much we are attached to those things.
[40:14] Right now, you probably know where yours is at, don't you? You might be looking at it right now. Don't do that. But we've become so attached to our phones.
[40:26] And we treat them like we should treat the Bible, don't we? Shouldn't we want God's Word close to us? Shouldn't we want our faces in the Word of God every day? Not to say that iPhones, I mean, they're just, it's just a thing.
[40:42] But it's what we make it. It's our need for it. That's where the sin is. One thing that has convicted me is there's an option that you can have, and maybe you have this, that tells you each week I get a report of how much screen time I have had that week, how many hours a day that I've averaged.
[41:03] And I'm not going to tell you how many hours that I've averaged because I've seen that and I've thought, oh my goodness, there's no way, there's no way that that could be true.
[41:16] And I praise God today, I saw that it was cut by 30%, okay? I'm a work in progress, right? But it was convicting because I thought, I don't spend nearly that much time with the Lord every day.
[41:31] I don't feel. In prayer, in studying His Word, what am I telling myself? What am I telling the world? that that phone has more to give me and sustain me than God does?
[41:50] And so, I encourage you to think more about how you spend your time. Because I'm sure that you, like me, have the time to spend. You just have to make the time. And I know that you can.
[42:02] Have you ever thought what grain must go through in order to become bread? It has to be planted. Then it has to grow.
[42:14] Then when it's ripe, it's cut down. Then it's winnowed. And then it's ground into flour. Finally, it must be subjected to the fiery heat of the oven.
[42:27] And only by that process does it become sustainable for life. Only by that process does it become good to eat.
[42:39] And so, why does Jesus call Himself the bread of life? Well, we've seen many of the reasons, but it's interesting that He would choose that as we examine our Lord's life and compare it to how bread was made.
[42:51] He was sent to this world. He was born to a virgin in Bethlehem, which, by the way, that word means, Bethlehem means house of bread. He grew up in a little insignificant town.
[43:08] He was bruised. He was cut down by sinful men. He passed through the fiery furnace of God's holy wrath as He took our place in judgment on the cross.
[43:22] He suffered this way for you. And so the question, that we should wrestle with, is how can we refuse to feed upon Him?
[43:36] Come to Him. Draw near to Him. And grow strong by feeding daily upon the bread of heaven, the bread of life.
[43:49] put away your phone. Turn off the TV. Give God your attention. And I promise you that as a result of that, you will grow.
[44:00] You will be strengthened. Your family will be blessed. Your friends will be blessed. Your neighbors will be blessed. Your workplace will be blessed. This church will be blessed. This world will be blessed.
[44:12] You being like Jesus Christ. So three closing questions of application for us to consider. First of all, what are you looking to today to give your life satisfaction?
[44:26] What are you looking today to give your life satisfaction? One way I think that you can best identify that is by thinking about what do you daydream about? What are you looking most forward to?
[44:40] And not everything that you daydream about, not everything that you look forward to is taking the place of Jesus, but it could be. Think, what am I living today for? And often you can find that that's the thing that you're looking for in life to give you satisfaction.
[44:57] And if it's not Jesus, that needs to change. Second question of application. How much time do you spend with God daily? This is something just for you to think about.
[45:08] I'm encouraging you to turn on that thing in your settings and your phone so that you can see how much hours you spend on your phone every day. But examine.
[45:20] How much time do you spend with the Lord daily? And I encourage you if you're not and you think, well, where do I begin? An easy way to do that is to do the 10, 20, 30 method that I've heard.
[45:34] You're going to spend an hour in God's word every day, 10 minutes in the morning, 20 at lunch, 30 at night, or you can mix that up any way you want. But I'm telling you, you spend an hour with God and His word every day.
[45:47] Now you're spending, you know, seven hours and you multiply that by weeks and years. But I'm telling you too, the more that you feed upon God's word, the more you're going to realize that, you know what, maybe an hour's not enough today.
[45:58] I need more and I need more because it's so good. And then third, what changes are you going to make in your life to give God more of your time? And so I encourage you to tuck that sheet away in your Bible, in your pocket.
[46:12] My encouragement would be to you, my invitation would be for you this morning as a believer to come back to that question tomorrow, maybe tonight, maybe this afternoon, to be in prayer over this question and to really search and think, what changes am I going to make in my life so that God can have more of my time and be more of a priority for me?
[46:37] And you know what? It might be hard. It might be hard to cut out some of those things but again, the promise from God to you is that if you do, you won't regret it. Let's be a church that loves the word of God.
[46:49] Let's be a church that is daily in the word of God. Let's be a church that is filled with the word of God, that abides in the word of God and encourage one another to do the same. As we go out and tell the world about the good news of Jesus Christ.