Hungry for Spiritual Food

Thank you very much, Mrs. Vomgardner, and thank you to all of you for your offering. Not that it's going to me, but I'll pass it on to the proper authorities. Now, there's something about me that bothers Sue quite a bit, but I find it entertaining, and that's something that's different about me than I find most people, and that is, I like to pay attention to commercials. I joke I consider them an art form, and sometimes they're very entertaining.

They can be effective at getting our attention, at making us laugh, at making us think, and some of them, especially, well, radio, but especially television, can be very good at presenting an image in our minds, presenting something so we just see it very clearly. And food commercials are some of the worst, and beer commercials are good at that. They portray, you see that frothy, golden liquid pouring into the glass, and those little sparkly bubbles rising up, and the head spilling over. And I know I've seen commercials, it seems like it's mostly for grocery stores, but they're advertising their wares, and they'll show a juicy steak sizzling on the grill, and it's just perfect.

Or, with a high-definition TV, you can see the picture of your favorite flavor of ice cream, gleaming, invitingly. And I wrote all that down, and then I had the note, don't you just hate it when speakers do that on the Day of Atonement? And at the same time, we sort of like it. But I didn't want to describe foods that would make us aware of our hunger, just to be cruel, but for a reason. I did it because, and we do think and learn through analogies, and God makes many great analogies in Scripture and through His Holy Days. And we can draw some important analogies between needing physical food, and needing spiritual sustenance, which we often call spiritual food.

We know, and we're very aware of it now, that our bodies need food to survive and to grow physically. We need spiritual food to survive and grow spiritually. In the Bible, we read about the milk and the meat of God's Word. Christ said that His meat, His food, was to do the will of the Father who sent Him. He also spoke of a parable of giving meat in due season. Now, we're having an analogy by going without food today, and fortunately, it is just a one-day festival. If the Day of Atonement lasted two weeks instead of 24 hours, how many of us would be alive to see the conclusion? Probably not many of us.

Few, if any of us, know what it's like to go truly hungry. And that's because of the blessings that God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We haven't been in a position to have to do that, and I pray that He'll spare us from having to. We've heard stories of men and women who have, especially in the Depression, in this country, and of course in the wars in other countries. You've heard of people who have had to go without coming to seeing hallucinations, getting to the point of being ready and willing to eat almost anything because they were starving to death.

They were feeling very, very hungry. But I don't want to focus on physical hunger today. Of course, it's there with us. It helps to make the analogy. There's an important question. It pertains to the Day of Atonement, but should be with us always. It's not, are you hungry, but are you spiritually hungry?

Do you have the hunger? And I could ask myself, do I have the hunger for the things of God? Let's turn to a scripture, Matthew 5. It's actually a well-known passage and part of what's called the Sermon on the Mount in the midst of the Beatitudes. Matthew 5 will read verse 6. And it's teaching, Jesus said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Hunger and thirst for righteousness. They shall be filled. The Greek word there for hunger, pionnéo, means to be famished. It could be translated as starving. Those who are starving for righteousness will be filled. Now, all of us here today are physically hungry. Hopefully, we're also hungering and thirsting for righteousness. We feel almost like we're starving to be reconciled to God. We often break down the word atonement to mean to be at one with.

At one with God. But that can only come. We can only be reconciled and be united to God when His righteousness is in us. Of course, it's something we can't generate on our own. So, one of the great lessons of the Day of Atonement, while we're physically hungry and thirsting for physical sustenance, we should be spiritually hungering and thirsting as well. Part of the reason we have this hunger, and the world doesn't feel it, but it is lacking, is because the world has been deceived by Satan.

I want to make some references back to the sermon I gave on trumpets about how the world has been led astray. Adam and Eve made that choice, and Mr. Bumgarner referred to it, and they've been deceived. And so, there's this void there of not having the righteousness from God. Now, our hunger doesn't come from being deprived of any of God's righteousness.

Fortunately, we've been called out. God is beginning to reveal His way to us and put His Spirit in us, but we're still deficient of attaining His righteousness. Isaiah, I believe in 65, says, even our righteousness, the best we can do is as a filthy rags before God.

So, we need to hunger and thirst for His righteousness in us. And Christ wants us to have an irresistible urge for His way of life. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness means that we have a wholehearted desire to become like our Maker. Not a sort of half-hearted, you know, maybe I want to do that. In this verse in Matthew, Jesus was saying, if we really do hunger and thirst for it, He will fill us.

He'll fill us with His righteousness and with all the good, wonderful things that can bring. Again, referring to the sermonette, we're looking forward to the time when God's way of life fills this whole earth, and Satan's deception will no longer hold stray. So, don't we want to be filled with that, and we want the world to be filled with it? And this analogy of hungering and thirsting portrays a Christian as having an acute awareness of a need in his life that must be filled. And because it's not yet filled completely, as I said, we're beginning, we have some of that in us. That's why we're here. We're striving to do this.

But because we're not completely filled with God's way of life, then there's a yearning for it. And it's good for us to periodically stop and ask the question, and the Day of Atonement is especially appropriate to ask, am I still hungering and thirsting for God's righteousness? Do I have the hunger? Pretty much all of us at some time felt an intense hunger for God's truth.

That can fade in time, but remember when you were first called? We often call that the first love. And I could say, for those who grew up in the church, as I did most of my life, you reach that point where you know you want to be baptized, and suddenly you feel a difference.

You feel this drive. Many people, when they're feeling that first love, have this strong appetite to learn of God's way and to draw closer to Him. They get booklets, they get Bible study guides and such from the church, and they almost devour them. In their mind, they do so. It's a wonderful part of a Christian's love. I want to read an email that another minister shared with me that was sent to the home office of someone who discovered the church's literature. It's very brief. It says, Thank God for the survival of His church.

Soon I want to find a place to worship with others who believe as I do. I felt so alone. I cannot get enough of your literature. How thirsty I've been!

Interesting that I can't get enough. I've been thirsty. They're making that analogy of that feeling that we all have now, only feeling that for learning more of God's way of life. Thinking of that analogy, are we still thirsty for the milk of the word and hungry for the spiritual meat?

So, keeping that analogy in mind, let's consider our desire to keep the Feast of Tabernacles in a few days from now. It's funny, I don't know how many of you have been in those conversations. A lot of times, the Day of Atonement services are the last that you attend with your local congregation before traveling to the Feast. When you're standing around after services, that's when the conversations are almost totally about traveling to the Feast. The people you're going to see, the things you'll do. Right now, we're fasting, but soon we'll be feasting.

As we prepare for the Feast, what is it that really excites us, or has been exciting us? What have we been looking forward to the most? The family and friends that we'll be with? Hopefully, we'll look forward to that. Travel to some exciting new place.

The terrific food and drink we'll enjoy. These are all parts of the Feast that are important and good and right. But, we should not allow the anticipation for those to crowd out our appreciation for the spiritual feasting we'll do. This is, carrying through that analogy, I've heard it most all of my life. I'm sure most of you have. The spiritual learning that we do there, along with the fellowshiping and communing with God, is a spiritual feast. I think that's why we call them feast-ates. Not only because we eat, but because we learn things of God. The word feast implies food in the English language.

This is an aside. It doesn't have much to do with the message. But, I found it interesting. Sue has shared this with me from her days teaching in public schools. When she would get ready to go to the feast, she would tell her students, I'll be gone for a week and a half.

Where are you going? I'm going to the Feast of Tabernacles. She might have opportunity to explain what that is and what it means. But, she said when she'd come back, the kids would always ask her. These were junior high school kids. Well, did you eat a whole lot? How much did you eat? Because they heard that word feast, and they thought, feast means eating and eating and eating. Well, we could compare the eight days of attending services at the Feast of Tabernacles to attending a spiritual banquet.

It's a very important part of rejoicing before God at the Feast of Tabernacles. Now, he does require us to rejoice with physical food. That's part of why he commanded setting aside the second tithe and taking it with you, or turning it into money and taking that with you and bestowing it on what your heart desires. You know, steak or fine wines or you know, or whoppers, if you're like me in that department.

But we do want to enjoy and rejoice over the spiritual food. We should be hungering for that. And there's been a special emphasis, I'll say from the home office, and I got an email just yesterday reminding us of how much the leadership of the Church is stressing to the ministry to try to give some of the best messages you can. Make this worthwhile for the members. Give them good meat in due season.

And we should be wanting to get that in. Try to do our best. And we get excited about going and hearing some of the best messages we'll hear. In sermons, Bible studies, and I'll mention also a personal Bible study during the feast. Now, I remember when I was younger, it would be easy to get so distracted with staying up late with my friend and going and doing activities that...

I thought, well, I'm going to church every day. I don't have to spend a lot of time studying my Bible. But, no, you should do that. And I think... I can look at the faces here. I don't have to tell you that, but I'll just remind you, you know, there's value in that. That's part of the spiritual feast, is not having to go do your job or having the normal distractions, but spend more time in God's Word and read special parts of it.

Now, that said, I like to revisit one of my favorite sections of Scripture in the book of Isaiah. There are many millennial Scriptures, and I love this section towards the end where God starts speaking in first person. I think of that as part of my feasting. We'll be focusing on and learning about God's plan of salvation for mankind and about the way of life He revealed to us. And, of course, the meaning of the Day of Atonement is a huge part of God's plan. You know, we won't be reviewing God's... God's plan isn't only the millennium, it's getting to that point. And so, we're here today celebrating the fact that after Jesus Christ returns, there will be a reconciliation.

The obstacles between God and man will be taken away, and one of the biggest being the adversary. Well, as I said, I've had times in the past where I got so excited and enthusiastic about going to the feast, and some of the physical aspects of it started to crowd out some of my appreciation for the spiritual.

And most of us have done that some. Not that we forget the spiritual meaning, but perhaps there have been some years where we didn't give it as much attention to the spiritual benefits right there before us. Now, physical appetites are strong. Physical things that we enjoy, and they can exert an influence on our thinking, can be distracting. And that's one of the reasons God commands us to fast. Not just this day, but He tells us to do it periodically. But when we're fasting, it helps us focus on what's really important overall. Because those physical things can distract us.

You know, and you think I can do another analogy. Forgive me, I know sometimes this is a pain, but, you know, if you're 20 hours into a fast, and you walk by someone grilling a steak, that smell, it's just almost overwhelming. You have to withdraw yourself from it.

I find for me the smell that, and here I'm talking about a physical distraction. For me, it's bread. Especially if it's fresh baked bread. I don't know if any of you live near a Subway sandwich shop, but they bake bread there. If you happen to come by when it's baking, it's almost overpowering. You smell it, it's like, I want bread! Let's turn... Well, actually, I don't have to turn. My Bible is open to Matthew 4, because it's across the page from 5.

Let's read the section of where Jesus Christ was tempted, but He was prepared. Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights afterward, He was hungry. We talk about that as a great understatement, but I wonder if you read it right. He was hungry. I'll bet He was. Now the tempter came to Him, and He said, If you're the Son of God, command these stones to become bread. Jesus probably at that moment remembered the smell of bread. But He answered, and He said, It's written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Satan was trying to tempt Jesus, where He was physically the most vulnerable. But Christ deflected that temptation by His focus on the spiritual food of God's Word. God's Word is related to bread, the bread of life. And of course, Jesus Christ is called the bread of life. And God's Word and bread, that analogy in comparison, carries through.

There are other places in the Bible where food is used to represent two divergent ways, one right and the other wrong. And the physical hungers that become involved are revealing about what man is and what we should become. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There are two different trees, each bearing different fruits. The fruit of the tree of life represents God's way.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents man going his own way while deceived by Satan.

And what we want to remember, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul refers to Christ as the second Adam. Okay, I'm not going to turn there, but he was the second Adam. In other words, Christ coming represents a fresh start. Adam and Eve made a decision that affected all their descendants. Jesus Christ coming in His sacrifice represents a chance to make a different choice.

We just read that Christ was tempted with food. We know the first Adam and his wife were tested with food. You could say they traded away the greatest blessings of God, literally, for a piece of fruit.

But, of course, that piece of fruit represented so much more. And on trumpets, we focused on man turning to Satan's way. Turning, well, basically to his own way, what was Satan guiding it? Man made that choice, and we've suffered ever since then. But the Day of Atonement pictures the time when Satan will be put away. That choice can be, well, not undone in the sense that all of history is undone, but from that time forward, we can go back and partake of the Tree of Life. Take the right fruit. Let's look at another analogy. If you'll turn to Exodus 16.

Exodus 16, we'll begin in the first verse. The children of Israel came out of Egypt, and, of course, they also became, they became distracted with physical hunger. Exodus 16, and I'll allow that time to normally while returning to another part of the Bible, is when I get my glass of water, but not today. As they journeyed from Ilim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the wilderness of sin, which is between Ilim and Sinai on the fifteenth day of the second month, they departed from the land of Egypt.

And then the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The children of Israel said to them, Oh, that we died by the hand of the Eternal in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full.

For you brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Now, Andrew, they'd just come through the Red Sea. They'd seen God literally part a sea. They'd witnessed the plagues on Egypt. They knew the power that God had, but they were preoccupied with eating.

They let those physical desires cloud their memory. Now, let's turn to 2 1 Corinthians this time to see Paul comment on this. 1 Corinthians 10. We'll begin in verse 1. There are lessons there, and there are a number of lessons, of course, there to learn. Paul says, Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud and passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses, in the cloud, in the sea, and all ate of the same spiritual food. Interesting. They were thinking of physical food. Paul here points out the spiritual food that's available, and all drank of the same spiritual drink.

For they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. But with most of them, God was not well pleased. Their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now, these things became our example to the intent that we should not lust after evil, things that they also lusted. And you see that emphasized, repeated for emphasis in verse 11. All these things happened to them as examples.

They were written for our admonition, upon whom the end of the ages have come. Paul is saying we can learn valuable lessons from the journey and the trials of the children of Israel. That their journey parallels our spiritual journey, not from a physical Egypt, but from sin, which Egypt represented going to the Promised Land of salvation. And one lesson for us to understand is how, even though they had been taken miraculously out of slavery, out of a wretched situation, and they were promised this wonderful life and place ahead, they allowed their physical appetites to distract them. And God told them where they were going, but they got distracted from that, because the physical appetites made them move their line of vision, cast or gauge, gaze elsewhere.

I have trouble getting some words out normally. Today it's worse. Let's go back to Numbers, if you will. Numbers, chapter 11. I do want to consider that, of course, they did have to be fed. So it's not wrong that they were pointing out that they were hungry, but how they let it distract them, and how even when they were fed, they started not appreciating that as those old appetites.

Numbers 11, we'll begin in verse 4. Now, the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving. So the children of Israel also wept again, and they said, Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish that we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. But now our whole being is dried up, and there's nothing at all except this manna before our eyes. So God miraculously gave them food every day, but now they're distracted again, because they were so tired of this manna. And I think verse 7 is probably an insert that Moses inserted to explain for those who didn't remember manna.

It says, Now manna was like coriander seed, it's the color of the bedellum, and the people went out and gathered it, they grounded on millstones, or beat it, and made cakes, they ground it on millstones, beat it in the mortar, and cooked it in pans, and made cakes of it. And its taste was like the taste of pastry prepared with oil.

I think, well, that sounds pretty good. They were saying, oh, there's nothing but this worthless manna. But not only did it taste like pastry made with oil, it gave them the nutrition they needed. It didn't take a lot of effort to get it, they just went out and gathered it up.

But they started focusing on wanting more. Their appetites weren't satisfied. I won't turn there, but in Numbers 21, they refer to it as worthless bread.

But, and if you want to write this down, Psalm 78, verses 24 and 25, refers to manna as bread of heaven, and angels' food. If we went along like that, it would be similarly easy for us to discount the value of the spiritual food that God provides for us. Now, we do, well, we were told in the model prayer to pray, give us this day our daily bread. Now, I don't usually say it in exactly those words, but I pray daily for God to provide for my physical needs and that of my family.

But along with asking for our physical needs, daily we need to appreciate and take advantage of the spiritual food that God makes available to us. We can study the Bible every single day. And for much of human history, that hasn't been possible. There was a time not all that long ago when each town might have one copy of the Scriptures in either a church or a synagogue. And of course, for a lot of that period, especially, you know, well, there were times when that copy might be in a language you couldn't read or a lot of people wouldn't be able to read. So, studying the Bible every day and having multitudes of books and magazines and things to help you understand it is something we shouldn't take for granted. And likewise, we want to value the miracle that God performed in calling us out of the world and giving us this Holy Spirit. And something we should pray is for God to renew His Spirit to continue that supply daily. So, we don't want to forget that. And we don't want to forget, of course, that we can go to God daily and come before the throne and by the power of that Spirit. The ancient Israelites forgot the miracles that God worked for them. The physical appetites that they allowed to control them were, when you think about it, they were more of the mind than the stomach. They weren't going hungry. They weren't malnourished. But in their mind, they started focusing. They started talking about meat and talking about leeks and garlic and things like that. And, of course, God made us to appreciate variety. And it's good that we have that. Of course, God was able to provide meat. And we go down in Numbers 11. We'll find that He did. He sent the quail. There's indication that He didn't send it just one time. It became a regular basis. Man in the morning, quail in the evening. They had what they needed. But they had an emotional response to appetites for things that they'd gotten used to in the past. And they forgot about the harsh conditions that came with it. It's interesting how fondly they spoke of Egypt at times. When they were in Egypt, they were moaning and sighing saying, could we be released from all this? But they got so caught up in the good things that they remembered while forgetting the bad that they were willing to turn back from the Promised Land. Willing to forsake all the wonderful blessings that God promised them just for some mouthfuls of meat. That reminds me of the story of Esau, who came in from the field and was so hungry. He said, What's his birthright going to do me any good if I starve to death? So he sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. In both cases, people were ready to toss aside the riches of God. Everything that they should have valued, because their physical appetites, overwhelmed their vision of what really mattered. And there's a lesson in that for us. We should have a vision of what really matters. The Holy Day cycle provides us that. As Mr. Bumgardner reminded us, we look back to Christ's sacrifice that was made, to the putting out of sin, and the fact that for those who have died in the faith, they've completed that process. We're in the process of doing it. It will continue. And we look ahead to the different parts of God's plan that will be fulfilled, with Christ's return and Satan put away in the establishment of the millennium, and eventually the second resurrection, and everyone having that opportunity.

So we don't want to lose sight of that vision and be distracted by anything physical. Again, remember when you were experiencing that first love for the truth. When you realized you wanted to be baptized into the body of Christ. When you began learning God's way of life and you just could not get enough.

Like that email I read that someone sent to the home office saying, I cannot get enough of your literature. Now before that happened, before God opened your mind, you may have been hungering for any number of wrong things.

I say you, I should say us, we may have been. You know, human beings naturally, led by Satan, will develop appetites for things that aren't necessarily good for them. And God knew that, but he called us anyways. Because he knew he could work with us and lead us the right way. And God started giving us an appetite for spiritual food. And that appetite is something only he could give. Now we can develop appetites for physical things, but that hunger, that hunger and thirst for righteousness is something we need to rely on God to give us.

And one of the things I'm getting at though is that when God gave us that hunger for the spiritual food, he didn't immediately just drive out every other appetite that was ever in us. He left those as trials for us to work on and things to overcome. Just like our ancestors wandering in the wilderness, how they had to deal with those appetites they had. But if we're not careful, the old appetites could start crowding out and replace a proper hunger for the righteousness that we should have.

And that's happened to some people. Over the years, some people have been in God's church and then fallen away because they could not or would not control worldly hungers. But here I want to say, I'm sort of setting this up as something for us to be, I don't want to say, scared of, but wary of. But then remember, God doesn't leave us powerless.

God gives us His Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ and the Father will dwell in us by the power of that Spirit, and they'll stir up that proper hunger. They'll stir up a hunger for truth, a hunger for righteousness, this hunger that motivates us to want to overcome and to grow spiritually. So with that, we want to cultivate that hunger. Think about what happens when we miss a meal, like all of us have now. We start feeling weak. Our blood sugar drops.

We feel empty. It's hard to think clearly. Hard to say words properly. We feel like we just can't function. The same thing can happen when we miss praying, for instance, or other spiritual things. Say you miss praying one morning. By mid-afternoon, you might feel something's off. It's not quite right. You start feeling down and empty because you haven't maintained that connection with God. So in a sense, you're starting to run on empty. But if you draw another parallel, and some of us might have already gone through this physically, especially, I think, when you begin a fast near bedtime, which with the late sundown, this time of year, you do, you sleep through a lot of that initial hungriness.

And then by the time you wake up, your stomach has kind of shrunk a little bit. And they say for people who fast a long time, the stomach shrinks. And although you might feel weak and debilitated, you don't feel hunger in the normal way. And that even can be dangerous. It can be where it's difficult to eat. What about spiritually? If we cut off our connection with God, do we get a parallel to having our stomach shrink to where you don't feel the need to reconnect with God, to read His Word?

If so, then you might be losing some of that spiritual appetite that we should be building up and maintaining. I just realized I was using the word you. I should be using the word we. I'm not exempt from any of this at all.

But in the same way that we could die from physical malnutrition, a Christian could die spiritually from losing that connection to God and His righteousness. And it's important to realize another analogy I've seen with people physically. You can die or suffer severe malnutrition without being hungry because of putting things in your stomach that don't really provide nourishment or nutrition.

I learned that to tell a story from back when I worked at Wendy's when I was a teenager and started in college. I loved frosties. It's funny how food keeps coming in this, but I even told people I was addicted. I had to go in on my day off to make sure I had a frosty every day. But when I worked with a closing shift, we would clean those machines out. It's a typical soft-serve ice cream machine.

It has a cylinder with a blade inside that spins around. And at the top, there's what's called a carburetor. The liquid goes in and air is mixed as it's freezing to give you that creamy substance. That's what makes it soft. Well, at the end of the night, we would...well, I mentioned there's a reservoir at the top with a fluid as it can go in and be mixed with air.

Because of the churning, air would come up out of that carburetor and you'd have a foam that would develop at the top. Nothing real bad, but it was just there. So at the end of the night, we'd turn the machine off and then put it on wash mode to drain all the liquid out.

Since it all cycled through, the foam would typically go down into the chamber. A foam is mostly a little bit of frosty residue with air. Well, we learned that we could turn back on the freezer, mix that up, and what would happen is more air would get mixed with the foam, freezes, and then we'd go to the machine and pull it like it was frosty. Something would come out that looked like a frosty and tasted sort of like one.

I was dumb enough to taste it. But it was 85% or more air. My manager once said, you know, I'll bet someone could starve to death eating this stuff because it looks like ice cream, but it's just air. You'd be filling your stomach up with something that might taste good and look good, but wouldn't provide nourishment. Well, there, the analogy spiritually, we got to be careful about that.

We don't want to fill up on something that's spiritually empty. And, you know, human beings, in a sense, always tend to often feel an emotional emptiness that's related to spiritual emptiness. And people will try to fill that void or feed that hunger, often with things that don't really provide spiritual sustenance.

People turn to things like alcohol and drugs. People turn to sex. They turn to food. Sometimes, and often it's junk food. People try to fill that hunger with entertainment or with partying with lots and lots of friends. Or sometimes acquiring things. What's that old saying? When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

At least, I heard that, well, no, now I think about it. I think I learned that from the Flintstones, which isn't a great source of wisdom. But also, people will try to fill that void with working their job or with exercising. And I want to make the point that people will try to fill that void with sometimes with things that are good and necessary. You know, food is necessary for us and shopping at times. And, you know, alcohol is proper in its right moderation.

But if a person relies on them to do what spiritual food should, the result can be like a hungry person that only ever eats ice cream. Or that frozen foam. They're not getting nutrition. Things that aren't really spiritual food might seem to temporarily alleviate the hunger. But they don't provide what a person needs for spiritual growth.

So the obvious conclusion, then, is we need to feed on what will provide that. Because, as the saying goes, you are what you eat. Let's turn to Galatians 6 to see a difference. The Bible doesn't say you are what you eat, although I don't think there's anything in it that contradicts that. We could see it in a different analogy in Galatians 6 and verse 7.

Paul writes, Paul writes, While we're thinking along these lines, let's turn to Luke chapter 15. About getting the right spiritual nourishment. This is one of Christ's best known parables. And I haven't often thought about how much it refers to food, and of turning from the things you shouldn't focus your life on to turning to what you should. The parable of the prodigal son. Did I say Luke 15, or did I just say, okay? Luke 15 will begin in verse 11.

So he divided them his livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered altogether and journeyed into a far country. There wasted his possessions with prodigal living. And when he had spent all their roses of your famine in the land, he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself with a citizen of that country. And he sent him into the fields to feed swine. So he dropped from being a wealthy heir to outfeeding pigs. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate. So he's going hungry, feeding these pigs, thinking, boy, I wish I could eat at least that. No one gave him anything. When he came to himself, and just think, with all that prodigal living, as the older brother says, lately he wasted the inheritance with harlots and fast living. He was feeding appetites that didn't provide real nourishment. Maybe he felt that emptiness. But when he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and despair? I perish with hunger. So I'll go, I'll arise and go to my father. And I'll say, Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. He's focusing on the right things, wanting to fill his appetite properly. So he arose and came to his father. And here's where we see the mercy this applies to all of us. Because, as I said, we've all been distracted by wrong things. But our father is willing to forgive us. When he was a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. The son said, Father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. And I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. The father cut him off before he could even offer to work as one of his servants. The father said to his servants, bring out the best robe and put on him. Put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. Bring out the fatted calf here and kill it and let us eat and be merry. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost in his found and they began to be merry. Now, I'm going to cut off the lesson with the older brother as an important one, but one that doesn't necessarily pertain to this. The lesson I want to focus on is that hungering for the things of this world leads to further emptiness. But hungering to be close to God will lead us to fullness. It'll lead us to feasting. But there's something else to address that some people use to fill their emotional emptiness. For some people, it's actually religion. People can be so devoted to certain improper focus on their religion. A person could focus on technical points of the Bible and so much that he neglects the meat of the word. We can find websites, and I've seen some of them, that pick apart every word of every prophecy or develop complex conspiracy theories. And it's not wrong to want to focus on every prophecy and all this. But if you lose sight of the weightier matters of the law, that's a problem. Justice, mercy, and faith. We need a balanced diet in our Bible study. Just as we shouldn't eat only dessert, we shouldn't study only one topic.

Even if the ones that are really fun and exciting. What is it that we're hungering for? I've had older ministers tell me that they knew of men who quit their jobs so they could stay home and study end-time prophecy and do nothing else. But those men, they said, weren't studying and meditating on principles of Christian living and overcoming. They were feeding on things like speculating who and where were the churches of Revelation 2 and 3. Trying to determine who would be the end-time beast in the false prophet. And so they were feeding a thirst for the things of God, but they'd acquired a taste for limited nourishment. But without proper, balanced spiritual nourishment, we can shrivel up and die. I said, someone who eats only junk food physically is probably going to have health problems. If you eat only junk food, and I like junk food. As a matter of fact, two kids and me, I eat way too many chips. And I love ice cream. But if I eat only chips and ice cream, I'd put on too much weight, my arteries would get clogged with cholesterol, and I'd be lacking nutrients. We crave junk food because it tastes so good. And certain subjects of the Bible, it's easy to study because they're so interesting. But in the same way, we don't get excited about broccoli or spinach or carrots, but those build our bodies and protect our health. Likewise, we might not get as excited about studying the Ten Commandments, or the Sermon on the Mount, or the Fruits of the Spirit. But those are the basis of good spiritual health, and all the other comes into the balance as well. And we don't want to be like the children of Israel who said, Oh, this man, I'm so sick of man, I don't want to eat any more manna. We want to realize the basics, the Word of God is good and healthy for us. And when we do study that, it'll build a craving for mental, or it'll build a cravings that are proper for God's Word. And unhealthy spiritual cravings diminish if we feed properly on the Word of God, if we hunger and thirst for righteousness and allow Him to feed us. And we face choices in this world. I mean, all you have to do is turn on the TV. Modern media and the Internet want to titillate our senses and arouse hungers in us, and then we'll provide the satisfaction, but it's not real satisfaction. God has called us to a higher level. Let's look at Ephesians 4, Ephesians 4, verse 22. A higher level of thinking is what we should be doing. Ephesians 4, 22 says, Put off concerning your former conduct the old man, which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you put on the new man, which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

As we come up from baptism, a new creation in Jesus Christ, we want to continually be shaped by God and fed by Him. We consider the foods that God wanted Adam and Eve and the children of Israel to eat, and what they represent for us. Let's think about that and feast on these things during the Day of Atonement. As I said, we're not eating physical food, but we can spiritually be fed nourishment. We know that eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil resulted in death. For the Israelites who craved manna so much that they were willing to turn back to Egypt, that resulted in their death. What about the foods that God offered? I won't turn there, because I just read it on trumpets, but Genesis 3, remember God said, Look, Adam and Eve, they've taken of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They'll be like us now. So, lest they also take of the tree of life and live forever, let's put them out of the garden. And he did. But the tree of life was freely available. What God wanted was available free. And of course, the manna. God put it out there on the ground every morning and said, Just go pick it up. Don't pick up too much, because I'm going to put it out there tomorrow morning. He wanted them to realize that they had to rely on him. As I said, atonement reminds us that whereas Adam and Eve chose the wrong fruit and didn't take the tree of life, it was freely available. The day of atonement reminds us that the serpent is going to be put away. I find it interesting in Revelation, where Mr. Bumgardner read, when Satan is put away, it refers to him as the dragon and that serpent of old. There's that connection all the way back to the Garden of Eden. He's not referred to as a serpent through most of the Bible, but in those two places he is.

There's that connection with the Garden of Eden in the Day of Atonement, because Satan is no longer going to be around to say, You shall not surely die and tempt us with these things.

For us, spiritual food is available free. The Church always practices what Christ said. Freely you've been given, freely give. We should all, and of course many of us do. I know you do. You freely share of what you've learned and studied.

Let's consider fruit from the two trees from a different perspective. If you'll turn over to Galatians, Chapter 5.

There's more than one kind of fruit in the Garden, but God doesn't leave us without any direction on which fruit to take. And the Apostle Paul makes the analogy. I've been studying some of the fruits of the Spirit just recently, looking ahead for a sermon I want to do.

Let's start with the wrong fruit, we could call it. Galatians 5.19. The works of the flesh are evident. They're adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like.

There's a lot of works of the flesh. And the like of which I tell you beforehand, as I told you in times past, those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law.

And what more do I have to say? Obviously, we should hunger for the fruit of the Spirit, not for the works of the flesh.

Now, we have considered man as that physical bread that God gave the children of Israel. It was good for them. It sustained their health for 40 years. But God always wanted Israel to have a spiritual hunger. Let's go back to Deuteronomy 8 to note.

Part of this will sound familiar.

Deuteronomy 8, we'll read verse 3.

Here, Moses is reminding the children of Israel those who were still alive before they crossed the Jordan of what God had done.

And Moses is speaking of God. It says, So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and then fed you with manna which you did not know.

Nor did your fathers know that he, that is God, might make you to know that man shall not live by bread alone.

Man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

This is the section, the scripture that Christ quoted to Satan when Satan was tempting him with blood. And, of course, we're to know... I mean, at the same time God was providing the physical bread, He was saying, bread isn't what you should be hungering for, though alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And God made Israel dependent on him every day for their sustenance.

As I said, He made them so they had to go out and get the man, well, six days out of the week.

He wanted to teach them about the Sabbath through that.

He wants us to depend on him for our daily spiritual sustenance.

I want to turn to John 6 to see that. The connection is strong.

I hadn't thought... I guess I focused on the symbolism so much until I was working on this. Boy, there's a lot of talk about food in this chapter and spiritual food, showing what's what.

The first several verses of John 6, of course, is one of the accounts of Jesus Christ feeding thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish. Showing, of course, that don't get all tight about physical appetites. God can make food out of them nowhere.

Christ made a spiritual analogy with food. Essentially, John 6, these next few verses, summarize all of the point I've been trying to make in the sermon.

I guess if I had to give it as a sermonette, I would have just gone to John 6 right from the start.

I'm not sure if that covered as well. Let's start reading in verse 27.

John 6 and verse 27, Christ tells them, Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you. It's freely available. Because God the Father hath set His seal on Him.

And they said to Him, Well, what shall we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He sent.

Therefore they said to Him, What sign will you perform then that we may see it and believe you?

What work will you do? So, our fathers ate the manna in the desert as it's written. He gave them the bread from heaven. So they're saying, Hey, work a miracle. Give us manna. Basically, they say, give us a free meal ticket. Make it so we don't have to worry about working every day like God did for our forefathers, where the bread is just there every day. But Jesus wanted them not to focus on the daily physical bread, but spiritual. Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say, Moses didn't give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives His life to the world.

And He was speaking of Himself. And then He said to them, Lord, give us this bread always. They're still thinking, you know, wonder bread or whatever. You know, and they're not seeing the spiritual aspect. Jesus said to them, I'm it. I'm the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger. He who believes in me shall never thirst. Now, we know that He must have been speaking spiritually, because we've all come to Him. We believe in Him. But all of us are hungry and thirsty right now. But spiritually, we don't have to be hungry or thirsty.

He said, But I said to you, you have seen me and do not believe.

Now, I want to skip down to chapter, verse 47.

Most assuredly I say to you, He who believes in me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the man in the wilderness. They're dead. So you're asking me for manna. The people who ate that before are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven. One may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he'll live forever. And the bread that I'll give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. Now, he's referring to making a sacrifice. The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, Well, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? Jesus said, Most assuredly I say to you, Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I'll raise him up at the last day.

For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh, drinks my blood, abides in me and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven. Not the man. Not as your Father's eight men and are dead, but he who eats this bread, speaking of himself, will live forever.

Now, we usually read that during the Passover ceremony. We know the symbolism there. At the Passover, when we take that unleavened bread and drink that wine, it's a symbol of Christ's body and blood. Not that he wanted us to become cannibals, but he wants us to feed spiritually on what he provides. I wrote in my notes, this is pretty heavy stuff.

God's Word, Jesus Christ called himself the bread from heaven. God's Word is also equated with bread. It's called bread, the Word. Jesus Christ called himself the Word. Man has served as a type of God's Spirit in a way in that it was provided every day and needed to be renewed. The Holy Spirit is God's very essence. It's the life of Christ that we want to have renewed in us daily, just like we take in food daily. The bread is often called the staff of life. It's eaten around the world. When you take in bread and eat it, or any other substance, but bread is the analogy, your body digests it and absorbs the nutrients.

It becomes part of your body. Little parts of that are taken out and put into you. But in the same way, Jesus Christ, the bread of life, the bread from heaven, that spiritual manna becomes part of us through the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. That should happen daily. His thoughts become our thoughts. His ways become our ways. We know that the prophets said, and God said, my thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways aren't your ways. But that's because we need to change. And as we take in, as we feed on Jesus Christ and His ways, that changes.

Our thoughts do become His thoughts. Or maybe I should say His thoughts become our thoughts. As we take in the Word of God and God renews His Spirit in us, we're spiritually nourished. We can thrive and grow. We can become one with God.

As we say in thetonement, we're reconciled to God. If the children of Israel had wholeheartedly obeyed God and sought to enter the Promised Land, He would have taken care of all their needs even more than He already did. And the analogy for us is if we wholeheartedly obey God and seek to enter His Kingdom, He'll take care of us every spiritual need.

He won't leave us wanting. One of the most famous scriptures in the Bible, in Matthew 6.33, says, Seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, have hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. All the other things will be added if we're hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I'll remind you again the scripture we started with, Matthew 5.6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They'll be filled. God will give us what we need. When we really hunger and thirst for the things of God, we'll be motivated to pray.

We will be motivated to study the Bible, motivated to meditate, even motivated to fast. Every now and then I'll have that feeling, and say, I need to fast. I don't want to. But I feel the need, and I'm sure many of you, or most all of you have felt that at times. I think it's Jesus Christ's righteousness moving us.

I'm probably not as close. I need it, even though I know I don't like it. Here we are on the Day of Atonement. This is a fast day sandwiched between... On my notes, I just said between two feast days. I'm talking about food even, and one I don't intend to. We're between the Feast of Trumpets and the Feast of Tabernacles. In the perspective of God's plan, we're just after Christ's Second Coming, but before the establishment of the Millennium.

There's a couple of events mentioned in Scripture that happened during this time. One is the binding of Satan, which we focus on quite a... on this day. He will be bound and put away, and he can no longer deceive the nations. And then also, in this period, somewhere is what's called the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

I've heard it discussed maybe that's on... should be included on the Day of Trumpets or just after. But let's turn to Revelation 19 to remind ourselves of this. Revelation 19, verse 7. He said, Let us be glad and rejoice, and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, his wife has made herself ready. And that will be our state on the fulfillment of this Day of Atonement. We'll be reconciled to God and be ready to be one with Christ. It says, To her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

So when this time comes, when we are about to experience the Day of Atonement, the church, the Bride of Christ, will have been made ready, no longer having impurities or blemishes. And then, just like the father of the prodigal son celebrated his son's return with a great feast, bring out the fatted calf, so too our Heavenly Father will have a great feast, a marriage supper, a marriage supper, with the best food and wine. Let's read in verse 9.

So that we won't die the second death, we want a hunger and thirst for the nourishment that will lead us to eternal life. For now, though, pretty much physically, we need to eat just about every day, as we're very well aware. But spiritually, we should be eating every day. We must feed on the things of God. We should be hungering and thirsting for His righteousness.

Hungering and thirsting for righteousness, because when we do, we'll be filled. Now, in a few hours at sunset, we're going to have a pretty strong focus on that physical nourishment, and it'll be great. I know you all have that...well, hopefully you don't have it in mind the whole day, but it comes to mind, and you think, yeah, that's going to be great. But we want to keep a strong focus spiritually, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Because when that hunger is fed, it'll lead us to eternal life, and we can focus on that all day. Won't that be great?