When I get hungry I get grouchy. Maybe you do too. This past Thursday Julie and I ran a 4 mile road race in Dublin. As we have been training we have been altering our diet a little bit – eating less, limiting our snacks, cutting back on the unnecessary calories – because each extra little snack comes back to haunt you when your are out on the road logging the miles. It slows you down and causes you to be less efficient as a runner. The bottom line is that lately I have been hungry. And when I am hungry I am prone to being grouchy, irritable, and uncomfortable.
I suppose that is not unlike the Hebrews in our Old Testament text for today. They were out in the wilderness. They ran out of food. They were hungry and before you know it, sure enough, they were irritable and grouchy and angry. Looks like I share the same sinful human nature as the Hebrews, the same nature that is quick to complain when I am not fat and well fed.
In their grouchiness, they complained against the Lord. “If only we had died in Egypt, when we had meat and bread and our bellies were full. You brought us out into the wilderness to starve us to death.”
Oh the foolishness that lives in the hearts of sinful men!
God came to the Hebrews in their slavery to rescue them. In our modern sensibilities we tend to think of this freedom in terms of personal liberty. All people are endowed with certain inalienable rights – life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Hebrews were slaves. They needed to be liberated. Not too different from how we view our political processes – Iranians, Iraqis, early American colonists, the plantation slaves from our own history – oppressed people who need to be emancipated. As far as God and the Hebrews were concerned, sure that was a part of the deal, but that was just a small part of the deal. More than emancipation from human oppression the Hebrews, and the whole Human race needed to be emancipated from sin, from death and the devil. When God rescued the Hebrews from Egypt, he had in mind to save them not just from Pharaoh and his task masters – the Lord had in mind to save them from sin.
So God did. God raised up a savior – Moses, from among their midst. He called Moses to be his mouthpiece before the people and before the Egyptians and to call the Hebrews to freedom through God's saving action. God rescued them from slavery and God brought them out into the wilderness on their way to the promised land. And then God brought them to Sinai where he gave them the covenant and the promise. He would be their God. They would be His people. They would sacrifice and He would not count their sins against him. And just as he raised up Moses to save them from the Egyptians, God would raise up a Messiah, Jesus, who would save them and us from sin for all eternity.
So there they were, making their way through the wilderness. They consumed the supplies they brought with them from Egypt and they ran out. They were a congregation a million strong. They were out in the wilderness and desert of the Sinai Peninsula. There were no fields to harvest, no grocery stores where they could stop and buy food. How would they survive? How would they live? Perhaps God hadn't thought this through – bringing a million people out into the desert without provisions for food. They were better off as slaves in Egypt.
Have you ever found yourself in the same boat?
Bread and water are pretty basic needs. You can't live without food to eat and water to drink. These things are important. Beyond that, we have standard of living that we maintain – necessities for life in the United States in the 21st Century – a house, a car, utilities – electricity, telephone, and the like. We have bills to pay. Have you ever wondered where the money is going to come from to meet these living expenses? Have you ever wondered how you are going to make it and keep up and keep ahead of your bills and keep the creditors from dialing your number? That can be stressful. You, like the Israelites, might be tempted to think and to say those same things the Israelites said, that they grumbled when they found themselves out in the wilderness, without bread, and hungry. Where's God when I need him? What good has he done for me lately?
At times, like the Israelites what we want is for God to be a bread god? A God who feeds us, fills us up with earthly food, food that perishes, that is here today and gone tomorrow. We want God to fill us with food that can be taken away, that can spoil, with food that you will demand for today but turn around and throw out tomorrow.
This was the god the Hebrews wanted. When the Lord no longer suited their needs, they melted down their gold, turned it into a bread god – a golden calf, a god who they would pray to to give them what they wanted. Have you done the same? Constructed your own god that feeds your belly and pays your bills?
Hear the words of Jesus: “Do not labor for food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”
The food that endures. These days if you want food that endures you have to fill it with preservatives. Saturate it with chemicals that make it taste bad. And even then it still has an expiration date. The best we can come up with is food that endures for a few months. Yet God gives to us eternal food. Food that does not spoil. That has no expiration date. Food that strengthens and sustains. Not just the food that fills us for today, but the food that fills us forever. Jesus tells us to labor for this food.
“But,” we tell ourselves, “there's no free lunch, right?” What will this food cost us. Doesn't Jesus even say it himself - “Labor for the food that endures to eternal life.” What is that work? What is the labor that results in eternal life?
We can't conceive of something for nothing, something that comes that we have not fully deserved. But Jesus tells us: “This is the work of God: that you believe in Him whom he has sent.” That you believe. Believe in Him. In Jesus. In the Son of God who has been sent into the world to pay for the sins of the world. This is the work that results in food that does not perish, that lasts without preservatives, that satisfies that doesn't need to be eaten over and over again, that fills us for forever. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and feed on the food that lasts forever.
Our sin that condemns us and leads us away from the Lord is our desire for the food that perishes, that fills our bellies but does not fill our souls. We want that food that satisfies our hunger pains and strengthens our bodies. We don't care how it comes or what we have to do to get it so long as it comes.
God knows that you need this food.
When the Children of Israel grumbled against the Lord in the wilderness, in spite of the fact that they were motivated by sin and selfishness, in spite of the fact that they wanted a god who would be their bread god, the Lord gave them what they needed. God hadn't forgotten that they had need of food for their bellies. God made us. God created us with bodies that need to eat and be filled. God created us with bodies that become weak when we don't eat. God doesn't want us to go without. God doesn't want us to be weak. God doesn't want us to go hungry. God found a way to feed one million hungry Israelites out in the middle of the wilderness. There were no farms or fields where they would plant and harvest. There was no grocery store out along the way. The Sinai Peninsula didn't even have one Super Wal Mart. Yet somehow God found a way to feed them. God sent bread from heaven – manna, that had all the nutrition they needed to survive and thrive out in the wilderness. And God will feed you. He will give you what you need. He will provide for you. You will have food on your table when you are hungry. “The eyes of all look to you,” writes the Psalmist, “and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.”
But God has greater things to give you than just food for your mouth and bread for your stomach. God has food for your soul. The bread of God that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
God has for you Jesus. Jesus who calls himself the bread of life. Jesus who says of himself “whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
When we do the work of the Father, when we believe in the one whom the Father in Heaven has sent to us, when we are turned in faith to Jesus, believing that he is the sacrifice for our sin, believing that he is the one who was sent for us to believe in to have faith in, then he fills us up.
When our bodies are hungry, we feel empty, we feel a pit in our bellies that needs to be filled, we are uncomfortable, we are irritable. We need to be filled. We are not satisfied until we have eaten and through that meal are strengthened and sustained.
When our spirits, when our souls are hungry, when we are emptied out because of our need for salvation from sin, because of our need to be restored to our relationship to god there is an emptiness in our souls that cannot be filled, a weakness that cannot be overcome until we have eaten and been filled.
This emptiness is not filled with a mere bread god, with a god of our own making who gives us what we want of with what we think we need. Have you noticed the spiritual emptiness, the vacuousness, the desperate hunger for meaning in the world today? We live in a world with people who need to be fed and filled with the bread of God.
The food that God gives, the bread of God that he has sent down from heaven, the spiritual food that fills our souls is the food that addresses that need that no bakery could fill. God gives the food that lasts to eternity. The food that fills the emptiness, that strengthens, that satisfies, that fills and that sustains. God gives Jesus. Jesus dead on the cross for our sin. Jesus risen from the dead victorious over sin. Jesus ascended into heaven as the one who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. This is Jesus for you. This is God for you. This is salvation for you. This is your bread. May you eat and be filled of the bread of life and may you never hunger or thirst.
Amen.
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