The
most important thing in life is to discover
what
is most important – that we become what we eat
Jeremiah
15:16
Welcome
to the wonderful world of food! I
assume you like to eat as much as I do and are a "gourmet" of that
which is the best (however you define "best" from mother's to Mac's).
We are talking today about how to prepare and eat food, not the physical
kind, which most of us handle quite capably, but life changing, joy giving,
spiritual food. It involves
harvesting crops out of a garden – a garden of words that were designed by
Someone incredibly wise Who could prepare His life-giving banquet out of little
combinations of letters on a page! Listen
to the testimony of one of the "harvesters:"
"thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me
the joy and rejoicing of mine heart. . ." (Jeremiah 15:16).
Have you ever experienced that? Words
that proved to be the joy and rejoicing of your heart?
I’m convinced that God wants us to live with joy and rejoicing in our
hearts – even in 2006.
There
are at least three keys in this verse: (1) “thy words.”
Everyone is eating something spiritually; it’s only God’s words that
promise life – not Mary Baker Eddy’s words, or E. F. Hutton.
(2) “were found.” Thy
words take a little search. (3)
“I did eat them.” The prophet
didn’t just look at them, didn’t just hear them, he ate them.
What does that mean? How do
you eat words? There is a direct
parallel between how you eat physically and how you eat spiritually.
Cookies are literal food, words are metaphorical and spiritual food.
Let me go back over these three parts:
I.
“Thy Words.” Just
eating “food” is not good enough. You
have to check its nutritional value. A
diet of English muffins? Dog
biscuits? Sugar? There is
mounting evidence that our children are being affected by the huge amounts of
sugar they are consuming. It is
difficult to raise a child in America today who is not overloaded with sugar.
Too much sugar harms us. It
can cause obesity in children, as well as aggressiveness and lack of attention.
And yet so many of the foods our children eat, from cereal, to yogurt, to
baby food, are high in sugar.
There
is good food and there is bad food. It’s
good to see a growing emphasis in America on healthy nutrition.
People spend extra money to make sure their food is “organic” and
“non-irradiated,” and the chickens are “free range.”
Why? Because we understand
more clearly that we become what we eat. Even
if we pray before we eat, we become what we eat.
At the same time it is possible to allow to come into our minds and
hearts that which is trash – that which can’t do anything but make us
spiritually sick.
Think of what it would be like to eat
garbage all day long. I looked for
pictures of good garbage and was warned by my family of the danger of showing
them right before lunch. I am sure
you have heard of those families in South America who live in garbage dumps and
eat garbage every day. Can you
imagine the horror of such taste? And
what it does to their bodies?
There
is something worse than that. It is
people who live in a metaphorical garbage dump, and eat nothing but trash all
day long. They eat trash by thinking about trash, by meditating on
thoughts that are garbage. They
could be eating gourmet food, but choose garbage.
And they pay Comcast to pipe the stuff into their living rooms.
And they buy and listen to CDs that have no higher motive than to churn
out garbage. And they do a Goggle
search for trash.
Jeremiah said, “your words were found
and I ate them.” The joy in life
comes when you find the ultimate in food, the tastiest treats. Have you found a place around here that makes a sandwich you
love? My son-in-law and I started
working together three weeks ago to lay down new flooring in our house, living
room, dining room, hallway, kitchen – a large undertaking that is not yet
finished. The first day, Thad said
to me, “I need to take you to Quiznos and buy you one of their new
sandwiches.” I went, I ate, a
prime rib and peppercorn sandwich. I
think I have been back for five more since then.
They are awesome sandwiches.
Why
would anyone want to live on garbage when they can have God’s prime rib and
peppercorn sandwiches? “Thy words,” Jeremiah said.
When you get the pure stuff, it is awesome. God’s words will do the same for you and me as they did for
Jeremiah. We will go back time and
time again! The second part is,
II.
“Were found.” When
Jeremiah says, “were found,” he suggests that God’s words took a search.
They weren’t laying on the ground for him to stumble over, they
weren’t running after him; they didn’t attack him and chase him down –
like advertisements that flash in your face repeatedly – “Nike,”
“Nike,” “Nike,” or “McDonalds,” or “Chevrolet.” God’s words have to be sought out.
A.
We live in a “fast food” generation.
I wonder if we tend to live spiritually the way we live physically.
What’s happened in the past 50 years is that there has been a
revolution in eating. When I was
growing up, almost no one I knew ate out. I
was 18 years old, traveling in a singing group before I sat down at a restaurant
for my first meal. And someone
said, “would you like roast beef?” and I answered, “what is that?”
We had stopped at White Castle and purchased a couple of 5 cent
hamburgers, and I remember stopping at A & W for root beer at 5 cents a
frosted glass; and I can remember High’s ice cream, triple dip cones for 15
cents. But restaurant?
Fast food? My mother
prepared all our food. Saturday night was hamburger night.
My dad bought hamburger meat three pounds for a dollar and mom would say
“how many hamburgers do you want tonight?”
My brother and I always ate five each.
Think
of what happens now. How many times
a week do we eat out? Or grab a
meal at Chick-fil-a as we are going somewhere, or a coffee at Starbucks, or
pizza to go? I think we have a
different mentality. And not just
in America. I found the same
mentality in Bulgaria. We
constantly hung out with Bulgarians at the coffee shops, pizza places, fast food
restaurants.
I
find a changed attitude here, a basic assumption in life that says, “I should
be able to get a prepared meal anywhere I am at any time.”
The sign down the street used to tell us that Wendy’s was open until 2
am. The danger is that the fast
food mentality can transfer over into our spiritual lives.
We expect that God is going to serve up fast food, when we want it, to
our order, because that is the way we live.
But does He? Does He provide
a McDonalds? Does He serve
spiritual fast food? Does He
provide Bible TV dinners? The truth
is . . .
B.
God doesn’t operate any fast food restaurants.
God still operates the old way – meaning that we go out into the garden
and pick our own corn and prepare it ourselves.
Let me observe the advantage and disadvantage of this method.
The advantage is that God’s food is
amazingly economical. In
fact, it is FREE! Jesus said, “I
am the bread of life. He who comes
to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
He had just finished feeding 5000 men plus women and children.
He didn’t sell the fish sandwiches to them, He gave them out – a
demonstration of the way He gives out His most priceless gifts.
And then He said to the same people the next day, “you can leave here
with ‘forever bread’ because I am the bread of life and I give it out as
freely as I gave out sandwiches yesterday to all those who come to me.”
The “disadvantage,” if you want
to call it that, is that God’s food is expensive.
Didn’t I just contradict myself?
Here’s the problem: “if it is free, how come everyone doesn’t have
it?” “If it is free, why did
Jeremiah say, ‘thy words were found?’”
Why do I say that God’s food is expensive?
Because of cost? No. It’s free. Because
it is hard to find, and available at only one grocery store in Pennsylvania?
No. It’s available
anywhere. Everyone has a Bible.
Why is it expensive? Because you have to WANT it in order to get it.
It isn’t a fast food system that simply costs you money.
It takes your time. That’s
all. But we value our time.
Some of us are waiting for God to have a food sale, so we can stock up at
the same time we relax and watch TV. People
with that attitude will keep waiting – and starving.
Bible study takes a little work, a little discipline, it takes a little
time. One reason it is expensive is
because there is someone in the mix who doesn’t want you to study your Bible,
and does everything he can do to distract you and make you overly busy, and keep
your mind on other things. Satan.
So there is a personal expense in getting fed spiritual food, because God
doesn’t operate a fast food restaurant.
Solomon said this back in Proverbs 2.
He said that God doesn’t operate a fast food restaurant.
Listen to how he put it:
My son, if you receive my words, And
treasure my commands within you,
So
that you incline your ear to wisdom, And apply your heart to
understanding;
Yes, if you cry out for discernment, And
lift up your voice for understanding,
If you seek her as silver, And search
for her as for hidden treasures;
Then
you will understand the fear of the LORD, And find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and
understanding (Prov. 2:1-6).
Notice
two things about this amazing food passage.
(1) The first word in verse 5 is “then.”
When? THEN you will
understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
WHEN? Then!
The first four verses tell you when the then will occur.
When is that? When one
applies his/her heart to understand God, when they cry after knowledge, when
they search for it as one would search for buried treasure.
How do people search for hid treasure?
They do a lot of digging. How
do people search for gold? They do
a lot of panning; they come up empty time and time again, and then they go back
and do the same thing again. Why?
They are hoping for a “then” when they will find gold and be rich.
The same happens with your search for God.
You put your heart to it, and there is a “then.”
You “understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.”
And you will say with Jeremiah, “that meal was incredible!”
Have
you had any meals like that recently, where you are so excited about who God is
and what He has revealed to you, that you almost jump out of your skin?
God wants you to eat good food, that will excite and energize you not
only for the day, or week, but for eternity!
When do you get it? THEN!
(2) The second thing about this amazing
food passage is in verse 6 where it says, “the LORD gives wisdom.”
It’s a gift. It’s free. Our
understanding of God is not based on our heavy duty IQ or our superior Bible
study methods. We understand God
because He reveals Himself to us. “The
Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding” – and
everything else.
God’s
human restaurant is similar to His restaurant for birds.
Jesus said in Matt. 6:26: "Look at the birds of the air, for they
neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds
them.” God feeds them! How
much do they pay for their food? It’s
free. BUT does God throw the food
into their nests? Does God package
their food in easy-to-find, convenient shelves in the trees?
No. They work hard at
finding their food. But it’s
free. It’s a gift.
God feeds them.
Jeremiah
said, “thy words were found.” How
much time do you spend looking for good spiritual food to eat?
How much time do you spend just reading your Bible?
Think of how much time we invest in physical food.
Breakfast takes what, 10 minutes? 15
minutes? Lunch, maybe 20 minutes,
unless you are out with others at Chili’s?
Thirty minutes maybe for dinner? Snacks
in between? I would guess that, on average, we spend at least an hour a
day eating.
Compare
that with the amount of time you spend looking for spiritual food. Are they
about the same? I think the
implication from these verses is that there should be some comparison.
You spend an hour eating physically, you need to spend an hour a day
eating spiritually. Now, when you
come to church on Sunday, that’s an hour of spiritual food.
If you come to prayer meeting on Wednesday night, that’s an hour of
spiritual food. If you are in a
small group, that’s often an hour of spiritual food.
That leaves you four days to say, “can I pray and ask God to give me
the discipline of spending four 15 minute chunks of time studying His word on
those four days?”
It
is so easy to live as a Christian with a healthy physical body and be
malnourished spiritually. How many
spiritual skeletons do we have walking around? And why would any Christian
starve, especially in America, with two or three Bibles in every home, books and
CDs and radio programs, and all kinds of ways to feed yourself spiritually?
Why would anyone starve in America?
Answer? Too busy.
Not enough time to find God’s gourmet meals.
III.
“I did eat them.” Think
about eating. How do we eat words?
Is it anything like eating meat? Why
did Jeremiah say, “I ate them,” instead of “I listened to them?”
A.
Eating begins with tasting.
You can’t tell how good certain food is until you put it into your
mouth. Jeremiah found joy and rejoicing when he got God’s words into his
mouth.
Have
you noticed how hard it is to get kids to take a bite of something new before
they go into their judgment mode? “I
don’t like that stuff mom; it doesn’t look good.
It looks slimy; I’m going to throw up if I eat it.
I can tell now, it doesn’t smell good, Mom.
Please don’t make me eat that stuff.”
Have you heard that dialog? And
the parents’ response is, “just take a little bite.”
Why? You have to eat it to
know how good it is. You can’t
tell what it tastes like or how it will affect you until you EAT it.
YOU CANNOT PRE-JUDGE FOOD.
The
same is true in the spiritual realm. People
can sit around with a Bible on the coffee table and say, “oh, I don’t know
if I like that stuff, it doesn’t look good.
It looks slimy; I’m going to throw up if I eat it.
I can tell now that it doesn’t smell good.
Please Lord, don’t make me eat that stuff.”
And the Psalmist says, “O taste and see that the Lord is Good.
Blessed is the one who trusts in Him.”
What do you get after you get God’s word into your mind and heart?
GOOD! If you are not
convinced that God is the most awesomely good person in the world, it’s
because you haven’t tasted. If
you think that God is double-crossing you, that He has not run the circumstances
in your life well, that He has not designed your life in a very good way, you
haven’t tasted. You haven’t met
Him. And you don’t know what you
are missing until you taste and find out how good it is!
B.
Food benefits you when it becomes a part of you.
People who are anorexic may eat much food, but it does them no good
when they toss it up as quickly as they eat it. EATING means chewing, it means swallowing, it means that it
gets into your stomach, it means that the acids in your stomach break down the
food into the kinds of things that various parts of your body need.
Food benefits you as it gets IN you.
God’s word benefits you as it gets IN your mind, in your heart, in your
attitude and memory. Some of you didn’t hear my story of the flatworm four years
ago. I gave this story back in
October of 2002 when we were in Exodus 16.
It’s about research done years ago at the University of Michigan on
flatworm memory. Flatworms,
Planaria, are perhaps the lowest form of life with a capacity to learn.
Scientists found that they could condition these worms to expect a shock
when they saw a flash of light. And
the worms would cringe at any sudden illumination even when the shock was
missing. So every time a light
flashed, they would jump, or duck. The
worms learned this, and it became a part of their behavior. The more amazing part was that when the Planaria was cut in
two, it retained its memory – both halves ducked when the flash of light came.
What did this teach us? That
the memory wasn’t just in the brain, but in the entire body of the Planaria.
In addition, when an outside worm eats
a conditioned worm, it receives the “memory” of the worm it eats. So if a worm that hadn’t been conditioned to expect a shock
when he saw a light, ate a worm that had, he all of a sudden would be
conditioned, and he would duck when the light flashed.
Isn’t that amazing?
Think about this in terms of eating.
We talk about “becoming” like Jesus.
How do we become like Him? By
trying to be sweet and nice, and kind, and maybe to think of helping someone
sometime? No, that may make you appear more religious, but that
doesn’t make you like Christ. The
truth is, becoming like Jesus is impossible.
You and I can’t be like Him. It
takes supernatural brains, supernatural power, supernatural compassion, to be
like Him. And we don’t have it.
But God’s method for us to become like Him is for us to EAT HIS WORDS.
We partake of Christ as we EAT HIS WORDS.
We eat His words and we partake of His character, we think like Him, we
understand His power, we develop His compassion.
We get smarter because He becomes a part of us.
That’s why Jesus used this shocking
picture in John six. Shortly after
He had stated that He was the “bread of life,” He explained that His
listeners need to “eat of His flesh and drink of His blood” (53-58).
That statement really put His listeners on edge.
What did He mean by it? It’s
the flatworm principle – you become what you eat.
In verse 63 Christ says that we feast on Him as we feast on His words.
Here’s the verse: John 6:63, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the
flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are
life.”
Eating
means munching on each word in the Bible, or in the chapter, or in the verse.
It means meditating on and thinking about and going back through a verse.
“Thy words were found.” Isn’t
that what we have been doing today? Just
munching a little on Jeremiah 15:16. We
are eating Jeremiah 15:16. We think
about the individual parts, we meditate on them; we memorize parts so that we
can think about them during the day. We
turn these phrases over in our minds, we pray about them and ask God what He
meant, we talk about them with others.
We keep reminding ourselves that “this is what God says.”
How well are you eating?
Does your Spiritual nourishment equal your physical nourishment?
Do you spend as much time eating Christ’s words as you do eating your
cereal and sandwiches? Do you spend as much time eating Christ’s words as you do
munching on the diet served up by your television set?
It is not that you spend all your time eating.
But it’s that you regularly get a good meal, one that brings joy and
rejoicing to your heart!
Is
there any growling in your spiritual stomach?
Do you feel malnourished? The way to get the ball rolling is to come to
Christ. You come to Him and admit
where you are, how much you have missed His fellowship, and you commit yourself
to get into His word. And you pray
James 4:2 – “you have not because you ask not.”
What are you asking for? A
good meal.
A
good meal depends on RMM – Read, meditate, memorize.
Here’s the bottom line. We
either learn to eat well and regularly or we are destined to live the lives of
the malnourished. We will look like
those guys who just came out of prison. Why
live on spiritual maggots and rotten tomatoes when you can enjoy the spiritual
Chart house every day?
08/12/06,
BBC am
GoalTwo.MEF, 08/22/06