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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Walsh

Spiritual Food-like Substances

I haven't been here in a while, so I don't know what happened.

But it's good to see the place nice and full.

I want to ask you to turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Matthew.

And I'll read in your hearing, starting with Matthew chapter 4, verse 1, the scripture says, Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward and hungered.

And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

But he answered and said, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God our message of the Sabbath is entitled spiritual food like substances spiritual food like substances let us pray father God we thank you Lord for this opportunity to study your word and to learn your truths.

Father God, I ask that I be not seen or heard today, but instead I ask that you would send a message from the throne room of grace.

Father God, feed your people, bread in due season.

Water us with the water of life Jesus Christ today we pray amen Jesus had come up out of the water of the baptism as John the Baptist had proclaimed who he was A voice was heard shouting down from heaven, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

With this Jesus came up out of the water setting an example and in essence beginning his earthly ministry.

The scripture says that from his baptism he is driven by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted.

The Spirit of Prophecy lets us know that Jesus would never have knowingly walked into temptation.

Instead, this was a part of his preparation and training for ministry.

While in the wilderness, Jesus embarks on a 40-day fast, at which time the Bible lets us know, as well as the spirit of prophecy, that Jesus is so in tune with getting to know his Father that Jesus does not even feel hunger during the 40 days.

The scripture says that after the 40 days, he begins to hunger.

I submit to you that 1 of the lost arts or lost power tools in the Christian armamentarium is the art of fasting.

Many a Christian struggles with so many things for so long and never actually open up the big gun, as it were, of receiving power from God.

In fact, many have no concept of what it is to really fast.

In this case, something powerful happens.

You remember Jesus also taught us when the demoniac boy came before him and his disciples could not cast out the demon.

And when the disciples get him alone later they say how is it that you could cast this demon out and we couldn't.

Jesus says that some things come only by prayer and fasting.

I submit that there are things that some of us are going through that if we were to put them to God in prayer and fasting, that God would show up on our behalf.

Even more powerfully, there are things that others around you are going through, that you could stand in the gap for them and if you prayed and fast for their souls salvation or for their well-being or for their marriage or for their relationship or their job if you stepped in and prayed and fast the Scripture lets us know that there is an extra amount of power released.

The Bible says that when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward and hungered.

It's interesting that Jesus in this wilderness picks up where Adam and Eve fell in the garden.

It is on the point of appetite that the temptation begins.

It is on the level of the most basic human need that Jesus is first accosted.

So much so that in verse 3, the Bible says, and when the tempter came to him, he said, if you are the son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

Desire of ages, Ellen White describes that this tempter is not a red-suited, sharp-tailed, pitchfork-carrying, horned creature that shows up and would cause you to be afraid.

Instead, Satan appears as an angel of light, a beautiful charismatic being, and when he appears as this angel of light and As he stands there in front of Jesus, he makes arguments to the effect that just as an angel showed up for Abraham as he was about to sacrifice Isaac, Lucifer tries to convince Jesus that he is the delivering angel.

I submit to you that you've got to be careful, because the devil doesn't always show up tattooed.

Doesn't always show up, you know, down in Miami, the rappers, they wear gold teeth.

Some of them even shave their teeth down to implant gold caps over them.

Breath just smell like quarters for the rest of their life, you know.

Just, that's alright if you didn't get that 1.

And we expect that when the devil shows up he's gonna look thuggish or rough or mean or terrible, but I submit to you that the enemy will come to you in grandeur and beauty.

I submit to you, young ladies, that he'll often have broad shoulders and a dimpled chin.

Young men, he'll often come with long, flowing hair and the rosiest of cheeks.

Because the enemy knows his deception works a lot better when you believe that what is being presented to you is of God and not of the enemy.

Isn't this how the serpent himself fooled Eve in the first place?

Satan understands deception and he comes at Jesus in such a way that when Jesus is at his weakest after 40 days of fasting, Jesus would have been in a state of ketosis.

His brain would not have had much of the only real fuel that the brain can use which is simple sugar.

He would have been in a probably in a bit of a state of delirium.

He'd have probably been laying on the ground after 40 days, hungered, weak, not moving and here comes this angel of light.

Looks like the angel of light is coming to his rescue when in fact it is the angel coming to destroy him.

The enemy knows to hit you when you're at your weakest point.

He knows that after you have had an experience with God, he will try you very quickly after.

He does not want the experience, the experiences that we have with God to sink in before he tries to separate us from God.

And the Bible makes it clear here as you look at verse 3, that when he finds him, 1 of the things that he does is he uses his environment to try and tempt Jesus.

If you ever go out to Joshua Tree or out into the desert, you know that the the stones can be really smooth as they're laying around on the ground.

In fact, I've been to Israel to the wilderness where this would have probably taken place to that area and truly when you look around the stones almost look like someone baked a loaf of bread.

It wasn't a far visual stretch to look at the stone and see bread, especially after you hadn't eaten for 40 days.

The devil didn't ask him to conjure up, you know, honey buns or Twinkies.

And it was a difficult thing to lay there that hungry and and knowing that Jesus actually had the power I Submit to you.

I've recently read a couple of books by an author named Michael Polan, P-O-L-A-N.

1 of them is entitled The Omnivore's Dilemma.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is a New York, both New York Times bestsellers.

You would almost think that this author was Adventist, almost.

I mean, there's some things in it that let you know he's not, obviously.

But he really speaks highly of a plant-based diet and of timing your meals and how you eat.

He speaks heavily against the system that has been created, this corporate capitalist system that has figured out how to not only mass produce meat, but to mass produce meat so that the meat itself is dangerous.

He speaks reams and volumes about the staple food of the US economy now, which is genetically modified corn.

And the fact that almost everything you eat, when you look at the carbon atoms in the food, the carbon from corn is a quadrivalent carbon.

And so you run it through a mass spectrometer.

If you run a bottle of soda through a mass spectrometer, all of the carbon atoms in that bottle of soda will come from genetically modified corn in the form of high fructose corn syrup and Guantham gum and all this other stuff in the stuff you can't pronounce.

And he makes powerful arguments like you really should never buy food that's advertised.

The fact that they advertise the food is a sign that you ought not eat it.

He makes the argument that when you go to a grocery store, you should eat the things that are around the outside of the store.

Never actually eat from the aisles in the middle of the store.

He makes the argument that you should never eat food that is, that makes a medical claim.

And he argues against spiritual, against scientific nutritionism and the fact that we have gone from food culture in the United States to food science.

And even many good Adventists have bought into this idea that you ought to take stuff from 1 place and fortify something somewhere else.

In fact, he argues that the United States of America has become a culture that does not really eat food any longer.

We have been duped into eating food like substances, like Twinkies.

Now Twinkies not really food and I can prove it to you because if you go and I want you to do this, buy a Twinkie this week and put it up in the shelf in your closet where no 1 will reach it to eat it.

Then I want you to go back every week or every month and push on it and check it.

And I want you to notice how that Twinkie doesn't change.

You can do it with McDonald's french fries.

And the point being that part of what makes food food is that it is desirable by microbial organisms like bacteria and fungus.

So the idea that you can put food on a shelf and sit it there, and it never break down, never rot, never spoil, never grow mold, argues that the microbials in their limited intellect have figured out that a Twinkie is actually not food.

In the United States, he speaks about the fact that we no longer dine, we feed.

And he talks about the fact that one-third of US children will eat fast food on any given day, and that 90% of that one-third will eat their fast food as they drive in a fast car.

And that that fast car will be at least in part powered by the very same genetically modified corn that they're eating in their McDonald's meal.

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Spiritual Food-like Substances

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