“What Are You Hungry For?” - Genesis Chapter 47 - Pastor Scotty

I signed my name on the dotted line for a building.

So.

(audience cheering)

We started renovation last week

and it's gonna be a while.

It's gonna be like eating an elephant,

one board at a time.

So we'll be over on First Street.

It's the old, many of you know it.

Hopefully you repented to that,

but it's the old Planet Doom, right?

Dr. Slaughters.

Next to Bolero.

So you bowlers, you know, come to church and go through.

No.

So we have no idea what the projected opening is.

So we're gonna try to do it in phases

and get in there as soon as possible.

There's a possibility of before Christmas, but not likely.

Probably more like January to June somewhere.

(audience laughing)

So please be praying because the Lord moves mountains

and concrete and all kinds of stuff.

So, yes.

Full Draw Construction is kind of our guy.

So be praying for the company and the workers

and all that stuff.

And there will be more information to come.

So with that, if you,

did I forget something?

If you have your Bible, please turn to Genesis chapter 47.

Genesis 47 · chapter mention

And going through this last week,

I came up with a title, "What Are You Hungry For?"

And we're obviously, they're still in a famine here

in the book of Genesis as Joseph, God supernaturally

puts Joseph in a position where he can literally save

and provide for the whole world.

And so beautiful picture of our Lord

and the savior Jesus Christ.

And I hope that that's what you're hungry for

because I know the older I get,

the more I wanna hunger for him.

Do I always?

No, I don't.

And so I think Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount

there in Matthew chapter six, it says,

"Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

will be filled."

And so you have to ask yourself, what is it that drives me?

What is it that moves me and motivates me

to do the things I do, to live the life that I'm living?

And so hopefully today,

maybe the Lord will speak to your heart.

And so before we're gonna start in verse 13,

but before we do, let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word that is a powerful tool,

Lord, it is as Job said,

it is better than our necessary food, Lord,

that it truly nourishes our soul

and gives us wisdom that is from above.

That is, Lord, it's so much all we need, Lord,

to be successful in this life, Lord, as your people,

to draw near to you, to hear your words,

to be willing to yield, Lord, and to be peaceable

and to be those who truly example

the life of Christ Jesus, Lord.

So we just ask that you would teach us today

by your Holy Spirit, and we pray it

in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

So like Jesus, Joseph, like Jesus,

has provided for his family.

Philippians 4.19 says, "And my God will supply

"every need of yours according to his riches and glory

"in Christ Jesus."

And that's what Jesus provides for us.

And Joseph is that beautiful type,

not only providing for his family, right?

Jesus didn't just come to save his own people, the Jews,

but he does say that he came for the Jew first.

And that we would be on the tail end of that as Gentiles.

But he came to save us and to provide a way for us

to get out of this life smelling like a rose.

And praise God, right?

'Cause I don't know about you,

but I don't smell like a rose very often.

And so to have the Lord make that way for me, I know,

is actually overwhelming at times.

And so we got through where Joseph had brought Jacob

and his brothers before Pharaoh.

He gave them jobs and the best of the land.

And in verse 13, it says,

"And now there was no bread in all the land,

"for the famine was very severe,

"so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan

"languished because of the famine.

"And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found

"in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan

"for the grain which they bought.

"And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house.

"And so when the money failed in the land of Egypt

"and in the land of Canaan,

"all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said,

"Give us bread for why should we die in your presence?

"For the money has failed."

And this is getting bad.

This is getting really bad.

And I don't know, I've heard different commentators

and economists and journalists talking about some stuff

going on in our country that it might get bad.

You know, the Bible says that the prudent

sees trouble coming and prepares for it.

And so I think that there's some preparation in order

for us as believers just to just be wise.

One of those things would be try to get out of debt.

Try to dissolve your debt.

And or as I tell my wife, I says,

I want to attack our debt.

I mean, with a vengeance, right?

And get out of debt.

These people we're gonna see that debt comes to them

because things are so hard.

I think we're seeing a lot of similarities

and even in our own culture today.

But they notice Joseph's wisdom

in managing this whole situation,

they came to him with money.

He takes all of it and he gives it to Pharaoh, right?

He's not pat in his own pocket.

You know, he's not living in a multimillion dollar mansion.

He is being wise with the position that God has given him

because Joseph has this overwhelming sense

that God has him in the place for such a time as this.

Do you have that sense?

Wherever you're at, it might be with your neighbors.

It might be with the place that you work at.

God has called you for such a time as this to be there

and to be a representative and to be a voice

and to be about his business.

And so Joseph is not concerning himself with himself.

He's concerned with the people

and with the leader of the country

because the leader of the country

has put him in this position.

And so there was no bread in the land

except what Joseph had control over.

He was the most powerful man.

He had all the food.

There are three things that you and I need physically

to survive, right?

And going without one of them is certain death.

And those things are air, right?

I don't know how long you can live without air.

I know it's not very long, right?

Water, right?

Depending on the conditions could be a week, two weeks,

three weeks, probably at the max or food.

Those things, we need those things, right?

Just to physically survive.

And here they are in this place

where one of them is very scarce and that is food.

They have air and water,

but food is the thing that everybody is focused on.

You know, we Americans, we don't get this.

I remember reading a book.

I read a biography of Abraham Lincoln.

And just to let us know how tough it was,

even in America, back in the time when Lincoln was young

and even before he was running for office,

in the winter time, all he ate, his only food was corn.

He was a bonafide corn-fed boy from Illinois.

But that's all he ate.

All winter long, all he had was corn.

If they got a turkey or some venison,

they would add that to it.

But if you know about Lincoln,

he did not like to kill animals.

And so corn, could you imagine?

Cornbread, corn mash, right?

Boiled corn, fried corn, baked corn. (laughs)

I mean, I'm just like,

I know people that would shrivel up and die, right?

If they had to eat corn all the time.

But it was tough.

And these people, they're glad to get the corn

'cause it's the only thing that is keeping them alive.

And so, you know, we just take all this stuff for granted

until you don't have it, right?

You take my air away from me for a while, you know,

before I pass out, it's gonna get pretty violent, right?

'Cause I'm gonna seek some air.

I was there when our friend Wilbur Botthoff

went home to be with the Lord.

And he was struggling for air.

And it's a terrifying thing, right?

To be struggling for something that you need that badly.

And finally, they gave him enough sedation

where he could leave peacefully, but it was terrifying.

It was terrifying to watch.

And yet this starving to death is a very slow process.

And so Joseph, his stewardship and wisdom is displayed

in verses 14 and 15 there, where it says,

"And he gathered up all the money that was found

"in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan

"for the grain which they bought.

"And Joseph brought the money to Pharaoh."

And so he was honest, he was trustworthy

to take care of the money that came in

from all the food that they had.

And so he does his job.

He does his job.

That's kind of a rarity today, isn't it?

I talk to business owners all the time about getting workers.

Nobody wants to do their job.

Just go to work, show up, give an honest day's work

for an honest day's pay.

And it's like people are immune to it.

They don't wanna do it.

And it's so wrong.

And we see this Joseph, what an incredible example he is.

He's not just a man pleaser, right?

Some of us work pretty hard when the boss is around, right?

Because he's watching.

Colossians 3, 22 says, "Bon servants, obey in all things

"your masters according to the flesh,

"not with eye service as men pleasers,

"but in sincerity of heart, fearing God."

Joseph took it to heart.

He knew that God was watching him.

Do you know God's watching you?

He knows, he knows it all.

He knows the attitude of our heart.

We can work hard with the wrong attitude

and be a stench to the Lord in heaven.

Whatever you do in word or deed,

do it as unto the Lord, the Bible says, right?

And it's really an attitude.

And so Joseph is taking this pretty seriously, right?

No doubt, literally the weight of the world

and being in control of all the food source in the world

is on his shoulders.

And if he fails, people are in trouble.

You know, I've really never heard that much about,

you know, people that are in control of food.

We're sure hearing about it a lot lately, aren't we?

Right?

And when you look back, right, you look back in history

and you think, you know, that's a scary thought

that someone, one person would have power

of all the food in the world.

And yet you hear stuff coming from the World Economic Forum

and the UN and stuff about food

and how they wanna control things

and how they wanna do away with cattle and sheep

and it's like, not.

I mean, and that's what happened in history.

Stalin starved people to death.

Mao starved people to death.

Kim Jong-un is starving people to death.

Hitler and the Holocaust, many of the Jews,

they died of starvation.

Do you imagine starving to death?

And yet we see what hunger does to people

in the Old Testament in the time of the judges.

When people, they were eating their own children.

Women were eating their own afterbirth.

It wasn't bad if it was cooked right, but.

Okay, just had to lighten it up a little.

Tastes like chicken, not.

(congregation laughing)

(laughs)

Okay.

But I mean, what would we do?

Praise God we got the South Fork, we can go catch some fish.

I mean, if, you know.

There's free spuds out here.

I'd take the guys up on it, you just never know.

You know?

But I'm, this guy's responsibility, no doubt,

it had to be pretty weighty on him, you know?

And there in verse 15, something, it's powerful.

It says, "The money runs out, we can't buy food.

Their hunger was causing them to plead with Joseph."

And that phrase just kind of gets you there

at the end of verse 15.

It's powerful.

The money has failed.

The money has failed.

Your money will fail you.

Right, the Bible talks a lot about money.

Peter in Acts chapter eight there,

when he's talking to Simon, the sorcerer,

who thought he could buy the Holy Spirit.

And he said, "Your money perish with you."

Right, your money's gonna perish.

Your silver and your gold, it's gonna rot.

So be careful not to put your trust in it.

And Jesus makes it clear that money is a rival

to who he is as Lord, right?

He talks about it.

And I'm just gonna read this in Matthew chapter six,

verses 19 through 24, where Jesus, he says,

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,

where moth and rust destroy,

and where thieves break in and steal.

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,

where neither moth nor rust destroys,

where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

And so many people, their treasure,

you talk to my friend, Maury Miller,

about being a, you know, he's kind of a stockbroker

and takes care of people that way.

And when the market dumps like 800 to a thousand points,

I mean, his phone blows up.

People have put their trust in their investments,

in their silver and their gold.

Don't do that, because if you're doing that,

that is your master.

The money will fail you, just like it failed these people.

It failed these people 'cause they ran out.

He goes on and says, "Listen, the lamp of the body

is the eye, if therefore your eye is good,

your whole body will be full of light."

Which brings us back to our beginning question,

what are you hungry for?

Financially, what are you hungry for?

But if your eye is bad,

your whole body will be full of darkness.

If therefore the light that is in you is darkness,

how great is that darkness?

He's talking about financial things here.

Pleasures and riches and the cares of this life.

Jesus talked about it in the parable of the sower.

It's a darkness.

And then he kind of gives us a punchline in verse 24.

No one can serve two masters.

For he, for either he will hate the one and love the other,

or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and mammon.

Folks, listen.

Finances are a great servant.

They're a horrific master.

And I mean, you know, you can plan, you can store up,

you can do what you want,

but just know that it all grows wings and flies away, right?

And in Proverbs 23, verse five tells us,

"Will you set your eyes on that which is not?

For riches certainly make themselves wings

and they fly away like an eagle toward heaven."

And just, there it goes.

It's kind of like us, it's just a vapor.

Don't put your trust in it, right?

And that's what the Psalmist writes in Psalm 62.

"If riches increase, do not set your heart on them.

Will the money is gone."

And so these people are in a pickle.

They don't know what to do.

They have no way to buy food.

And they come to Joseph and say, "You gotta help us."

Joseph, get tongue tied.

Joseph was the man with the plan, right?

And he was prepared and it's good to prepare, right?

That verse that I mentioned in the opening

was Proverbs 27, 12 said,

"The prudent sees evil and hides himself,

but the naive proceed and pay the penalty."

So we live in a time when it's important to be wise,

be wise with what God has given you, but also be generous.

God's never called us to not be generous

and become tightwads.

Because the old saying is true, you can't out give him,

but the Lord is our security.

God is my security, right?

I don't have to worry.

If the bank account gets low,

if I've done it foolishly, then that's on me.

But if it's just because I'm trying to live,

hey, God will provide.

Do you believe that?

And so, because time and chance happens to everybody.

How come somebody wins the lottery

and a lot of people don't?

The people that you read about that's won the lottery,

man, it's just like, oh, I wish I'd never won it.

I didn't know so many people thought, had my name.

They thought, and I'm related to so many people.

They just, everybody wants a handout.

And if God wants to bless you, he'll bless you.

Finances has always been something real scary to me

because I realized that I don't appreciate it, right?

I don't appreciate gifts.

You don't appreciate it.

And then pretty soon you spiral down and then you expect it.

You have this entitlement mentality.

That's why we're in the pickle that we're in today.

Do you realize that the national debt

is over a trillion dollars?

National consumer debt, national consumer debt

with two or three years ago, it was like at 68 billion.

Now it's over a trillion.

God is our security.

And if God wants to raise us up, he will.

Ecclesiastes 9-11 says, "I returned and saw under the sun

that the race is not to the swift,

nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise,

nor riches to men of understanding,

nor favor to men of skill,

but time and chance happened all."

(congregation murmuring)

And that's why so many people have a hard time

with the Bible verse that says,

"Rejoice with those who rejoice

and mourn with those who mourn."

We don't have a hard time mourning with those who mourn,

but we have a hard time rejoicing

with those who win the lottery.

Well, why they?

How come they?

Isn't that just like us?

We're terrible.

We really are.

We're terrible.

And so it goes from bad to worse.

Not only did they run out of money,

but here in verse 16, right, it gets worse.

And Joseph, it says, "Then Joseph said,

give your livestock and I will give you bread

for your livestock if the money is gone."

And so they brought their livestock to Joseph

and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for the horses,

the flocks, the cattle, the herds, and for the donkeys.

Thus he fed them with the bread in exchange

for all their livestock in that year.

And when that year had ended, gets worse,

they came to him the next year and said to him,

"We will not hide from my Lord that our money is gone.

My Lord has also our herds of livestock.

There is nothing left in the sight of my Lord,

but our bodies and our lands.

Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land,

by us and our land for bread?

And we and our land will be servants of Pharaoh.

Give us seed that we may live and not die,

that the land may not be desolate.

Then Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh,

for every man of the Egyptians sold his field

because the famine was severe upon them.

And so the land became Pharaoh's.

And as for the people, he moved them into the cities

from one end of the border of Egypt to the other end,

only the land of the priests he did not buy.

For the priests had rations allotted to them by Pharaoh,

and they ate their rations, which Pharaoh gave them.

Therefore they did not sell their lands.

Then Joseph said to the people,

"Indeed, I have bought you and your land this day for Pharaoh.

Look, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land,

and it shall come to pass in the harvest

that you shall give one fifth to Pharaoh,

and four fifths shall be your own as seed for the field

and for your food for those of your household

and for the food of the little ones."

And so they said, "You have saved our lives.

Let us find favor in your sight, my Lord,

and we will be Pharaoh's servants."

And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt to this day

that Pharaoh should have one fifth

except for the land of the priests only,

which did not become Pharaoh's.

And so now Pharaoh has everything, absolutely everything.

So he institutes a barter system.

You don't get anything, you don't get nothing for nothing,

something for nothing, that's how it goes, isn't it?

You don't get something for nothing, and that's just,

you know, that's just the way it was.

You don't, I mean,

they didn't have homeless problems back then, right?

If people were in debt, they would go to a debtor's prison

and have to pay.

So no doubt he's asking,

"Hey, what do you guys got in value?"

Money's gone.

Well, we got livestock, livestock, horses,

right, it's first on the list.

It's interesting for you Bible students,

this is the first mention of horses in the Bible,

first mention.

And it is interesting that if you look up today,

the primo Arab breed is from Egypt.

And I've been around a few Egyptian Arabs

and I don't like Arabs, but they are a bigger,

stronger horse than the little bitty things.

But just a side note.

But flocks, sheep, goats, cattle, whatever you had,

he'd trade you.

Now if they was poor,

you'd probably only get a half a bushel

instead of a full bushel if they was fat.

But no doubt he had some kind of a value system

that he used and people could come

and they could trade their livestock for food.

And so, second Thessalonians talks about it,

it says, "For even when we were with you,"

this is Paul talking, "we commanded you this,

if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat."

So that whole culture, the mindset of that culture,

you don't work, you don't eat.

That's just part of it.

You do what you can do and there's no freebies.

And that's just, I think, you know,

that's why our government is so off the rails

in all this free stuff that they've given people

and now no one wants to work, right?

So you don't work, you don't eat.

And so these guys were, they had to.

They had to trade their animals.

And in verse 18 and 19,

they sell themselves.

Slavery, we sure hear a lot about slavery.

I'd like to invite you to watch a film.

I don't do that very often,

but Matt Walsh did a film called "Am I a Racist?"

You should watch that film

'cause one of his team members was a man of color.

And so he thought he would ask the lady who was woke

and totally into this thing.

She goes, "Well, you should pay him some reparations then."

She says, "Well, I only got 30 bucks."

And he goes, and the guy on his team goes,

"I'll never turn down cash."

Do you guys know what the reparations thing is?

Anyway, it's crazy.

It is absolutely nuts, but slavery is,

say slavery has always been a part of humanity.

It just has.

There's been, there's white slaves, black slaves,

every color you can imagine,

every people group has experienced slavery.

And in our country, they just take one portion of that

and run with it and create all kinds of chaos.

And now they're trying to convince us

if your skin is lighter colored, you're a racist.

That's a lie.

That's just not true.

I worked with a guy, he was, his mom was white,

his dad was white, he was very dark.

And people kept calling him Hispanic.

He goes, "No, I'm not Hispanic, I'm white."

Yeah, but you don't look white.

Listen, we're all just people.

We all bleed the same blood, right?

In fact, the Bible says that God took one blood

and made all the nations.

We're all the same.

But these people sold them,

had to sell themselves to actually eat, right?

And so they tell him, "Go ahead and buy us,

we'll sell ourselves."

In the law, we see this happening

in the book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy,

that there were concessions for people

that they got in debt and got in trouble,

they could sell themselves and then have an out,

where the most popular one that many of you have heard

is probably in Exodus chapter 21, right?

Exodus 21 · chapter mention

When a Hebrew had a slave,

he could only keep him for six years.

At the end of six years, he could choose to leave.

And no doubt receive a wage and get paid.

But this is where they're at in a place of being enslaved.

And Pharaoh has all the land, he owns everything.

They are noticed though, it is interesting

that he doesn't totally put all of them in total bondage.

They do have some freedoms.

But this is the fulfillment

because Pharaoh gets all the money, all the land,

and this is God's promise to Abraham

there in Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

It's a fulfillment of that.

When Pharaoh gets all this stuff,

Pharaoh is kind to Jacob and his family,

gives them Goshen, we read in the last chapter,

and now Pharaoh gets everything.

Just like God told Abraham what would happen.

Those who bless you, I will bless.

Those who curse you, I will curse.

We're seeing that today, you guys, right?

It's still true today.

But almost 4,000 years later,

that statement that God made to the patriarch Abraham

is still true today.

Whoever blesses you, I will bless.

Whoever curses you, I will curse.

Now this Pharaoh was nice,

but we're gonna see a Pharaoh come later

that's not nice at all, right?

Because this really opens the door for them to be

those slaves for 400 years there in Egypt.

But it started good, right?

Which proves the point

that man is desperately wicked.

Because of Joseph, because of Jacob, Pharaoh gets it all.

So too, because of Jesus, you and I get it all, right?

We get it all.

Just like Pharaoh received all these blessings

and all this stuff, right?

Hebrews chapter one, verses one and two said,

"God, who at various times and in various ways,

spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets,

has in these last days spoken to us by his son,

whom he has appointed heir of all things,

through whom also he made the worlds."

So Jesus is the heir of all things.

And then Romans tells us, right?

That the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit

that we are children of God.

And if children then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

So because Jesus gets it all and we're joint heirs with him,

we get it all.

We're blessed because of him.

All you gotta do is come to him.

If you haven't done that yet, would you just please

come to Jesus and experience this blessing

that God has bestowed here upon Pharaoh,

but also bestows upon us.

And then Paul goes on there in Romans,

anywhere he says, "For I consider that the sufferings

of this present time are not worthy to be compared

with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

It's gonna be a glorious thing when we get all the booty.

We get it all.

Now you may not get it here.

You might be in poverty here.

And I think we have to be okay with that.

But you're gonna get it there when you're with him.

And it's but yet just a little while.

Now it is interesting in verse 22 that the priests,

it says, right, that the,

"Only the land of the priests he did not buy.

For the priest had rations allotted to them by Pharaoh."

So they didn't have to.

They were already on Pharaoh's payroll.

So he was giving them the rations that he had,

the rations of food.

So they didn't have to, so they kinda,

they got blessed.

The New Testament tells us you're not to muzzle the ox

that treads out the grain.

They're speaking of pastors there.

Boo.

Or beast of bird and donkeys, hee-haw, right, there we are.

But it's a blessing.

It's a blessing to share the word of God.

It is truly, truly a blessing.

Yes, it's a calling, but it's also a blessing.

And so in verses 23 and 24, it says,

"Then Joseph said to the people,

"Indeed, I have bought you and your land

"this day for Pharaoh.

"Look, here is seed for you and you shall sow the land."

So Joseph is such a benevolent leader.

He's basically a dictator, right?

He's got all the seed.

And so these guys that have sold their land,

they sold themselves, the Lord,

Joseph here, a picture of the Lord,

gives it back to him, says, here's your seed.

You go sow your land.

And then whatever you grow,

whatever you grow, you give 20% to Pharaoh

and you keep 80%.

Hey, that's a good deal, right?

Even in the Middle East, scholars say

that the tax that they had on the people was over 33%.

And these guys sold themselves and their land.

They didn't even own it.

They didn't even own themselves.

Does that remind you of something?

Bible students, Paul tells us,

you are not your own,

but you were bought with a price, right?

You were bought with a price, the blood of Christ Jesus.

But he is this benevolent leader of a country.

Incredible.

No doubt the people have to be moved by this, right?

Some people you read, they're just critical.

Oh, Joseph, he should have just gave them back their land

and he should have, he should have.

No, he shouldn't have, right?

He was wise, he was smart, he was fair.

And so,

the bottom line was,

they had a master that they could trust, right?

That's the bottom line for us too, folks.

We have a master that we can trust.

Joseph was an extremely benevolent master.

Jesus is an extremely benevolent master.

Because listen, there's two masters that are in the Bible.

There's two masters vying for your service and mine, right?

There's two masters, the Lord Jesus and your own sin.

'Cause Jesus said, "Anyone who sins is a slave to it."

Right?

It's your master.

It masters you.

And that's, "Its desire is for you," he told Cain,

there after he killed Abel, right?

Sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you.

Who do you serve?

Which one are you hungry for the most?

The master of sinfulness or the master Jesus?

And whichever one you're hungry for

is the one that you're gonna be pursuing.

Jesus told us, right?

You're gonna love one.

You're gonna hate the other.

The choices are yours.

These guys come and says, "You have saved our life."

They recognize salvation.

Salvation was in Joseph.

He saved their lives.

I'm sure they gave that 20% with a spring in their step.

"We're alive, we have food."

Not only that, but we're making a profit.

But how can we deny Christ

when he is the one that saved us?

Right?

How can we deny him and serve our own sinful selfishness?

Jesus saved us just like Joseph saved

all of the known world at that time.

You know, when there's a person in leadership,

the Bible tells us in Proverbs,

it says, "When the righteous rule, the people rejoice."

Right?

And I don't know that we see that much around the world,

but back in the 1990s, there was a king in Jordan.

His name was King Hussein.

And so when James Babani was here,

the guy from Iraq that came and spoke,

I talked about him because when they were going

through their refugee, they were refugees in Jordan

in the 90s.

And I said, "I heard some stories about King Hussein."

He said, "Oh my gosh."

He said, "King Hussein was unbelievable.

"The people worshiped him," which is not right.

"But the people worshiped him because he was so benevolent.

"He was so loving."

They had a huge snowstorm he told me about

up in the hills there in Jordan.

"Him and his whole administrative team went up there

"with scoop shovels and began shoveling the sidewalks."

This is the king of the country doing this.

And the people were, they loved him.

They did not despise their leader.

They loved him.

Why?

Because he first loved them.

He showed them love.

He showed them concern.

How much greater has our Lord showed us that love

and our concern by going to Calvary's cross for us?

So what you hungry for?

If you think about this in your own mind, right?

Success, success in finance, maybe success in your family.

I know, I think every man worth his salt

wants to be a successful husband to his wife

and a successful dad to his children.

Maybe education, maybe a success in a position and power.

What about spiritual success?

Is that something you're hungry for?

Because it's attainable.

Some of this stuff here, I just, that's beyond me.

But that for me is attainable to be spiritually successful.

And so it is with you.

All we gotta do is enact Matthew chapter six, verse 33

into our lives and you'll be successful

because Jesus promises it, right?

Matthew 6, 33, many of you have memorized this verse.

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God

"and his righteousness."

All these things will be added unto you.

I don't have to chase after or fret

about my investment portfolio or my retirement account.

I don't have to fret about that

'cause it can come or go.

My God is still God.

That's what I wanna be hungry for.

Friend of mine and I were talking this week

and he was telling me about a message he had heard

where people sincerely, truly hunger or seek joy.

They want joy.

I just want joy in my life, right?

We might name it peace.

Just want to be loved, right?

But he says when we can't find true joy,

now the Bible tells us that the joy of the Lord

is our strength, right?

That we have this hope and joy from knowing him

and we know our end that it's good.

And there's this joy that just settles in to our life.

That's the joy of the Lord.

The Bible says it's our strength.

It's not necessarily happiness

because you can have joy being in a dungeon

or being persecuted even to death.

But what people do if they can't have true joy,

then they settle, listen, for pleasure.

Then they settle for pleasure.

And that's a scary thing to me

because I know I'm bent that way.

I think we're all bent that way.

Well, I like this.

This is nice.

But it's not genuine.

It's fleeting.

It doesn't satisfy.

Jesus condemns it when he talks about the soils there again.

The pleasures of this life, they snare us.

It's all summed up, I think, in Galatians chapter five

when Paul talks about the contrast between those two things,

walking in the flesh and walking in the spirit.

And so in Galatians chapter five,

I'm just gonna close today by reading through this

and just listen up.

If you wanna turn there, it's Galatians five

and I'll start reading in verse 16.

And it says, "I say then, walk in the spirit

and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

For the flesh lusts against the spirit

and the spirit against the flesh.

And these are contrary to one another

so that you do not do the things that you wish.

But if you are led by the spirit,

you are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are,"

and here's this list.

"And this is what walking in the flesh leads to.

For all of us seeking pleasures in this life

is adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,

idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions,

jealousy, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambition,

dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness,

revelries and the like of which I tell you beforehand,

just as I told you in time past

that those who practice such things

will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Those who live in this lifestyle,

notice it says practice.

Now all of us has probably done these things.

Maybe some of us, even this week.

But is that what you practice?

It's just consistent.

That's what defines you.

I don't think that's what it's talking about

but I'm thinking it's when people are headlong

into walking in the flesh and refuse to walk in the spirit,

they said, "Will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Will not.

And so praise God that Paul does not leave us there

but he gives us incredible hope

when he continues into verse 22.

"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 so success spiritually is having God come

and live his life through you.

You throw your hands in the air.

I throw my hands in the air,

say, "Lord, here I am.

Help me to be your vessel."

And hold this life very loosely, very loosely.

Because things come and go, people come and go.

So in Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit,

our hunger is satisfied.

John 6 35 says, "I am the bread of life.

He who comes to me shall never hunger.

And he who believes in me shall never thirst."

This is what satisfies our hunger.

Now, that's in the here and now.

Check out what's happening in the future.

Revelation 7 verse 15.

Revelation 7:15

"Therefore, they are before the throne of God,"

that'd be you and me,

"and serve him day and night in his temple.

And he who sits on the throne will dwell among them.

They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore.

The sun shall not strike them nor any heat

for the lamb who is in the midst of the throne

will shepherd them and lead them

to living fountains of water.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

Every tear.

And I know we have shed some tears just in this fellowship

over the last couple of years,

losing loved ones and heartache and brokenness,

and yet our hope, our hunger should be for heaven.

Amen?

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for the promise of heaven,

Lord, that you truly satisfy our every need.

Lord, may we not look to our own resources,

Lord, our own bank accounts.

May we not even look to others in this life,

but may we only look to you,

the author and the finisher of our faith,

the one who is able to do abundantly above

all that we could ask or think.

Lord, you direct our steps.

Yes, time and chance happens to us all,

but you're right in the middle of that time and that chance.

And so we just praise you and we can rest in the fact

that you're gonna get us out of in through hard times.

And Lord, there's a sense in our world today

that those might be coming.

And so Father, I just pray that you would help us.

Give us wisdom in these days, Lord, that we would prepare,

that we would walk before our God in a way of integrity,

in a way that is an incredible witness

just as we see in this man, Joseph's life.

Lord, we love you and we praise you for the promise

and the hope that you have,

the future that you have for us.

So may we find ourselves, Lord,

just truly, truly hungering for that, Lord,

that those who hunger for righteousness will be filled.

So fill our cup, we pray in Jesus' mighty name, amen.

If you need prayer,

prayer team's gonna be over here to the right.

God bless you, have a great week in Jesus.

(gentle music)

[music fades out]