The Struggle to Trust God's Provision

Good morning.

It's good to be here.

It is great to be here.

I want to welcome, if you're a first-time guest with us this morning, this is your first time.

I want to say a special welcome.

We are glad you're here.

And we will do our best to make you feel welcome.

I hope you've already felt that way.

If you're returning for the second or third time, we're extremely excited that you've come back.

And so we want to welcome you again.

And if you call this your home, we thank you for your continued generosity and support.

As Katie said, I'm Monty, and I'm still Monty.

If I hadn't had a chance to meet you, I look forward to doing so.

I want to share a little bit about who I am.

And I grew up in Conyers, Georgia, neighboring town, just a few miles, I guess, to the east of here, west of here, south of here.

Not real good with directions, but I grew up in Conyers, Georgia.

I still live there.

I had a great childhood growing up, man.

I had two parents that loved me.

They took care of us.

I never had to worry about the roof over my head or the food in my belly or the clothes on my back.

That's not everybody's story.

But I didn't have to experience that.

I had a great childhood.

Loved both my parents.

My father and I had become best friends.

We did lots together.

And 1977, I was 17 years old, I'll give you an idea of how old I am, so just told on myself.

My father was diagnosed with lung cancer.

It was a blow to our family.

But through faith and medical breakthroughs and stuff, he was in remission in lung cancer.

Things were great.

We never stopped living.

We never stopped doing the things that we love to do.

And then in May of 1979, we thought everything was good.

I woke up to the sounds of my mother screaming.

My father had passed away unexpectedly on May 13th, 1979.

And as our friends and our support and our family rushed to us to care for us, I was 18 years old at the time, and all I heard was, you've got big shoes to fill.

You've got a mother and a sister you've got to take care of.

Folks, I was 18.

I never had to worry about providing for anything.

It was always provided for me.

My father was the provider.

And all I wanted in that moment was my father, my daddy.

That's all I wanted.

I didn't want to provide.

But for the first time in my life, I was faced with the potential of having to step into some shoes I wasn't ready to fill.

I was entering into the wilderness for the first time in my life.

I had no direction.

Had no direction.

I was now going to have to figure it out.

And while we were at the funeral, and if we were in the church we were at, I was sitting about right here where these young ladies are.

And all I could do was worry about what tomorrow held.

What were we going to do?

My mom was a stay-at-home mom.

And in those moments of being vulnerable and worried, I heard these words.

It was as God had literally, physically touched me, and he said, It's going to be okay.

Don't worry.

I will provide.

I will provide.

And I was struggling with that.

And so that's what I want to spend some time on this morning.

Speaking and talking with you about our struggle to trust God's provision.

How we all struggle.

We all have stories of how God's provided, but yet I suspect we all struggle.

We all struggle with that provision.

As we continue with this series, The Life of Moses, we've gone through Moses being hidden in the bull rushes so that he could grow to be the leader of the Exodus.

We've learned about seeking obedience, surrender, and the presence of God.

We've learned about seeking God on ordinary days.

And last week we talked about when there is no way out.

And God provided a way out.

You see, in the life of Moses, as I look back on these series, it has been a series of God providing constantly, daily, in the Israelites, the Hebrews, struggle and escape.

So today our big idea is God's provision often arrives when we least expect it.

God's provision often arrives when we least expect it.

So let me ask you a question.

Do we learn from history or do we repeat it?

Do we learn from history or do we repeat it?

I want you to think about the lessons you've learned 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago, depending on where you are in your stage of life.

And in many cases, I know I'm still trying to master those lessons.

I'm a slow learner, and my wife would attest to that sometimes.

I take something.

And like Russ, if y'all speak back, I'll get done quicker.

She would probably disagree with you, but I do.

I'm a slow learner.

At least I don't necessarily learn from history.

I don't learn from my experiences all the way sometimes.

And see, we're like that.

Humans are like that.

We struggle to learn on a permanent, life-changing basis the mistakes of our forefathers.

And what tends to happen is we tend to repeat them.

We tend to repeat them.

But guess what?

We're not alone.

This was true among the ancient Hebrews.

That's why Paul wrote to the first group of first century of believers.

In 1 Corinthians, beginning in the first verse, chapter 10, it says, I don't want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago, and about all of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground.

See, the emphasis here is on all.

All.

All of the Israelites who left Egypt with Moses had seen God's hand on grand display.

Think about that.

As we saw in the earlier messages, the Lord led them by cloud by day and by fire by night.

And he delivered them from bondage in Egypt through the sea.

All of them saw that and experienced that miracle.

All of the Hebrews.

Again, don't miss it.

All of them saw the cloud.

All of them saw the fire.

And all of them went through the sea and walked on dry ground.

All of them experienced the deliverance.

And if we jump down to verse 11, we can see that these things happened to them as examples for us.

They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age.

You see, not only were the Israelites making history, but they were also making history for our benefit, for our experience.

And at this point, some of us, I know I fall into this category often, don't have any wilderness or Red Sea experiences now.

We've been through all that.

Well, guess what?

I think verse 12 was written for me, and it may be written for you.

If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall.

Mid-2021, that's where I was at.

That's where we were at, my wife and I.

Life was good.

And we were sitting up at Waterside in a hot tub at a campsite, watching the 4th of July fireworks, going, Life is good.

And then we got the unfathomable news from some medical test that my wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

And it had spread into the lymph nodes.

We were faced with, what are we going to do?

We're going to have to trust God.

And up to this point, I'd been 40 plus years since my father passed away, and I had experienced God's provision every step of my life.

Remember, I heard the words, it was going to be okay, and I can tell you it has been okay.

It's been all right.

He had provided.

Even in the dark times, God had provided.

And now we were going to have to trust that God would lead us to the right doctors, that he would lead us to the right treatment, and that we would trust a healing would take place.

You see, he often repeats his messages by taking us through the wilderness.

And that's where we were headed was back into the wilderness, to the unknown, not knowing the outcome or the destination.

And for me, that's a scary thing.

My wife will tell you that when we travel, I Google stalk every mile of the road through satellite so that I know the way.

I'm knowing how we're getting there and where we're going to end up.

And then we didn't know where our destination was going to take us.

But if we jump ahead a year, man, we came out of that after 20 plus weeks of chemotherapy, after surgery, after being told no radiation is needed, my wife was pronounced cancer-free.

Amen.

That's right.

And we had reason to sing.

We had reason to celebrate, to throw our hands up and say, praise the Lord.

Once again, he had provided.

Which brings us to the beginning of our text for this morning.

Beginning in the chapter 15 of the book of Exodus.

After God had drowned Pharaoh's entire army, for the first time in history, Israel found herself in the Egyptian desert, out in the open, completely on her own.

God had proven himself faithful.

The nation had walked through the sea on dry land, and they must have been awestruck.

I can only think what it must have been like to see God part the waters.

And this is what I think about not only part the waters, but dry the ground so that thousands of people could walk across.

Giddy with excitement at what their God had done if they come out of that deliverance, they sang a song of great praise.

And that's what chapter 15 is.

It is a song of great praise.

We know it's broken down into basically four or five standards.

They're praising the Lord as a man of war because he conquered their enemies.

He said, You have overthrown those who are against you.

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?

The people will hear and be afraid.

The people will hear and be afraid.

So in verses 20 and 21 of chapter 15, it says, Miriam the prophet, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine and led all the women as they played their song, as they played their tambourines and danced.

And Miriam sang this song: Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously.

He has hurled both horse and rider into the sea.

They were celebrating, they were excited, they were free.

And on the hills of the song of triumph and gratitude, it was now time for them to continue their journey into Canaan.

Picking up in verse 22, it says, Then Moses led the people of Israel away from the Red Sea, and they moved out into the desert of Shur.

They traveled in the desert for three days without finding any water.

And when they came to the oasis of Mara, the water was too bitter to drink.

So they called the place Mara, which means bitter.

Then the people complained and turned to Moses and said, What are we going to drink?

They demanded.

So Moses cried out to the Lord for help, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood, and Moses threw it into the water, and this made the water good to drink.

It was there at Mara that the Lord had set before them the following decree as a standard to test their faithfulness to him.

He said, If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, obeying his commands and keeping all his decrees, I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you.

After leaving Mora, the Israelites traveled to the oasis of Elam, where they found twelve springs and seventy palm trees.

They camped there beside the water.

And what a description of Christian life that is.

Many of us have been through the Red Sea.

Many of us may be standing on this side of the Red Sea, waiting for it to part, to move through.

We've been delivered from our old life.

We've been given a new song, a new life, a new beginning.

Quickly, our memory fades, and we discover that once again we must face a wilderness experience.

How quickly they forgot what God had done, going all the way back to the plagues and being spared, witnessing the sea opening and Pharaoh's army being crushed.

They now complain.

John 16, verse 33 says, I have told you all this so you may have peace in me.

John 16:33

Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows, but take heart.

I have overcome the world.

We will experience trials and tribulations on this earth because we have accepted Christ, because God is our provider, we will still experience trials and tribulations.

But we need to learn to trust His provision and his outcome, that He will lead us and guide us.

You see, what we just read and saw in chapter 15, particularly 23 through 27, those verses is a picture of what the Israelites would face.

It's the wilderness in miniature.

For 40 years, we know they went through a cycle of events that was just illustrated in these few verses.

That cycle is abundance, expectation, disappointment, complaint, and provision.

You see, in abundance, we look up.

In abundance, we look up.

We praise God.

We give Him thanks.

Now let me qualify abundance just real quickly.

I'm gonna take a little squirrel trail here.

Abundance is exactly what we need.

It's not more or it's not less.

It's exactly what we need.

And when the Lord provides, that is abundance.

And when we experience abundance and we look up, we begin to expect that God will be there and will provide.

And with expectation, we look ahead.

We're looking forward, we're looking with anticipation of what God is going to do.

And if you're like me, I have an idea of what I want him to do, okay?

Not just necessarily sitting back waiting for him to do.

I'm kind of trying to guide the Lord.

Okay, Lord, I need you to do this.

This is what I'm expecting.

And when we arrive to that point and we don't get what we expected, we're disappointed.

And in disappointment, we look down.

Our shoulders slump, and we look down.

We're disappointed.

And from our disappointment comes complaint.

And in complaint, we look back.

We look at how things were in the past when it was better than it is today.

And we begin to complain and we begin to grumble.

And then when we trust God's provision, we look around.

And we'll see that in the next few verses.

When we trust God's provision, we begin to look around.

When we get to that point, we can look around and expect and go, what is God doing?

Where is he providing?

How is he providing?

And often it takes till that provision takes place for us to look back and know that's what he was doing.

But if we trust him, we can look around.

It's like an imaginary wheel in time that turns round and round.

And all of us are somewhere on that wheel right now.

All of us are on that wheel right now.

And often we begin and end in the same place, only to repeat.

Why?

Because if you're like me, you don't learn from history.

We don't learn from history.

We should, but in our humanness, we don't.

The Hebrews didn't, surely, the Hebrews didn't.

As I continue to share bits and pieces, there is so much, and we don't have enough time today for me to share all that God has done and shown me in my life and how he's provided.

And if I could tell you every piece of that information, you would ask me, why do you still struggle with his provision?

And I do.

There's always that little doubt.

But back in 2022, we had started talking, Elizabeth, my wife, and I had started talking about her going part-time.

See, she'd been working with a company for over 20 years.

And I will tell you this, and even the team that worked with her will tell you, she was the backbone of that company.

We didn't plan a trip that didn't have something to do with that company's schedule.

It had something to do with payroll, had something to do with a case.

We made sure she was available for 20 years, and she had decided that maybe it was time to go part-time.

And I'm like, sure, I'm sitting here thinking she's about to give up half her income.

And in the back of my mind, I'm going, what are we going to do?

How are we going to make this?

But I told her, we'll figure it out, we'll get it done.

Get that, we'll figure it out.

We'll figure it out.

I can play less golf, I can go out to eat less, I can do this.

Well, God had other plans.

Didn't know the very day that she was sitting down with the owner of the company to say, hey, this is my proposal.

The very day my boss calls me into the office.

He said, Hey, we've noticed you're below market value.

And we want to give you an increase.

And I sat there and my eyes welled up.

And the increase covered almost 50% of what she was giving up.

Now, provision's not always financial folks.

I don't want people to think that's always provision.

But in that point, I heard God go again.

I told you it was going to be okay.

I need you to trust me.

I will provide.

Amen.

And he has.

He has.

So now we get into the crux, chapter 16.

It says, Then the whole community of Israel set out from Elam and journeyed into the wilderness of sin, pronounced Zen, between Elam and Mount Sinai.

They arrived there on the 15th day of the second month, one month after leaving the land of Egypt.

There, too, the whole community of Israel complained about Moses and Aaron.

If only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt, they moaned.

There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread that we wanted.

But now you brought us into this wilderness only to starve us to death.

Then the Lord said to Moses, Look, I'm going to rain down food from heaven for you.

Each day the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day.

And I will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow my instructions.

On the sixth day they will gather food, and when they prepare it, there will be twice as much as usual.

So Moses and Aaron said to all the people, By evening you will realize it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

In the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard all your complaints which are against him, not against us.

Then Moses added, The Lord will give you meat to eat in the evening and bread to satisfy you in the morning, for he's heard all your complaints against him.

What have we done?

Yes, your complaints are against the Lord, not us.

See, verse one begins with when?

Then when?

And it was after they'd been at the oasis.

They had enjoyed fresh spring water and dates.

I can just imagine coming out and being thirsty and sitting around with all they needed.

They thought they had arrived.

They thought they had arrived at the place they needed to be, and then they had to move.

They had the Shade of the trees, and there was abundance.

And then they had to set out again.

If we pay close attention, we'll find how much time had passed.

In chapter 15, it took only three days to find water.

Now it's been over 40 days for them to find shade and shelter.

They came out of abundance with unrealistic expectations.

Out came the complaints, and out came the grumbling.

I look at this statement if only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt.

Wow.

In Egypt, they had pots full of meat.

They ate all the bread that they wanted.

And all they had experienced, they had such short memories.

You see, many of us, let me speak to myself, are like that.

Especially early in our life.

The lesson here is if we focus on the past, it won't be long before the complaints and the grumbling start oozing out from our lips.

We'll remember long ago, you will remember long ago, we were bathed in a hazy, rosy glow of memory when something was easier and more comfortable than it is today.

And as you compare then and now, we'll begin to grumble.

The Lord hears.

He heard their complaints, he heard their grumbling, and he said, I will meet your need for hunger.

Listen carefully.

Then Moses said to Aaron, Announce this to the entire community of Israel.

Present yourselves before the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.

And as Aaron spoke to the whole community of Israel, they looked out toward the wilderness, and there they could see the awesome glory of the Lord in the cloud.

Then the Lord said to Moses, I have heard the Israelites' complaints.

Now tell them, in the evening you will have meat to eat, and in the morning you will have all the bread you want.

Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.

That evening vast numbers of quail flew in and covered the camp.

And the next morning the area around the camp was wet with dew.

And when the dew evaporated, a flaky substance as fine as frost blanketed the ground.

The Israelites were puzzled when they saw it.

What is this?

They asked each other.

They had no idea what it was, and Moses told them, It is the food the Lord has given you to eat.

These are the Lord's instructions.

Each household should gather as much as it needs, pick up two quarts for each person in your tent.

So the people did as they were told.

Some gathered a lot, some only a little.

But when they measured it out, everyone had just enough.

Those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered only a little had enough.

Each family had exactly what they needed.

The Lord provides just what is needed.

See, keep in mind the Hebrews had never read the book of Exodus, which means they'd never heard about Mana.

This was their first experience and their first appearance of heaven's catering service.

God brought it from above, delivered it to the ground like dew, and when they woke up in the morning, they looked around and said, What is this?

And Moses told him, You wanted bread?

Here's a wilderness full of it.

How would it be if every morning we woke up and walked outside and there was mana on the ground?

Every morning, we no longer had to go to the grocery store.

We no longer had to shop for food.

We no longer had to worry about what we were going to eat this evening.

But I suspect if that was the case after a while, we'd probably grumble.

Like them, we'd get tired of eating the same thing.

I know I enjoy leftovers for a day or two.

And I know there are people who don't eat leftovers, period.

And if that would be you, you would not like this because it'd be like eating leftovers every day.

But it was the Lord's provision.

He had provided exactly what they needed.

We jump along, jump ahead to the end of 2023, January 2024, and another experience that Elizabeth and I had.

We had started talking about her potentially retiring in August of 2024.

We're in the throes of preparing and getting ready to have a wedding and stuff, and she wanted to be able to take off and be done with work August, September for the October wedding, so she could really engage herself in the planning.

And she had come out of a, I will just call it a preventative surgery.

She'd been on medical leave.

It was in January.

And as she was sending her boss, the owner of the company, an email said, Hey, I'll be returning to work on Monday.

Just want to make sure everything's da-da-da.

She received an email that said, an email now after 20 years.

She received an email that says, Hey, I've decided to eliminate your job.

You've got about five minutes to read your emails, get what you need, boom, come off.

20 years.

Now let me preface that with he's a business owner.

He can do what he wants to.

I don't have any problem with that.

He owns the business.

He feels like he needs to eliminate a job.

Go ahead.

That's a whole nother story and what happened there, but I didn't like the way it was done.

She didn't like the way it was done after 20 years of pouring out your heart and soul.

At least call her in, sit her down, say, hey, you know, we've decided to go in a different direction.

Give her a send-off and go.

But here we were.

We had plans.

And I had eight months to figure out what we were going to do to make up losing the rest of what she was bringing in.

See, that was our margin.

And man, he dropped that on us.

And of course, me being me, I told her, I said, it's gonna be okay.

We'll figure it out.

When I didn't figure it out the last time.

But we'll figure it out.

We'll get through this.

We'll make a way.

Well, it wasn't, but a couple of weeks after that, I got called back into my boss's office and said, hey, we want to recognize what you've done, da-da-da, here and here.

And I got an increase that made up about 50% of what she gave.

He said, You see, you're not providing.

And later on in that year, I got a promotion, a substantial change in responsibilities.

Again, it's not always financial, the provisions.

It's about seeing doors and opening up.

But what the Lord was telling me, was telling Monty is, I need you to trust me.

Have you not experienced through your life all that I have provided you?

From open doors to step through.

Through making a way when you didn't see a way.

And yet here I was having experienced this, and yet I still struggle in the doubts of my mind.

I still struggle with trusting him in that provision.

But I can tell you, looking back, that was the best thing that could have ever happened to us.

We have a newfound freedom.

I can work wherever I'm at.

Doesn't matter.

She didn't have that ability, and as soon as we leave here today, we're headed to Stone Mountain to camp for a week because we can.

She can.

And we see that provision.

But now the instructions that we have to look at what was given to the Israelites, to the Hebrews, then Moses told them, Do not keep any of it until morning.

But some of them didn't listen and kept some of it till morning.

And but by then it was full of maggots and had a terrible smoke smell.

Moses was angry with them.

And after this the people gathered food in the morning by morning, each family according to its need, and as the sun became hot, the flakes they had not picked up melted and disappeared.

On the sixth day they gathered twice as much as usual, four quarts for each person instead of two.

Then all the leaders of the community came and asked Moses for an explanation.

He told them, This is what the Lord commanded.

Tomorrow will be a day of complete rest, a holy Sabbath day set apart for the Lord.

So bake or boil as much as you want today, then set aside what is left for tomorrow.

So they put aside some until the morning, just as Moses had commanded.

And in the morning the leftover food was wholesome and good, without maggots or odor.

Moses said, Eat this food today, for today is the Sabbath day dedicated to the Lord.

There will be no food on the ground today.

You may gather food for six days, but the seventh day is the Sabbath.

There will be no food.

Some of the people went out anyway on the seventh day, but they found no food.

Then the Lord asked Moses, How long will these people refuse to obey my commands and instructions?

They must realize that the Sabbath is the Lord's gift to you.

That is why He gives you a two-day supply on the sixth day, so there will be enough for two days.

On the Sabbath you must each stay in your place.

Do not go out to pick up food on the seventh day, so the people did not gather any food.

Some families didn't trust the provision.

They were not obedient.

See, for me, that's the route for me is obedience when the Lord calls.

I struggle with that.

I struggle with that.

Anybody that knows me knows I can tend to be a rule breaker.

Obedience is not my strong point, but I try.

And I think about all that they had seen and done and followed, and the Lord was manifest in a cloud and a pillar of fire with them, leading the way.

And yet they still had trouble trusting provision.

We have the history of the Hebrews, and we tr struggle.

We have our own history and experience, and we struggle, we grumble.

And even in abundance, as we move through.

Just earlier this year, we were sitting around talking about her getting retired.

We don't say she retired, she got retired.

I mean, that's what it was.

She got retired, and we were sitting there talking about that, and you know, how life had been good and how God had provided.

And, you know, I'm sitting here, I'm being me, and I said, Well, I don't wish him bad, and I don't wish him good.

But I had a butt in there.

Wouldn't break my heart if he lost everything.

I'm just being transparent, folks.

All that God had provided, I'm sitting here grumbling, and as I'm walking back down to my office at the house, I get about midway down the steps, and it's like somebody slugged me in the back of the head, and the Lord said, But you should be praying for this man and his business.

I have provided for you every step of the way.

Why are you grumbling?

Why is there a but in this?

Well, come to find out.

I was the but.

I mean, I mean, let's just be honest, okay?

I'm praying some of y'all can relate, all right?

Amen.

I got you.

That I'm not the only one.

But God reminded me again.

You see, it'd been, what, 46 years since my father had passed away?

And I had 46 years of God providing through tough times.

Always.

Never missed a meal.

It might have been beanie-weenies or hot dogs, but I never missed a meal.

I didn't know what hunger was.

Might not have been necessarily what I wanted, but I was provided for.

So as we finish up our text, it says, the Israelites call the food mana.

It was white like coriander seed, and it tasted like honey wafers.

I'm thinking, wow, that's pretty good stuff right there.

Then Moses said, This is what the Lord has commanded.

Fill a two-quart container with manna to preserve it for your descendants.

Then later generations will be able to see the food I have given you in the wilderness when I set you free from Egypt.

Moses said to Aaron, Get a jar and fill it with two quarts of manna, then put it in a sacred place before the Lord to preserve it for all future generations.

Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

He eventually placed it in the Ark of the Covenant in front of the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant.

So the people of Israel ate mana for forty years until they arrived in the land where they would settle.

They ate mana until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.

The container used to measure the manor was an omer, which was one-tenth of an epiph.

It held about two quarts.

The Lord wanted them to remember.

He wanted future generations to remember what he had done.

So that maybe the struggle wouldn't be as much.

See, if I recap some of what I've just told you and I connect the dots, you see, I've eaten mana, mina for 46 years.

The Lord has provided every step of the way.

He has provided, and yet I still have to ask myself, why do I still struggle with his provision?

I don't struggle as much today as I did yesterday.

But I've got a lot of life experience.

But doubt still creeps in the back of my mind at times.

What am I going to do?

How are we going to do this?

What is the destination?

Where is the outcome?

See, the Lord wants us to remember.

He wants us to recall what He has done for us.

And in a few moments, we're going to prepare to partake in the Lord's Supper, communion, one of the sacraments of the church.

One of the sacraments of the church.

And so what I'm going to ask you to do is the last few rows, last couple rows in here, if you will exit when it's time, exit out the side doors.

There's a table out in the lobby for you, and you can return through the center doors.

So last couple rows out the side doors and in through the center doors.

The rest of you can partake in the table to each side.

See, in Luke's account of the Last Supper, when he gathered the disciples in that upper room, they were taking part in the Passover meal.

You remember the Passover we talked about with the plagues and that last one when they were going to kill the firstborn, and the Hebrews were to mark their doors with the blood of the Lamb.

It was that very blood of the Lamb of Jesus Christ that saved us.

The ultimate provision God gave us was in his Son Jesus Christ in his sacrifice.

He provided in that death if we will only accept him as our Savior and Lord of our life.

Already.

And then that account that Luke gives us, as Jesus and them were gathering around and they just finished one of the cups of wine.

He picked up the bread and he broke it.

And he said, This is my body given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In remembrance.

You see, he wanted to store the minor so the descendants could remember.

And Christ is now setting a place for believers to remember.

To remember.

And likewise, he took the cup.

Many believe it was the third cup, the cup of redemption.

Think about that.

The Israelites were redeemed from Egypt and entered into the promised land.

When we accept Christ, we're redeemed from the bondage and chains of sin.

This is the covenant, the new covenant poured out in my blood for the forgiveness of sin.

Remember.

And so as we prepare to take communion, I want you to remember your challenges.

Remember those things God has done, particularly when you didn't expect it, and how He has provided for you, and how you can share that with your generations and descendants so that they will know that our God is a provider.

He warns us not to come in an unworthy manner.

There have been times in my life when I didn't take communion because I didn't feel like I was in a place where I could.

But if you'll sit there as I read these final passages and know here that at church at the Grove, we have an open communion table for those who call Christ their Savior.

They have an open communion table.

So as we sit here and I read these final verses, I want to share with you as we prepare.

Ask Him for forgiveness where you need forgiveness.

And remember all that He has done.

In the sixth chapter of Matthew, beginning in the 25th verse through the 26, he said, That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life.

Whether you have enough food or drink or enough clothes to wear, isn't life more than food in your body more than clothing?

Look at the birds.

They don't plant or store or harvest food or store food in the barns, for your heavenly father feeds them.

And aren't you far more valuable than they are?

And then if we jump down to 33 and 34, it says, seek the kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

So as you prepare yourself, as you remember, know that the ultimate provision was Christ's death on the cross.

And I'll just say this: if you're here today and you haven't accepted Christ and you want to do so, it's just as simple as saying, I can't do this on my own.

I need a Savior to come in and guide me.

Forgive me of my sins and accept Him.

And if you want anyone on the stage can help you with that, Jonah's here.

There are many people here that can help you if that's where you're at.

But as you prepare, the table is open.

Come as you are ready.