John 6:35

what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

Or Ecclesiastes 6-7,

all the toil of a man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.

Now since we are embodied souls, I don't want us to lose sight of the physical needs of this world. And Jesus was not either when he said,

do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.

" The Bible is clear about caring for our bodies. When we read in 2 Thessalonians 3.10, it says,

for even while we were with you, we gave you a rule. We said, anyone who won't work shouldn't eat.

So we know that Jesus isn't talking about not caring about what we eat. So please don't think that food that we eat is inconsequential because as embodied souls, as God has planned, we must care for both. The physical body requires less reminding unless there's something wrong. Now as I thought through this passage, I could see two large movements in this passage and in Jesus' words. Number one, Jesus is not talking about him as the bread of life we eat once and have eternal life. The gospel tells us that through the gift of faith, we are given the knowledge of Christ as the bread of life. Jesus said,

I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I say to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.

We see in Jesus' own words that without the intervention of God the Father, we do not know Jesus as the bread of life. Because without the intervention of the Father, we don't even desire spiritual food. We are not without desire, and that becomes an obvious problem. But we are without a desire for him who is the bread of life. All who are here tonight that know Jesus as the bread of life have great reason to rejoice. We could easily burst into worship and praise right now. Because the reality of that is profound. Because God the Father has intervened on our behalf. And by Jesus' words, we know that we are forever his. Let us never stop rejoicing in the fact that God's intervention on our behalf has given us eternal salvation. Number two, now there is a sobering second movement to this passage. The fact is that we still have a serious eating disorder. And as we live out our lives here, it is seen. Thankfully, God will be about the continual work of changing our appetites. For us to stop craving the lesser food of this world, He requires our participation with him. Because we desire what is less and what will never satisfy us, we must with a sense of wanting to leave the garbage pail we have been eating from and with an intention of learning to eat from his banquet table, we must go there. where the choicest affair is found, and where the garbage we once craved become more and more detestable. How does this practically happen? First, we must be better students of our own hearts. That is hard work, and often extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do it by yourself. That's why a church community is important. That's why friends who are other believers are important. If you really want to know a person or yourself, the questions you want to ask are, what do you long for? What do you want? What do you have to have to be happy? What are your hungers? What are your cravings? What do you fear? What do you love? Then assess those answers and see if they match up with the actions of that person or of you. Your life will reveal an incongruity to your stated loves and desires and wants from your actions. And they will reveal a disparaging difference between your words and what you actually believe and love. Because those things will determine the best and the worst behavior and also change our routines and habits. They will also tell you something about what you're feeding on. Being created in the image of God, we were first and foremost people who were created to love. And our first love was to bring our worship to the triune God. Please understand something, it is often very hard for us to see what is underlying in our loves, especially where there is habitual sin, struggle, that makes the difficulty of living out in a day-to-day life. We tend to become more cliched and throw scripture without ever answering the good questions that God would want to ask us. Help you? Help you with what? Let's talk about what's lying underneath your struggle. What else does a changed appetite, how else does a changed appetite happen? Well, having a changed appetite will never ultimately come by avoiding bad food through a simple self-control. It is obvious that consequences can deter us from doing things or eating bad things, going to bad things. But when the world, the flesh, and the devil convince you that there will be no consequences and that it's good to eat, then we are bent to eat. In food terms, you will taste the filet mignon. Until you taste the filet mignon, growing up with roadkill might be the best meal you know. The question that naturally comes is, how do we taste the filet mignon? Let's consider what is being said in Philippians 4, 8, as it instructs believers to think on the things that are true, honorable, pure, lovely, commendable, and praiseworthy. If there is anything of excellence and worthy of praise, we are to think on these things. This is not our normal practice to go through our lives. We live in a broken and dark world and the same exists inside of us. For the reason of self-interest and we are often thinking of what we shouldn't be doing or avoiding or simply reacting to a world that is coming at us at a fast pace. And we never really are directing our thoughts about what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and praiseworthy. Our minds are distracted by all things around us. Jesus is asking us to feed on, intentionally on him. But maybe, just maybe the worst thing that we could do is bring question to what has been promised to the Father by our Father to us. That he will never leave us nor forsake us, that promise. That somehow, because we are not living consistently, we bring question to whether or not he could still love us and care for us. And then quite frankly, where we go is back to the garbage pail, because we have no other hope. We eat from what we know. If God is not present, if God is not near, if God is not growing and capturing our affections, that we believe that we have been made right permanently with Christ, to God, through Christ, then we will go back to the garbage pail. We must hold on to the goodness of God that has been that said

I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Because if we're not living constantly in his amazing love, care and redemption, then we begin to believe that we're on our own. Let us be people who go out from here and taste and see that the Lord is good by meditating on his love, his character, his promises. They are who he is. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we have intensely demanding self-love that includes other loves that often displace you from the rightful place you deserve in our lives. And because our eyes have been opened through your mercy and grace, we can see the need for you to reorient our hearts. We pray that our hearts continue to be reoriented by your amazing love and grace, that living more fully in your love rightfully brings mouths and hearts of worship and praise that you deserve above all things. We pray that the many loves that we put before our love and worship of you would continue to be reordered to their rightful place through an ever-growing faith and trust of who you are. Help us as we seek you by your spirit and through the truth of your word. We ask this in Jesus Christ's name, amen.