The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: Grace simply means favor, not cursing. Favor, not judgment. Victory, not defeat. Life, not death. Heaven, not hell. What God has done for us, can everybody say, "Thank you, Lord"? Say it again, "Thank you, Lord." Say it to Jesus and mean it. And I'm sure you do, that God has done great and mighty things for us.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Healing Word, a ministry dedicated to offering strength and encouragement through God's word for anyone facing life's challenges, bringing hope and renewing your faith. Now, here's Pastor Jack Morris.

Pastor Jack Morris: Bread from heaven, God's bread, God's food, angels' food, that that will cause us to become strong and develop our spiritual life in Christ. I'm going to ask you to put the map up right now, so we'll do just a little bit of a review.

If you'll look at verse two as I get ready now to Exodus chapter 16, verse two. This is a verse that I'm almost embarrassed to read. I think of God being chagrined, even embarrassed over this, but he put it in the word anyway. "In the desert, the whole community grumbled." Grumbling believers. You know, all saints, some of them are "aints." And here was a group of them.

Now, just look at this for just a moment. And you'll say to yourself, and I'm sure you will, and I hope you do, why did those people grumble after all the things God did for them? Then turn on yourself. Oh, I'm not going to go into that too far. Okay. Here's where they started, way up in this area. The 10 plagues. Not a one of those plagues touched them. Not a one of them. God protected them from every one of them.

Then he put a cloud by day and a fire by night to lead them. And here they start coming, all the way down, delivered from Egyptian bondage. Here they were trapped right here at the Red Sea, Pharaoh's army behind them. God opened that sea, the water stood hundreds of feet high on either side and approximately a half a mile apart, and they walked across, had a great time of rejoicing.

Then they went over to Marah, and the waters were bitter. God showed Moses a tree, he threw the tree into the water, which is symbolic of the cross of Jesus dying for us on that cross, and the waters became sweet. Then they traveled south. The cloud and the fire led them south to Elim. There were palm trees, 27 palm trees, and 12 wells of water. What a great time they had.

And then they went on, on south into the Wilderness of Sin. Now, this word "sin" is not to be confused with the biblical word "sin." It comes from the word "Sinai," and there they grumbled. Now, with all of those wonderful blessings and caring of God's mighty hand upon them, they grumbled. It's a wonder God just didn't take and throw them all into the Red Sea. But he didn't. He didn't do that at all.

They began to blame Moses and Aaron. You know, when we get into a hard place and things aren't going right, we love to blame somebody for it, don't we? Spouses will blame each other, we'll blame our friends. Very, very, very few times do we ever blame ourselves. And if we do, we usually at the end we'll put a P.S. there: "But it really all wasn't my fault. It was him. It was her. It was them."

Even when a man took a match, poured gasoline all over his lawn mower because it wouldn't start, and took a match and threw it on his lawn mower, blew it up—we even blame things, don't we? We'll get out of the car and kick it. Why do we do those things? I'm not sure. I really don't know. I'm really not sure.

And then look at what they said in verse three. They said, the Israelites said to them, to Moses and Aaron, "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt. There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted." And they went on and remembered, and all of it was untrue. Not a bit of it was true. Not a bit of it was true. They were just alibiing and trying to excuse themselves, blame Moses.

But instead of God judging them, instead of God judging them, he blessed them. What kind of God is this that we serve? A God of blessing. He sent bread from heaven. In verse four he says, "I will rain down bread from heaven." Not judgment, but blessing. He blessed those people.

Is there a more beautiful word in the Bible than the word grace? Grace covers it all. God looks over our inadequacies, our sins, our complaining, our bellyaching. Friends, let me tell you something. Everybody, everything isn't going to always go right. You don't know that by now? That we live in a fallen world, that you married an imperfect person, that you have children that are imperfect, that your children have parents that are imperfect.

Here Israel was grumbling instead of being thankful for all of those blessings, all of those miracles. Now God sends another miracle: he sends bread from heaven. Grace simply means favor, not cursing. Favor, not judgment. Victory, not defeat. Life, not death. Heaven, not hell. What God has done for us, can everybody say, "Thank you, Lord"?

Say it again, "Thank you, Lord." Say it to Jesus and mean it. And I'm sure you do, that God has done great and mighty things for us. All of these blessings, miracles, and gifts from the supernatural hand of God. And we need to often, very often, every day, stop and count our blessings because God has done great and mighty things for us. Great and mighty things the Lord has done.

Then Jesus turns around and says that he is the bread of life. What they experienced, the children of Israel, the Hebrews, in the desert, the bread from heaven, was a foretaste or a fore-type of the blessing of God that was going to come in Jesus. They ate manna in the wilderness, the children of Israel did, and they died. It only took care of their physical needs.

But Jesus comes and says, "I'm not only going to take care of your physical needs, I'm going to take care of your spiritual needs. I'm going to care for you, bless you, watch over you. I am the bread of life." Jesus is our satisfying portion, and he's here always, and especially is he here today to bless us.

He's the bread that came to the people. Now, notice what happened. This manna came to where the people were. They didn't have to go out and look for it; it was there every morning. All they had to do was open their tent door, and there was the food. There it was. See, that's why we need to wake up in the morning and say, "Thank God I'm alive, thank God I'm breathing, thank God I can get up and go to church or get up and go to work. I have a job to go to."

I mean, there's a lot of things. But if you want to be negative and always look at the hole in the donut, not at the donut, that's your privilege. That can be done also. But there are so many blessings around us. And there the manna was on the ground. Now, isn't this exactly what God did for us through Jesus?

We didn't have to go off somewhere and look for Jesus. Jesus came to us. We didn't have to travel some distance. He's the one that took the long journey, left the realms of glory to come down to where we are, to look through space and all of the planets and find one little planet out there with a group of people who had rebelled against God.

And he found us. He came to us. He didn't miss our planet and go off to another planet. He came right to where we are. Jesus says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." He comes right to my house, right to your door. Don't have to go looking for him somewhere. Wouldn't it be something if we had to go off into outer space somewhere and try to find him?

We'd have to try to get a ticket on with one of the astronauts on one of the rockets and say, "Get me to the moon. He's got to be out there somewhere. I have to find a redeemer." No, the redeemer finds me, and he finds you. And he comes to bless us and to help us. The manna comes to where we are, right where we are.

He comes to where you are this morning to bless, to help, and to minister to you, that you'll go away from this house not empty but filled and blessed and ministered to. The gift of God. Now, the manna was a gift. The children of Israel didn't have to work for it. They didn't have to earn it. All they had to do was receive it. And so it is with our Lord and our Savior.

In verse 15, Moses said to them, "It is the bread the Lord has given to you." Notice, "It is the bread the Lord has given." Say the word "given." It is the bread the Lord has given to you. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. What could I do, what could I possibly do to earn God's favor, to earn God's blessing, to find forgiveness of sins?

What could I do to deserve that? There is absolutely nothing but God in Christ through God's love to you and me brings Jesus to us, who loves us and gives himself and gives his salvation. And still there are so many people say, "Not now. Maybe after a while. There's surely another way." There is no way but through Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ alone.

Paul said, "Not by works of righteousness which I have done, but according to his mercy, according to his grace." Works of righteousness meaning doing the right thing, shunning the wrong and doing the right. If I do enough right things, I'll get some credits. The more right things balances out against the wrong things I have done, and when I get more right things done compared to the wrong things I have done—no, it doesn't work that way.

We have all sinned. We have all broken the law of God. We have all done unright things. But the gift of God, the gift of God. Can I say it over and over? He's a gift. This is a gift. And what did he give? He gave everything. He gave his blood, he gave his body, he gave all. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy.

Paul went on to say, "The wages of sin is death." If you really want to get what's coming to you: hell, death, eternal separation from God. Now, that's what you and I deserve. If we get what's coming to us, that's what we're going to get. But if we get what's not coming to us, but receiving God's grace through the gift of his Son, we will receive Jesus and salvation, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life.

I don't want what's coming to me. Do you want what's coming to you? You see, we've got some bad people here this morning. But God has come through Jesus Christ to cleanse us from all our sins. Now, this bread was to be eaten. When the Israelite opened the tent door and went out and saw those little pieces of manna, those little loaves of bread on the ground, they were to pick it up.

They weren't just to look at it and say, "Wow, isn't this wonderful?" Okay, dear friend, listen. John 6:53. "Unless"—now, do you hear this? Unless you do something, you're going to be lost. "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."

Death is in you, death is reigning, and death will bring you down and ultimately conquer you. But if you eat his body, his blood—he's not talking about cannibalism now. That's not it at all. You surely know that. This is metaphorically being spoken. "You have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.

Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on the bread, on this bread, will live forever." He's talking about his words, his precepts, his admonitions, his commandments. Take them, believe them, apply them, live by them. You're eating the blood and flesh of Jesus when you do that.

When you come to this table today, he's not saying you have to have a communion service where there's a little bit of grape juice and there's a little wafer, that's eating. No, this is saying to God, to you, and to the testimony to the church: "I have been hearing his word, I have been believing his word, I have been appropriating his word. I have been changed and I am being changed by his word."

Now you come down here and take this, which gives a testimony to that that you've already done. Hallelujah! In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God. This is eating Jesus, the word of God. This is his word. Taking it, appropriating it to your life.

Friend, if you come down here and you're not living the life, you are a hypocrite. You're a play actor. You're a person like a person on the stage in a theater. You're saying one thing, but you're living a lie. Don't do that. The scripture says if you do that, you'll die early. And there are many, Paul said, that are in their grave prematurely because they didn't discern properly what they were doing.

Now, the mouth is the gateway into my body. When I eat, the food that I eat is transformed and transmuted into tissue and blood. I eat food, it becomes part of my body. That's how I satisfy the body. How now do I eat the blood of Jesus and eat the flesh of Jesus? By believing. How do I believe? I believe through my eyes and I believe through my ears.

Your eyes, your ears, the gateway to your soul. What you're looking at, what you're listening to, you're feeding your soul. And do you know there are a lot of people who are literally trashing their souls by what they see and by what they hear? Listen to the word of God. You're feeding. Spiritual formation is taking place.

What you're hearing goes into your soul. What you're seeing, when you hold the word and read it, it's going into your soul. Your eyes and ears, the gateway to your soul. You're continually feeding your soul when you're not even in church. The lyrics that you're hearing, the words on the songs that you're hearing, you're feeding your soul.

Those TV programs that you're watching and all that trash, you're feeding your soul. Your soul is becoming stronger and stronger either for God or for the world or for the devil. Your soul. You have control over your soul and a great deal of control over your body. People, you've heard the old saying: "You are what you eat."

Well, you are what you look at and what you hear. When you begin to desire the house of God, the word of God, the praises, the worship, the fellowship, you know your soul has been spiritually fed. But when you begin to desire lustful feelings, sensual feelings, sinful attitudes, you know you've trashed your soul.

When you begin to get excited because you see a picture, because you see somebody half-dressed, and the sensation begins to come, you are responding to what you have already put in you. You put it in there, and now you're beginning to feel the effects of it. Friend, you are what you make yourself to be.

I don't want to be a hard pastor and be mean to you, not at all. I love you, and I'm telling you the truth because I want you to know the power and presence of Jesus in your life. You're God's people. You're God's people. Now, just as I mentioned a moment ago, when you take these feelings and they begin to come up within you, you're turning the pages and you see somebody half-dressed, or you see somebody walking and they're half-dressed and you keep staring and you walk behind them and you begin to feel that—friend, you've already trashed your soul.

Now, on the other hand, or you're watching television or you're looking at magazines or you're hearing stories and you can really belly laugh at those dirty jokes—I mean, you know you've already taken it in, you're enjoying it, and now you're building onto it. There is spiritual formation, but it's negative. It's destroying you.

Now, on the other hand, when you begin to take on the characteristics of Jesus, the mannerisms of Jesus, you can turn the other cheek, you can love your enemies, you can do those kinds of supernatural things that you knew that you couldn't do before, you know you have fed the right kind of food into your soul. Amen! You have done that.

Now, when we have fed our souls properly with the word of God, with Christian fellowship, with messages, with teachings, with service, we have been feeding our soul with this heavenly manna. Then our spiritual immune system is strengthened. When temptation comes, we don't fold into our shoes. We don't capitulate.

When things go wrong in our life, when the bills are more than we can handle at the time, we don't complain and break down and weep and just become unnerved. Or whatever happens, we can say, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I'm going to serve him. I'm going to trust him because he'll bring it all about in his time."

When you can have that spiritual immunity that you can cast off doubt, you can cast off temptation—now, people yield to temptation, they will yield and fall down and be hurt by hard places that come into their life. Hard places, temptations are going to come as long as you're here on this earth. They're going to come.

But if you have been feeding with the manna of God, the strength of God, and spiritual formation has taken place, you can push it aside. You can push it aside. You can say, "Get behind me, Satan. Get behind me." But when every little thing comes along, knocks you down—now, you still might be saved and be a Christian, but you can't resist anything that comes along that's brought about by circumstances that the devil might be behind.

But with God's spiritual battle taking place, it's his battle, you win.

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