[Mr. Troy Phelps]: I was speaking with my mother-in-law just a few weeks ago after the Feast. And my in-laws both served over in East Africa for a number of years. And she was telling me a story and it was a story about two twin children that were born to a church family over there in Africa. And the mother, sadly, due to complications while giving birth, died. And in that culture, young children often have a part in raising their other siblings. Carrying around the children, helping feed them, help keep track of them while the mother is out in the field, etc. And in this particular case, these twin children had a six-year-old older sister who was given the responsibility of caring for the new twins. With the mother gone, the family soon began to really struggle. And the twins were not getting the food that they needed, and they were on the verge of starving to death.

Even by 18 months old, the children couldn’t walk or speak. And she showed me pictures of them. The effects of starvation were clearly seen. You could see in one where the growth plates were still very, very far apart. At 18 months apart, you could see their bones, you know, really taut against their skin. It was very sad. She said the first time she saw them, she started crying. Now, thankfully, the story for those two twins has a good ending. With the help of various church members, the children were eventually given the nutrition they needed and soon began walking, developing, and growing. God made food to be so incredibly important. It provides nutrients and energy. It helps us to develop, to grow, to be active, to be healthy, to be able to move, to work, to play, to think, to learn. Food plays an essential role in the promotion of our health, as well as the prevention of disease. And like these two twin children when appropriate daily food is not consumed, appropriate development and growth is severely impacted.

So, why did God make us to need daily food? Why didn’t He make us to live each day, and just keep going, and going, and going until one day, you know, enough time’s passed and we die? We just heard from Mr. Rangel, you know, about time. He didn’t say how long we spend eating every day. I did a quick Google search while I was sitting there. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that we spend 1 hour and 8 minutes every single day during the weekday, 1 hour and 17 minutes on the weekend, just consuming food and water. And that’s not even counting food prep. So we then spend 34 minutes every day prepping food, and 37 minutes on the weekend prepping food for a total of 8 hours and 14 minutes a week spent just prepping and eating food.

So now we’re down to 60 hours if we take away the 14 minutes, we’ll do easy math. We’re down to 60 hours left now to get things... Why did God design us to use those eight hours on eating when there’s so many important things to be done? Now, you might say, “Well, it’s for our pleasure and enjoyment.” And there’s probably some truth in that too, but God could have made us to consume food for pleasure and enjoyment without it being necessary for our development, our growth, our health and our life. Throughout God’s Word, God gives us numerous physical examples that teach us powerful lessons about His spiritual creation. We have physical lessons of a husband and wife teaching us powerful things about covenant love. We have parents and we then begin to be parents and we get to parent our own children that teach us powerful metaphors about God and His great love for us. We have family and many, many more things, physical things, so we could consider and understand an even greater spiritual lesson.

So, why did God create us to need daily food? Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 8:3. As we start Deuteronomy 8:3 here, Moses telling Israel, he said, breaking into it a little bit,

Deuteronomy 8:3 – “So, he humbled you,” - and notice – “God allowed you to hunger, allowed you to feel those hunger pains. And He fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know that He might do something.” There was a purpose, this hunger that they felt had a purpose to teach them an incredibly important lesson, and what was that lesson? “That He might make you know, that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”

Before the children of Israel could go into this land of plenty, a land that’s much like our own that we get the pleasure of living in, Moses reminds them that God allowed them to feel hunger and provided that hunger for a purpose. That the manna was to teach them about a greater food that trumped all other food, that man should live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Now, Jesus Christ would later feel these intense hunger pains Himself and Jesus Christ would quote that scripture back to Satan in Matthew 4:4, we won’t turn there. When Satan was tempting Jesus Christ to make bread out of a stone. You remember that story to satisfy His physical hunger. That trial didn’t trip up Jesus Christ. Through Him, all things that were made, that were made. He knew the purpose of hunger. He understood and designed that physical hunger to have a great design and purpose. Jesus Christ knew that consuming and living all for the Word of God at all times is what truly mattered, more than even sustaining physical life.

We see other places where God worked powerfully within this metaphor of food to spiritual food. I’ll quickly read two scriptures to you, you can jot them down if you... Job 23:12 just breaking into a part. Here we have the most blameless man, an upright man on the face of the earth. He says,

Job 23:12 – “I have treasured the words of His mouth,” - God’s mouth – “more than my necessary food.” I’ve treasured Your words more than my necessary food. Job said that’s the food that was most important. We just sang even words, “Sweeter are Your words to me than any other words.” You know, those words, we can almost taste those words and they’re sweet. God’s words are great. The prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 17:16, he said,

Jeremiah 17:16 – “Your words were found and I ate them.” “Your words and Your Word was to me, the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” What isn’t apparent when we first read that verse from Jeremiah, that God at this time was punishing the nation of Judah for not keeping His word. And they were in a terrible drought. And that drought led to famine, and that famine led to widespread malnutrition. Jeremiah said, “I found Your words and I ate. And those words were joy to my heart.”

We all recently came home from a tremendous physical feast, right? You probably had some of the best meals of your entire life at that time. And I think we should take a minute to revel on some of that great food that we ate while we can. Maybe you had a delicious filet mignon. Anybody have a steak while they were at the Feast? A few hands, okay. How about maybe a Cedar Plank salmon, something like that? Any Cedar Plank salmon? Okay. Rack of lamb, maybe? Yeah. Okay. Some lamb. Or it says whatever we desire, rack of lamb if that’s what we want, you name it. I got cannoli one time at the Feast. I love cannoli, one of my two favorite desserts and I wasn’t even hungry. But it was there and it needed to be eaten. I love cannoli. God commanded us to go to that Feast and feast physically on food, right? Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 14:26. You probably read this scripture at the Feast, but we’ll read it again. Deuteronomy 14:26, it says,

Deuteronomy 14:26 – “And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires for oxen or sheep,” notice filet mignon or lamb. “For wine or similar drink.” Now I got myself a bottle of Balvenie DoubleWood Scotch, that’s...that was my favorite drink. “For whatever your heart desires, you shall eat there before the Lord, your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.” This is God’s command. We’re supposed to do that. But do you think the physical feast was the main point for God wanting us to feast at the Feast? Do you think that was the main point? I think we all understand that the physical feast wasn’t the main point. That it was a type of a much greater spiritual feast that must be taking place at that time. So, we went to services, we went to Bible studies, we went to seminars. We fellowshipped, we shared stories about how we were called and faith-building stories. And we feasted, and we feasted and we feasted. And through that, we can much more readily through the physical feasting, much more readily understand the spiritual feasting, because God gave us these lesser physical things that teach us important spiritual lessons and help us to understand them.

So, our need to consume daily food was always designed by our perfect Creator to teach us a much more important spiritual lesson about daily food. So, as we come together, this Sabbath after a great time of physical and spiritual feasting, it’s a good time to examine and consider our spiritual nourishment and our wellbeing as we leave this feast season and as Mr. Rangel mentioned, you know, when we move into these cold weather months before the spring, it’s a good time to consider our spiritual nourishment. Because just because maybe right now we’re feeling pretty full, pretty full. We just got back from the Feast. We’re crammed full of all that great spiritual food, doesn’t mean we’re going to stay that way in the future. Let’s turn to Revelation 3:3. This is to one of the seven churches, and to the angel of the church of Sardis. Now, Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, one of the provinces of Asia Minor. Now I probably should be embarrassed to admit this, by until very recently had no idea where Asia Minor was apparently. I thought it was way out... let’s see you’re looking at me. So it’d be, if this is Israel, I thought it was way out east of Israel like, you know, India, China, maybe Thailand area. I won’t ask to show hands who else thought Asia Minor was out that direction. You know, it was Asia, so I thought that was the direction and the Minor didn’t mean anything to me, it was a minor point, right? So, then I learned that Sardis was in Turkey.

Now, the next question I had to ask is where’s Turkey? Now, my family - I’m going to admit something, we’ve always been terrible at geography. We’re really bad. Actually, when Cadence, I’m going to tell a story on Cadence here real quick. When Cadence had started junior high, she got the option to take a foreign language, right? And she wanted to take French. I kept trying to press her, you know, “No, take Spanish. I think it’ll have more use in your life. You’ll probably have more opportunities to speak it.” But then I decided, you know what? You’re learning, if this is what excites you about learning, take French. You know, and enjoy that. Take French. Well, I later found out she took French because she loves Italy. A few more questions later led me to understand that she thought Europe was the continent, that Italy was the country, that France was a state within Italy, and that Paris was a city, you know, in that state. So, I’m not sure who failed her more, the educational system or her parents. But we did recently get a globe, so I’m hoping that might help a little bit. So, where’s Turkey for maybe anybody else who doesn’t know? If this is Israel and here’s the Mediterranean Sea, you go up north and take a left and go west, not east, west, like you’re heading toward Italy where they speak French. Now, I’m going to mess up all the kids don’t believe in any of that that is not what they speak in Italy. Okay. So, it’s actually not east it’s northwest from Israel who knew? Okay.

Back to the story at hand, Revelation 3:1.

Revelation 3:1 – “To the angel of the church of Sardis write, these things saying, ‘he who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars, I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but are dead.’” “You have a name that you are alive, but are dead.” Now, what does this mean? “You have a name that you are alive and then dead.” Sardis had once been a splendid, ostentatiously wealthy city. It was over the top. It had it all, but over time, it had declined in its grand jury, its influence, it’s important due to a whole bunch of different things. You know, Rome, people would come in earthquakes, a whole bunch of things and it had declined, but it still had a great reputation based on what it once was. You know, what it once was in its heyday. In much, same way the church that was founded in Sardis had also once been a flourishing, vibrant church. Now here’s what Henry Commentary says about the church in Sardis that one time, “This church had gained a great reputation. It had a name and a very honorable one for a flourishing church, a name for vital lively religion for the purity of doctrine. Unity among themselves. Uniformity and worship decency and order. We read not of any unhappy divisions among themselves. Everything appeared well as to what falls under the observation of men. They had a name. However, this church was not really what it was reported, reputed to be.” End of the quote from Henry Commentary. John recorded, “you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.” This church had a reputation before being spiritually vibrant, having lots of vitality for being full of spiritual life, but really, it was dying. And in their great abundance, some things had slipped.

Going on verse two, “Be watchful.” New Living Translation says, “Wake up and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect.” This word perfect is a word that literally means crammed full or filled to the full before God. He says, “All these things that you’re doing, There’s an emptiness to them.” Mr. Rangel talked about that. He went to Haggai and it said there, “You eat, but you do not have enough.” They had bags that had holes in them. Their priorities weren’t right. And there was an emptiness to them. Same here, verse 3, “Remember, therefore, how you have received and heard. Hold fast and repent.” The church of Sardis was living on a past reputation of purity, of doctrine, of unity, of being full of good works of knowledge. And the church, and who makes up a church? The individuals of that church, maybe even children and grandchildren, by this point of those original members, they were really good at living off of a past reputation.

What they once were. They’d gotten complacent. They were good at playing church. They were good at looking to part. I mean, they were from the great congregation of Sardis, but God saw inside and realized, “No, you’re dying, you’re dying.” We have just come through a time where we ate a lot. And we have times where we also we’re spiritually zealous. We’re using our 60 leftover minutes after eating, 68 minutes, however, you want to count it. You know, we’re using them wisely at times, we’re filling up on eating God’s Word. We’re living, we’re doing. But if we’re not careful, we’ll find ourselves also in times where we go through a dry spell. Anybody ever felt unconnected from God, felt empty inside, not fulfilled, not crammed full anymore? But actually feeling quite hungry, maybe even starving. A couple of months ago, I started a personal study where I was studying the physical progression of starvation, of how malnutrition leads towards starvation. And I want us to look at some spiritual parallels in the time that we have left that we can consider about our regular intake of food and how that can apply to our regular intake of spiritual food in the state of our spiritual health. So, number one, when someone has not had enough physical food, the first early sign is weakness, weakness. Now we all know this one well, right? It hasn’t been that long ago that we all took part in the Day of Atonement. It doesn’t take very long on that day before we start feeling physically weak. When I was a kid, I used... I shouldn’t use the word, I hated the Day of Atonement. But I looked at it as a thing I had to get over to get to the Feast of Tabernacles. It was not something I looked forward to.

As I’ve gotten older, it’s actually one of the feast days that I have come to just love. And one aspect of the Day of Atonement that I love about it is everybody sticks around on that day. We all stay together, right? I mean, people will stick around and talk all the way up till they think they have enough time to get to wherever they’re going to get this food. And, but as I watched this year and looked as people talked, as the day went on and the day went on and sunset’s getting closer, people started to sit down to have their conversations, right? It didn’t take us very long before that weakness of not having any physical food started to set in. And we didn’t have as much energy. We didn’t want to stand and use up that energy. Well, the first spiritual sign for someone heading into a state of malnutrition and towards starvation is weakness. It’s an early warning sign that we haven’t been getting enough spiritual food. Now, maybe ordinary areas of self-control where we had been strong becomes lacking. We stumble in a way where we normally wouldn’t. We give into a temptation that we normally don’t. We might even say, “Why did I say that about them? I know better than that.” Or, “Why did I give into that temptation? I haven’t done that in such a long time.” Just like a day of physical fasting, if we eat some quality food at that time spiritually, we bounce right back. But fail to address the underlying nutritional problem, and it continues to progress.

Number two, as physical malnutrition increases, next, confusion begins to set in. Confusion, thoughts aren’t right. Thinking starts to get physically distorted and murky. Things that should be clear once were clear, no longer are. And then spiritually, confusion is a progression of spiritual malnutrition. We used to have a speech club here in Cincinnati, a number of years ago, and one of our early mentors in that, he once asked all of the men in the club, he said, “Do you know what you get and what you find when you get away from the trunk of the tree on a tree and you get way out on the branches? And do you know what you find way out at the end of the branches when you get out there?” And we’re like, “No, what do you find?” He said, “Nuts.” The nuts. You guys remember that in the club? And that always stuck with me over the years because if we’re not feeding consistently off of the trunk of the tree on consistently strong, nutritious food, spiritual food, we can start to get a little nutty.

We can start to find our ideas deferring from, you know, established strong church doctrine where many serious men have stewed over the words and looked at the, all the different lenses of the Bible and looked at commentaries. And, but, you know, we start to think we know better. We’ve got it figured out. Or maybe things that were once clear, no longer make any sense. If we find ourself in that state, it’s time to evaluate our spiritual food and make sure we’re consistently feeding on strong, consistent sources of spiritual nutrition. Number three, as physical malnutrition continues, the next physical effect is irritability, irritability. So even when we physically have not gone without food very long, we use the term hangry. Has anybody been hangry before? Oh, like three people. No, that can’t be true. My wife gets hangry. I get hangry. My children get hangry. I bet every one of you, if we don’t have food very often, we get a little hangry, right? But that’s the reality. We don’t have food coming in for a little while and we start to get a little bit irritable. Things start to get under our skin a little more easily. We get agitated a little quicker and even about things that really aren’t that big a deal.

Well, spiritually, when we go without consistent daily food, we can become irritable. We can begin to have, you know, a disgruntled attitude, have being upset become a part of our life. Anger can start to be directed at coworkers or our family, at church members, maybe the minister, maybe the church as a whole. Relationships begin to break down. So, we have to ask ourselves, you know, “Do I have strife in my life? Is everyone else the problem, a bunch of dummies?” You know, if we have a lot of strife in our life, it’s probably not everyone else. It’s time to take a deep look at our spiritual nutrition because it’s a sign that something spiritually isn’t right. Four, as physical malnutrition advances through the stages towards starvation, the next physical effect is a weakened immune system. And this is where things begin to get really serious physically. Physically, we struggled to ward off the attacks against our body that we once could have. Our immune system no longer identifies and destroys simple illnesses and attacks designed to weaken and destroy us. And this is the stage that usually introduces some outside foreign material that can ultimately lead to our death. So spiritually, the disease of sin at this stage begins to really infect us. Temptations or addictions begin to take a deeper root and deeper bondage is established.

Sins that our spiritual immune system once could have identified would have identified, would have rejected, and eliminated takes hold, and begins spreading through our life. Pornography, hatred, gossip, lust, lying, envy, disrespect, rejecting authority, selfishness, drunkenness, you name, it sets up in our lives and ends up killing us. We are getting into terrible shape and we need to urgently get substantial spiritually nutrient-rich food or we’re going to die. Five, next, as starvation continues, the body has depleted all fat cells and begins to feed on its own muscle tissue. Our body turns on its own body for anything to consume, even its own strength and support systems. Spiritually, at this point, as starvation continues, we begin to turn inward and begin destroying our own spiritual muscle tissue. Those that have helped to hold us up, who help us to stay strong and through life, we might even blame God for our problems at this point. “Why is He letting this happen to me? Why isn’t He blessing me? I go to church every week.” We destroy and consume relationships that were once our closest, our church, family, and our friends. We no longer heed wides council. No one is safe, and we are in desperate shape.

Six, next, physically our internal organs shut down. Our body begins to power down the systems that are designed to keep it alive. One by one, they are shutting down, holding out all hope that food will arrive in time before it’s too late. Spiritually, by this point, everything is in disfunction. Everything is falling apart and shutting down. Our marriage and our families in a major crisis. Our job has problems. Our finances have problems. Maybe we even stop attending church, because what’s the point? “God’s not there for me, my friends aren’t there for me. My minister doesn’t know anything.” We’re hanging by a thread.

Seven, physically, the third to last stage is hallucinations. Our body begins to see things that aren’t there. Spiritually, our thinking becomes completely bizarre. We get off on all sorts of weird ideas, things that are distorted and lack even common sense and truth. Let’s turn to Romans 1:21. Romans 1:21 says,

Romans 1:21 – “Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, to the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature, rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.” Verse 28, dropping down. “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do the things which are not fitting.” - Verse 32, last verse here – “Who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.”

Eight, second to last, the physical body starving to death moves to a stage of comatose. The body is in no longer in search of food. It’s done trying and death is coming quickly. Someone in this spiritual stage needs a miracle from God to survive. They’ve completely checked out. Thankfully the Bible and life experience has taught us the fact that God never quits on anyone. He’s always trying to bring a lost sheep back from wandering away. I’m not going to turn there today because I think it’s a familiar story to probably most of us. It’s found in Luke 15:14, and it’s the story of the prodigal son. After the son had gone off, he had gone off from where he should have been, what he should have been eating, where he should have been eating. We find a severe famine arose on the land, a severe famine it says, and he was hungry. He begins to starve to death. And thankfully, he realizes it just in the nick of time. And he goes back to his father with deep humility and he repents. But notice what the father does. I’ll read verse 23 and verse 24 of Luke 15. He says,

Luke 15: 23-24 – “And bring the fatted calf here and kill it and let us eat and be merry. For this, my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found. And they began to be merry.”

He comes to the father and what do they do? The father feeds him. He’s hungry. The father feeds him. He was starving to death. The boy needed food. Now God isn’t going to force-feed us, we have to see the nutritional value of what God is offering and choose to consume it, process it, turn it into energy and to live it. Now, starvation isn’t the fun thing to talk about, is it? This isn’t one of those feel-good messages. It’s not fun to consider, but if I’m being honest, I have found myself in some of these stages before when I wasn’t eating properly. We would never want to go multiple days without physical food. No, minus the occasion for a spiritual purpose for physical fasting, we eat physical food every single day. We want to use those eight hours every day eating food.

We want to eat. God placed a need in us, a hunger. Our brain responds to that need and knows you need physical nourishment. And we can’t go very long physically without food before we notice it before it signals that we’re empty. I believe that we’re wearing the habit of eating spiritual food from God’s Word every day that we also feel it when we miss a meal. We just don’t always keep ourselves attuned to those hunger pains. We choose to ignore these hunger pains and if we do, they will die down. God gave us these wonderful, physical, and spiritual parallels to teach us about spiritual things. Spiritually, we also need to eat every single day. If not, our body quickly starts through this progression toward death. Now, maybe like me, maybe you’ve identified some of these early warning signs being in your life before weakness, confusion, irritability.

Maybe you’ve been there. Maybe you’re there right now. And if so, determine a plan to get spiritually rich dance food in every single day. Good plans often include eating spiritual food first thing when you get up before your day gets going and gets away from you. Maybe to be successful, your plan needs to have spiritual food in even before physical food is consumed. The first time I was successful in reading all the way through the Bible, I had my breakfast with my spiritual food every single day. And that was the first time I was able to make it successful in getting through that Bible from cover to cover. That’s what I needed. Maybe you even identify with some of the more advanced stages of spiritual starvation, a weakened immune system, turning inward and on God and those who strengthen you, etc.

If you do, it’s important to get back to the basics. Physically and someone who has been dealing with long-term malnutrition or starvation, the body has to go through it a period of time, back on the basics to relearn to function with food appropriately. It had shut down certain parts. The body has to relearn to secrete digestive juices and just at the right quantities. Stomach muscles have to be restrengthened. Physically, when they start with someone, they start with water and then they introduce some fresh fruit juices, and a day later maybe they give them small amounts of solid food for three or four days. They have to start with the basics. Spiritually, if we’ve allowed our spiritual health to suffer, we need to get back to the basics. It said before, strengthen the things that remain that are ready to die. Get back to the fundamental beliefs, relearn, recheck, reproof. Stick strongly to the trunk of the tree and build yourself back up with consistent daily spiritual meals.

If you aren’t there right now, that’s wonderful. We should be thankful to God for that. But that’s the thing about food, right? Like Sardis, if you’re physically full right now, physically strong, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be that way a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, etc. unless you continue to eat food. Keep eating spiritual food, stay on guard and watch for any signs of spiritual malnutrition, and don’t let up. In the model prayer, Jesus Christ said, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Do you think Jesus Christ was most concerned with your daily physical food or your spiritual food? John 6:63 says, “The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” And then Jesus Christ even expanded that further in John 4:34 and He said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” When we take in food, our bodies process it, they turn that into energy for doing. Spiritually, when we take in food, God’s Word, it’s not enough to just know it. We have to turn it into energy and action. To be full of good works, to serve, and put this way of life into action.

So, brethren, those twins in Africa were in dire state because they had not received the proper food that they physically needed. It was visibly obvious. Our perfect Creator designed us to desire and need daily food to develop, grow, and reach our physical potential. God gave us these physical metaphors to teach us powerful lessons about the spiritual. Spiritually, God likewise, designed us to need daily spiritual food for us to spiritually develop, grow, and reach our tremendous potential to be children in God’s family, to be siblings of Jesus Christ. We may not be able to physically have steak and lamb all that often, but we are blessed to be able to have spiritual food always readily available to us. There are no viable excuses for not getting the spiritual nutrients we need. Similar to physical starvation, if we begin to miss meals, it doesn’t take long before we spiritually begin to move through the stages, the various stages of spiritual starvation, and the effects begin to wreak havoc on us.

Let’s keep our spiritual nutritional needs firmly in our minds. And let’s ensure that we have spiritual meal plans in place to make sure we’re getting in those daily nutrients we need for spiritual growth. If we notice any of these warning signs in our lives, let’s pray and act quickly to make sure we don’t slide down a dangerous path towards spiritual malnutrition. As we move away from this time of physical and spiritual feasting, this great time of plenty, let’s be using our time wisely, and let’s be eating.