(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) numbers will be given where available)
Welcome to our Sunday Service, today shared on paper across our circuit and with the congregation at Baildon Methodist Church led by Roy Lorrain-Smith one of our Circuit Local Preachers.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Song – StF – Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!
Introduction
Our focus in this service is on faith: trust in God and his faithful word; and our faith in following his way, rather than our own.
Prayer:
Lord, we praise you that we can trust you, for you are faithful. You are God: with all power; who knows all; and the Father who loves your creation and desires the best for each of us. Please guide our thoughts and spirits as we worship you in faith. Amen.
Reading: Exodus 16:1-16
The Israelites, liberated from slavery in Egypt, were being led by Moses through the desert on their way to the promised land.
They had already encountered a lake (Mara) with water so bitter they couldn’t drink it, but had been shown a tree which made it OK (Gen 15:22-25). (Julian Evans, in his book “God’s Trees” suggests it might have been a species of Moringa tree, because it grows there and its seeds can quickly make polluted water drinkable.)
Then, after a restful spell by the rich Elim oasis, they are led to the wilderness of Sin (it takes its name from the town of that name) with no food. They grumble to Moses: better to have died well- fed in Egypt, than out here from hunger!
But their grumbling against Moses was really doubting God. He is a God who provides (Gen 22:14). Is our grumbling doubting God?
Now he promises meat that evening and bread next day from heaven. And when it happens they will know he is the LORD their God. They are given a vision of his glory in the cloud over the wilderness where they are to go. (Reassuring? Rebuking?) Promises test our faith?
That evening a flock of migrating quail are blown in, and next morning when the dew dries, the ground all round the camp covered with a fine, flaky, frost like thing – manna (= what is it?).
This, Moses tells them, is God’s bread from heaven. They’re to gather daily about four pints (2 litres) for each person (cf Give us this day our daily bread – Mt 6:11). But get double on Fridays because there will be none on the Sabbath, the day of rest; they aren’t even to go out looking.
This manna feeds them until they get to the promised land, then stops.
There are lots of suggestions of what it might have been, but none quite fits the Bible’s description. But miraculous or not, it was provided by God for his people. And God still promises to provide for the needs of those who are seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness (Mt 6:31-33). So make sure we are his people: actually seeking kingdom of God and following his way, in faith – trusting his promises, not grumbling.
To a later generation, Moses explained that manna was to teach God’s people that even miraculous bread from heaven could only feed the body: to live spiritually they needed faith in God and his word: what he said was, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD (Dt 8:3). And Jesus used that text during his wilderness days to fend off temptation by the devil to turn stones into bread when he was hungry (Mt 4:1-4).
We shall sing of that in our next hymn.
Song – StF 254 – Seek ye first the kingdom of God
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we didn’t think our grumbling might be doubting you, and your promised care. Please forgive us and put us right.
And in Give us this day our daily bread, help us to trust you to provide, for all our needs, as we seek first your kingdom and righteousness.
And remind us to thank you when you do provide, and to acknowledge you as our Lord our God: you keep us alive day by day.
Help us trust what you say to us in this manna story; and always to pray your promises into being: on earth, as it is in heaven.
Heavenly Father, we’re asking all this for ourselves, and for others you call to our minds, that our and their faith may hold, even when:
- Your promises seem impossible – with you nothing is impossible (Lk 1:37)
- We’re ill and can’t do – you are God our healer (Ex 15:26)
- Our will is weak – your power is perfected in our weakness (2 Cor 12:9)
- Our spirits are low – you are Father of spirits and giver of life (He 12:9)
- All seems against us – you discipline us for our good (Heb 12:7-13)
- We’re tempted to stray – you provide a way of escape from temptations (1 Cor 10:13);
- We want to give up – endure to the end to be be saved (Mt 10:22).
We ask all these things in the name of Jesus, leading us to everlasting life with you. Amen.
Song – StF 252 – Jesus, the Lord, said: ‘I am the Bread’
Reading:
Witness account: I am the bread of life
Yes, I can tell you about it. I was there. And I saw what led up to all this, his miracle of feeding that vast crowd of people. Five little loaves and two tiny fish! That’s all Jesus had to start with, but he just went on and on, dividing them up, feeding everyone, somehow, till we were all full.
And then they gathered up all the bits left over, and had far more than they started with: 12 great basketfuls, from five small loaves! It couldn’t happen – but it did!
The thing ended strangely too. There was a group in that crowd that decided Jesus would be the ideal king to kick the Romans out of Israel, but he just… well, he sort of withdrew. We didn’t actually see him go, but he suddenly wasn’t there.
And then his disciples went down to the shore and pushed off in their boat without him, and rowed off into the night across the sea.
It was only next morning, when some other boats came, we heard he was already in Capernaum, on the other side, and got them to ferry some of us across. So that’s why people were crowding round and asking, “Teacher, when did you get here?”
Jesus looked at them searchingly, and said, “You’ve just come looking for more food to fill your bellies, not because you saw what that feeding meant or pointed to.” And, well, he was right, really.
“Don’t just go for quick bucks,” Jesus was saying. “Get what you can keep always, even after death. That’s what the Son of Man can and will give you. What he does bears the full stamp of God, because he is doing God’s the Father’s work.”
The crowd started muttering at that, wondering what he meant. And then someone shouted out, “The Father’s work? So, what must we do to be doing his work?”
Jesus pounced on that question. He said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he has sent!”
Well the guy who’d asked the question scratched his head a bit and then said, “Believe? Believe in you, you mean? Believe you came from God? So what sign can you give us so we can believe that? I mean, like our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness with Moses. That was bread from heaven, from God, fresh every morning – and from nothing, and not just once but every day for 40 years. Can you do anything like that?”
Jesus said patiently, “This isn’t about bread for bodily food. This is about the true bread that comes down from heaven, and gives full life to all the world for ever.”
“Well, that sounds good!” said the man. “Give us that: Bread for life.”
And Jesus said, “I am the bread of life! Come to me, and you’ll never hunger; believe in me, and you’ll never thirst. For I can satisfy your soul’s deepest hunger, and your every heartfelt longing.”
Well no one quite knew what to say to that, so there was a pause, and a good deal more muttering.
Jesus looked at them, a bit sadly, and said, “But you don’t believe! Well, you don’t, do you! You’ve seen me and all I do; and you’ve heard what I say and the way I speak – and you still don’t believe.”
He paused, and then went on, “But, it’s all in the Father’s hands. All he gives to me will come to me; and whoever does come I will certainly never cast out. Can’t you feel his pull, any of you? Don’t draw back.
“I tell you, I’ve come down from heaven. I’ve not come just to ‘do my own thing’. The Father sent me, and I’ve come down to do what he wants, here on earth.
“And what he wants is that I should keep safe, lose no one and nothing, of all that he gives me – and raise you up on the last day, to full, eternal life with the Father.”
Well, you could feel the effect of his words. Some in the crowd were plain scoffing: Just who does this guy think he is?! Others seemed sort of mystified by it all.
But some had a look of longing, hanging on his words because they had a ring of truth and hope about them like we’d never heard before. And I could feel we were being ‘drawn to him’.
“I promise you,” Jesus said, “my Father God promises, that every one of you, every one who looks to me and truly believes, you will have eternal life, and I will raise you up to heaven on that last great day of this present age. In me you will be counted worthy of eternal life.”
That’s what I heard Jesus say. There was still a lot of grumbling and mumbling in the crowd around me, but I believed.
I felt I’d seen something… something unshakably true in Jesus, a truth I could really trust. That’s why I follow him.
Spend some time considering: what do you see in Jesus, and why you follow him? And how might you share that with others?
Song – StF 322 – How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
Dedication of offerings
Dear Lord, please accept all that we offer to you, in any form, and make of it – and of us – greater things than we can possibly imagine. Amen.
Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
Great God and Father of our Lord Jesus, in whom alone we too can know you as Father God, please correct our faith and make it stronger, and guide our thoughts, words, and choices, that we may keep in step with your Holy Spirit in our pilgrimage to you – through the wilderness of this world. Amen.
Song – StF 465 – Guide me, O thou great Jehovah
Say The Grace, thinking of others you want to bless: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.
