It's Not About The Bread

[0:00] The Lord God is so faithful. Trust in the Lord.

[0:18] Oh, what it is to know how faithful God is. Well, it's good to dig into Exodus. It's good to hear the word of the Lord.

[0:28] We've heard from Exodus chapter 16. Being hungry can mess with the way that you see things.

[0:43] Most of you know the saying, never make a decision on an empty stomach. It's actually been researched and tested. Hunger makes you more impulsive and more prone to decide on things that give the most immediate gratification.

[0:59] Hunger makes you seek the short-term reward, even if that isn't food. American teacher and writer Frank McCourt once said, After a full belly, all is poetry.

[1:16] I'm sure you can understand what he means. If ever there was poetry, if ever there was beauty or meaning in anything, it often can't be appreciated when all you're thinking about is food. Maybe you've experienced the truth of this.

[1:30] Never go food shopping when you're hungry. I've been far too guilty of this far too many times. Or you probably heard the saying, Your eyes are bigger than your belly.

[1:43] Your eyes and your appetite can deceive you. The Word of God is no stranger to these things. From the beginning in Genesis 3, the serpent encouraged disbelief in God's Word so that their desire would lead them to death.

[2:00] Genesis 3, verse 6, it says, after this encounter with the serpent, So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

[2:20] Another American writer, Perro S. Buck, says, A hungry man can't see right or wrong. He just sees food. Desire coupled with disbelief leads to destruction.

[2:35] It's not like that was the only tree in the garden. The tree of life was available to them. Life was there for the taking. Think about that. Life was available in a tree over here, and then another tree over here would result in death.

[2:51] And it just so happens, if you choose to follow God's Word, it will result in life. If you don't obey God's Word, you will perish. So what are you going to choose?

[3:02] Will you trust God or not? To trust God equals to choose life. This is actually one of the last things that Moses will say to the people of Israel before he dies.

[3:13] In Deuteronomy 30, he says this, If you obey the commandments of Yahweh your God, then you shall live. But if your heart turns away and you will not hear, you shall surely perish.

[3:27] I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving Yahweh your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him.

[3:42] And this is the key part, for he is your life and length of days. Choose life. God is your life.

[3:53] Therefore, choose God. The Bible is no stranger to people disregarding God's Word for something their eyes desire. Yet from the very beginning, God has not been unclear about the results.

[4:06] from the first pages of the Bible, God has not been unclear about the results of disregarding his Word. Food, along with everything else in creation, is a byproduct of God's Word.

[4:20] And therefore, trusting in his Word is the thing that leads to life. And that's the big point of this passage. It's not about the bread. So much stuff about bread in this passage.

[4:32] It's not about the bread. Bread alone will not keep them alive in the wilderness. Yet it is not merely hunger that's clouding their vision. Now, as you all know, I've got two kids.

[4:45] I know what it is when someone gets hangry. I don't know if you've heard of the term hangry. It's hungry and angry. I know what it's like. But there's a deeper thread running through this.

[4:57] Something is exposed through the Israelites' hunger that is far worse. Something subtle and often tolerated, excused, or even justified among God's people.

[5:10] And it's this. It's not just their grumbling bellies. It's their grumbling hearts. You see, grumbling betrays a lack of gratitude, a lack of vision, and a lack of trust.

[5:22] Another way of saying that is that grumbling reveals an ungrateful, unsegacious, and unbelieving heart. Now, there's a new word that I learned, unsegacious.

[5:37] I don't know if you've heard of that. Someone who is sagacious is someone with good discernment, wisdom, and sound judgment. Someone who is unsegacious is short-sighted.

[5:49] So, not only are these people acting ungrateful for all that God has already done in their midst, but a grumbling heart tends to affect vision and memory.

[6:02] You see, these people seem to be oblivious to the colossal pillar of cloud and fire that is still before them. And also, they seem oblivious to how terrible it actually was in Egypt.

[6:17] They are acting like God is no longer with them and they are talking about Egypt as if it was the good old days. See, that's what a grumbling heart does to you. It makes you misremember things and it makes you miss things that are right in front of you.

[6:35] How quickly they have forgotten their own cries for help in Exodus chapter 2. You see, they don't trust God's word. See how often they talk about dying when all God has done is keep them alive against the odds.

[6:54] And so, this passage is a warning about responding to God's mighty power and amazing grace with an ungrateful heart that cannot seem to recall or thank God for His provision.

[7:07] An unsagacious heart that cannot judge properly the situation nor can it remember properly the misery of your life before God's deliverance and an unbelieving heart that cannot trust God's unfailing word to fulfill what He promised and to finish what He started.

[7:28] Therefore, do you see how serious it is to grumble against God? And so, think of the first readers of this. Not just in the story, but the Torah as it was delivered to the nation of Israel as they entered the promised land and see how they need this warning.

[7:46] Because it's not just a few people here. Verse 2 says, the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled. The whole congregation. It's a terrible, terrible kind of unity here.

[8:01] It's a complete national failure just weeks after their spectacular deliverance. Listen again to what they say. This is what the whole nation is saying, Would that we had died by the hand of Yahweh in the land of Egypt while we sat next to the meat pots and ate bread to the full.

[8:21] You've brought us out into this wilderness to kill the whole assembly with hunger. All they can see is death. They're following God and all they can see is death.

[8:32] It's as if they conclude that Yahweh is only out to kill them. And they would rather it happen back in Egypt than out there. Not only that, they blame Moses for bringing them out.

[8:44] Have they forgotten that it was the Lord that brought them out? And yet they speak as though God bringing them out of their slavery was a bad thing. Do you see the seriousness of their grumbling?

[8:58] Do we ever think that God's deliverance in our life is a bad thing? That somehow this situation we're in, we would rather be back in the good old days when we didn't know God.

[9:10] Thank God that he's slow to anger. A wee while ago a friend of mine told me that our son accused her dad, our son accused his dad of being lazy.

[9:23] He isn't lazy. And so how do you react to something like that? It was the careless, unsegacious comments of a child in a moment of forgetfulness as to how much his parents actually do for him.

[9:36] Now he's not normally like that, but his dad had the mind to walk away rather than to react. It's a good decision. Slow to anger. If that was you, I wonder how you would respond.

[9:49] I know how I would. It probably wouldn't be as good as that. I've been in situations in this steep learning curve of parenthood where I've been taking the boys to go somewhere fun and on the way something less than this kind of grumbling happened in the car where the boys have been bickering or something like that.

[10:08] And me, in my short suffering and very limited patience, has said something to the effect of, well, if you don't stop it, I'm turning the car right around and going straight back home.

[10:20] Might it have been justifiable if God were to just cancel this whole promised land thing and turn them back around and send them back to Egypt if that's what they want, if all they want is Pharaoh's meat pots and bread, if it were not for the fact, as Emmanuel said, that God is faithful, if it wasn't for the fact that God is faithful, he might well have been inclined to turn them back around but here's the difference between us and God.

[10:54] God never turns back on his word. Never. God's not unaware of their need. In fact, God is never unaware of any of our needs but it just so happens that what the people actually need more than bread in their bellies is trust in their hearts.

[11:11] They need to learn to walk by faith. They need to know that as long as they have Yahweh, they have everything. As long as you have God, God, you have everything.

[11:23] This is not about bread, this is about God. Yet it's a sad, sad day when the entire nation want to trade in their freedom for prison food.

[11:35] That's what it is. I recently learned a little fact about Alcatraz, you know, the old prison, the old island prison in San Francisco Bay.

[11:46] Alcatraz Prison. It was the only federal prison in its day to allow the prisoners to have a hot shower. Did you know that? The only prison in its day to allow the prisoners to have a hot shower.

[12:00] Now, it was a prison on an island in the middle of a freezing bay. Why do you think they did that? The thinking behind this was that the prisoners who were acclimated to hot water would not be able to withstand the freezing bay waters in an attempt of an escape.

[12:21] It's, you know, they're warming them up so that they just can't escape. And actually, you can go online and you can find copies of the menu that they had in Alcatraz and it's not bad.

[12:33] They had lobster coming out their ears. There's this sense that like prisoners, the people of Israel have become a thing called institutionalized.

[12:45] This is where they don't know how to live outside of their captivity. They do better in prison. They just want to stay in prison. They don't know how to be free.

[12:56] And in many cases, they prefer the devil they know. It's the same goes, doesn't it? Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. And that's the real problem.

[13:07] They're thinking about God like he's just another Pharaoh. Yet God is one who provides less food and less certainty. They would rather have the devil they know than have to trust God in the unknown.

[13:24] And that just shows that they don't really know God. Trusting in God is walking by faith, not by sight. You see, atheists, unbelievers out there think that believing in God, they think that faith means believing in God without having any reason to believe in God.

[13:41] But that's nonsense. That's not what it means. That's blind belief. And it's not the kind of faith that God's looking for. Walking by faith means trusting God when you don't know what's ahead.

[13:52] That's all it means. Trusting in God when you don't know what's ahead. And you trust in God because you know that he does. He does know what's ahead. And he has shown himself time and time again to be absolutely trustworthy and faithful in everything.

[14:08] That's what it means to walk by faith. It means to know that God is trustworthy and trust in him when you don't know what's ahead because he does. Think about this.

[14:18] we're all probably guilty of this. If God were to reveal every aspect of the future, do you think it would help you? It would only lead us to trust in our own understanding.

[14:31] It wouldn't lead us to trust in God if we knew all the details. The point is that life, life is not in food. Life is not in the future.

[14:44] Life is in God. God. As long as you have God, you have life. It doesn't matter your situation. And so what we need to know is God, not where our next meal is coming from.

[14:58] Now, do you find that hard? Because I do. I find that very hard. But I'll tell you something. I don't want to go back. I do not want to go back to where I came from.

[15:11] Even if there were meat pots and bread, I don't want to go back there. I don't want that life that I had in the prison of darkness. Many people turned back in John chapter 6 when Jesus said that he was the bread of life.

[15:27] Many people turned back. But when he asked his disciples, like Peter, when you know, you know. And Peter said, I mean, to whom will we go?

[15:38] Who are we going to go to? You're the only one that has the words of eternal life. When you know, you know. Only Jesus has the words of eternal life. The only way I can see that you could want to go back is if you didn't realize that it was never about bread, but it was about the baker.

[15:56] It was never about the provision. It was about the provider. It was never about the gift. It was about the giver. But you will be tempted to go back if all you see is your plate instead of the pillar that is before you.

[16:15] Here's a question that really challenged me. Do you ever think that your needs are more present than God? They were so focused on their needs, they couldn't even see how present God was with them.

[16:31] And here's a challenge. Even if you were to die of starvation while trusting in Jesus, do you think that's the end of your story? This manna might have fed them for a while, but it didn't give them eternal life.

[16:45] And this is why Jesus said in John 6, Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. And then they asked, What must we do?

[16:57] What does it mean to work for the food that endures to eternal life? And Jesus said, This is the work that you need to do. Believe in Him who was sent by God. Believe in Jesus.

[17:09] Yet isn't it telling that when Jesus is talking about this in John chapter 6, what do they do? They do the same thing. They grumble. It says that they grumbled. They have the same hard heart against God.

[17:23] Jesus said that they came out not because they saw the sign, but because their bellies were filled with bread. They came out chasing food. They are too busy looking for food to see that God is present and right in front of them.

[17:38] This time, it's not a pillar of cloud and fire, but it's flesh and blood. They think they believe in God, these Jews, in John chapter 6. Yet it is like the people in Exodus 16.

[17:50] Moses said to them, What are we? Your grumbling's not against us. Your grumbling's against God. And it was the same in Jesus' day. The people thought that they were being faithful to God all the while they were grumbling against the one who God sent.

[18:07] Now, that being said, feel free to groan. Feel free to lament. Feel free to cry out. That's not what these people are doing. You can groan.

[18:17] You can lament. You can cry out. In fact, you should cry out to God. But these people are not crying out. They're grumbling in disbelief. Yet what does God do in response?

[18:32] When He heard their grumbling, He could have rained down fire. But He said He was going to rain down bread for them. Not what they deserve. It's God's grace.

[18:43] When Jesus said that He came down as the bread of life, you and I were not getting what we deserve. We were getting something far greater than what we deserve.

[18:54] Now, how many chances has God given you? I've lost count of how many chances God has given me. I've lost count in the space of a week, never mind my life.

[19:06] So many times He could have ended His patience and withdrawn His grace. But He is gracious and merciful. He is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. How should we respond?

[19:18] How should we respond to such kindness from God? Should we disregard His tender mercies? Do you remember what Paul says in Romans 2?

[19:29] He says that the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience is meant to lead us to repentance. That's what it's meant to do. And so God will be kind.

[19:39] God will be patient. God will be gracious. But it will be a test to see if you learn to trust such a kind and faithful God. God. Again, this isn't just about the people in this story, but the nation as they receive the Torah as they enter the land of promise.

[19:59] The people in this story in Exodus 16, they don't yet have the Ten Commandments. They don't yet have the whole law. But yet God says that this provision of manna will test them to see if they walk in His law or not.

[20:13] And so this passage should be a warning to the nation who will later have the law. Are they going to walk in it? The point is if the people cannot keep a few simple commandments about bread in the wilderness, how can the nation possibly keep the law when they enter the land?

[20:35] If they can't walk in a few commandments before they get there, how will they ever keep the law when they live in the land? And so this is a test.

[20:47] It's called a test. And along with the test at Marah that we heard about last week, this word for test, Moses only used one time before this in the Torah, and that was in Genesis 22 when God tested Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

[21:04] So Moses is using this word and signaling back to Abraham and Isaac and asking Israel, are you going to pass the test? You see, Abraham failed many times before, but God kept telling him that the whole promise rested on his son, his own son, a son from him and Sarah.

[21:24] The promise rested on Isaac alone. And so the test to sacrifice Isaac was to see if Abraham really trusted God's word that the promise would only come through Isaac.

[21:35] if God is true to his word, then Isaac must live. And so if Abraham trusted God, he would be able to sacrifice Isaac.

[21:49] If he didn't trust God, he would never have offered Isaac in the first place. That's why the writer of Hebrews can say that Abraham considered that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead because Abraham learned that God must keep his word.

[22:03] God is faithful. If God said the promise is coming through Isaac, then it doesn't matter if Isaac dies. He will live because God is faithful. Trust God's word.

[22:15] Moses uses this same word testing for the Israelites. The Israelites are a people whose very existence is only because God was telling the truth about Isaac.

[22:28] God's word is the only thing that brought about the birth of Isaac in the first place. Without God's word, Isaac would never have been born and therefore the nation of Israel would not exist.

[22:39] Will they trust God's word? This time, it's not a sacrifice that God provides, but it's bread from heaven. It's called manna. It just means in Hebrew, what is this?

[22:52] I don't know if in Scotland we would say, what do you call it? Or something like that. I don't know. They don't know what it is, but Moses doesn't get caught up in trying to figure out what it is.

[23:03] He simply says, it's the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. And so here's the instructions. Sometimes we can stand about asking questions and talk about what this means or what that means when we should just be getting on with it and getting our daily bread.

[23:21] Sometimes we can talk about faith, but James says be a doer of the word, not just hearers. And so it's not about the bread, is it? It's not just about the bread. It's about God. It's about His word.

[23:33] When God provides this and gives them instructions, will they believe His word? Will they believe His word? It's a test about trusting God's word because it was not flesh that gave life to Isaac and it is not manna that will give life to the Israelites.

[23:52] It is God's word that gives life. Will they realize this? Will they pass the test? In our passage, sadly they don't. Verse 19, Moses tells them not to store any of it up for the next day.

[24:07] Verse 20, but they did not listen to Moses. Some of them kept leftovers and it bred worms and stank. They failed. It's like the simplest of commands.

[24:17] Are you going to trust God's word? Here's exactly what you must do and they don't do it. Again, verse 26, Moses told them that they could only keep leftovers for the Sabbath because on the seventh day there would be no manna to gather.

[24:32] But again, in verse 27, some of them went out anyway. Some of them went out in the Sabbath to gather and found nothing and failed again. How will God's promises ever be fulfilled if His people don't listen to His word or keep His law?

[24:50] Do you think the failure of the people will stop God's promises? No. But does it require someone to keep His word?

[25:01] Yes. You see, as Paul says in Galatians 3, the promises of God are not fulfilled in the nation of Israel as the offspring of Abraham, but in the person of Jesus, the true Son of God in whom He is well pleased.

[25:17] He's the true Israel who fulfills the law perfectly. It's no coincidence that after Jesus goes through the waters, He is led into the wilderness for forty days to be tested.

[25:29] It's no coincidence. And He's hungry, and it's no coincidence that the first test of Jesus is with bread. But what does He reply? He says, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God.

[25:46] And He quotes Deuteronomy 8.3. And something you need to know about that verse in Deuteronomy is that it's a direct reference to the hunger and grumbling of these people with the manna in the wilderness.

[26:00] It's a direct reference to that. And so listen to the full verse in Deuteronomy, and we'll see that it was never about bread. Deuteronomy 8.2 and 3 says this, You shall remember the whole way the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness.

[26:18] For Jesus, it was forty days. That He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

[26:29] Why? He humbled you and let you hunger. He let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

[26:51] Jesus passed the test in His trial in the wilderness. He passed the test because He knew that it's not bread that gives life, it's the Word of God. And when He quoted that, He knew what He was doing and He knew that He was doing what Israel failed to do.

[27:09] Now, would God not have provided them food if they hadn't grumbled? Do you think God would not have provided for them? Why didn't He give them food earlier?

[27:23] Do you not stop and think, if God has not yet provided something, is He trying to teach me something? Or is He just a mean God who's withholding good stuff? You see, what Israel failed to realize is that God was trying to teach them something.

[27:37] He was trying to allow them a little hunger to teach them that man does not live by bread alone. It's not about bread. This is not what they need most.

[27:48] They need to trust in God's Word. They wouldn't have starved to death. It was supposed to teach them that it wasn't food that was keeping them alive, it was God. And there's more in this passage than we can possibly cover, but let me encourage you to read over this passage, meditate on it, see how it teaches us to trust God in what we say, trust God in how we obey, to trust God in how we rest, and trust God in how we remember what He has done.

[28:17] A few things as we draw this to a close. We need to remember who brought us out. See, Israel accused Moses of bringing them out, and Moses said, it wasn't us that brought you out, it was the Lord.

[28:32] We need to remember who brought us out, and we need to remember that it was darkness that He took us out of. It was death and misery and slavery that He took us out of. We need to remember that He is with us.

[28:47] And if we have Him, then we have all we need. Don't miss the pillar of His presence because you're too busy looking at what's on your plate. We need to remember that He knows our need and trust that He will provide what we need for today.

[29:06] Lord, help us to stop fretting about tomorrow. Like the people, we often feel like we need to gather more than we will use today. Don't we?

[29:18] We feel like we need to gather more just in case there's no provision for tomorrow. We need to learn to trust God to provide what we need for today. The provision for tomorrow is not the bread that we store up, but the God that we follow.

[29:36] We also need to learn to rest in that trust. It's like the Sabbath. Like them, we feel like our life depends on our own work, as if our breadwinning is the thing that keeps us alive.

[29:52] Is it our breadwinning that keeps us alive? Because if it is, we're going to work on the Sabbath. But the Sabbath teaches us not only to trust in God, but to rest in that trust.

[30:04] The world will be fine for a day without us. God gives us sleep to teach us that He doesn't need us to do what He needs to do in the world. We wake up in the morning and God says, see, everything's fine.

[30:20] I was able to handle everything fine without you. The Sabbath was given for us. We need rest. Rest helps us to trust in God.

[30:31] And in the end, we need to remember that it's not about bread. It's about the Word of God. The reason that they grumbled is because they're actually more interested in the gift than the giver.

[30:44] They're more interested in creation than the Creator. They aren't really interested in knowing God. They just want the benefits. They don't really care even where the benefits come from.

[30:57] Do you know people like that? They just want the benefits, but they don't want God. They want all the things that God gives without God. And they think that somehow, if there's an existence beyond this life, that they're going to have anything good without God.

[31:13] people who want the good things without the good God. And yet, the people of Israel, they're not only just interested in the benefits, they don't care where it comes from.

[31:25] We'll go back to Pharaoh. He gives us meat pots. Doesn't matter where we get it from. They're grumbling because they're not interested in God. They're interested in the things that God can give or that anyone else can give.

[31:37] they just want what they can get. They want what they can get from God. They don't want God. I've been there myself.

[31:49] They just want what you can get. You ever hear people talking like that? Some people follow God, but they follow Him just for what they can get.

[32:03] Real life is found in knowing God Himself. It's something we all need to learn. It's not this, I mean, God provides wonderful stuff.

[32:14] What God gives is good. Every good gift comes from the Father above. It's good and right to give thanks to God for all these good things that He gives us. But without God Himself, none of these things would be so.

[32:29] God is what we need to know God. Do you know the beauty of knowing God? We're all learning it. We're all learning it. Philippians 2 says, Do all things without grumbling, and you will shine as lights in the world.

[32:49] In John chapter 6, Jesus fed 5,000 people plus. And while they were impressed at first, they are actually not as impressed as we might think.

[33:05] Here's the twist in John chapter 6. After feeding 5,000 plus with bread and telling them to believe, they asked Jesus what sign He's going to perform like He didn't already do that.

[33:19] What sign are you going to do so that we might believe in you? And then they say this, because our fathers ate manna in the wilderness. As it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

[33:34] And what they're actually saying to Jesus, if you can imagine the audacity of this after being fed miraculously, what they're saying to Jesus is, aye, that was alright.

[33:46] But what about this bread from heaven that Moses gave the people every day for 40 years? Can you do something like that? Because the Messiah is supposed to be greater, and so Jesus, that was a good trick.

[33:58] But if you claim to be the Christ, you need to do one better. Because Moses gave the people bread from heaven for 40 years, and Jesus says, no, it wasn't Moses.

[34:10] See, you're forgetting. It wasn't Moses. It was my father who gave them it. And second point, reality check, the people who ate the manna still died. So what kind of bread is that?

[34:26] And thirdly, it's not really about the bread. See, God is doing something greater and he can't see it. God is giving them himself. Sending his one and only son down from heaven.

[34:40] Because man doesn't live by bread alone, but by the word of God. And who is the word of God except Jesus Christ, the word incarnate. He is the one who gives life and life eternal.

[34:54] He's given himself. It's not the bread that does it. It's Jesus. And you know, I was listening to Warren Wiresby on this, and he reminded us that back in Exodus, it wasn't a difficult or costly thing for God to open the storehouses of heaven.

[35:18] It wasn't a difficult thing for God to rain down bread from heaven for them. It wasn't very costly for God. He could do that easily. What the people don't realize?

[35:32] The giving of his own son. Think how costly that is. Think how greater that is. The question that Warren leaves us with is that we should look at Exodus 16 and John chapter 6 and ask ourselves how salvation in Jesus is greater than this manna in the wilderness for the Israelites.

[35:56] sometimes we act like it's not. We can't forget who brought us out.

[36:07] We can't forget what we've been brought out from. And we ought not act like Jesus, the bread of life, is stale bread. The people of Israel begin to complain about the manna later on like it's some stale bread.

[36:23] Think about the Israelites when familiarity breeds contempt and every morning they wake up and someone, and you know this, you know when someone first believes how excited they are about the Word of God.

[36:36] You know it. You've seen it. You've experienced it. How excited and passionate someone is about this bread of life. Yet like the people in Israel, can we sometimes be like, oh, that?

[36:50] Oh, that's just manna. It's there every morning. Don't worry about that. The bread of life? Oh, that's there every morning. Don't worry about that. Nothing special about that.

[37:02] Man. Jesus is the bread of life. So even when we come to a time of communion, in our remembering, let us remember that it's not about the bread, but let us see how what God gave us by sending His Son down from heaven is far better and far greater than the manna in the wilderness because He has given us Himself a costly gift of His one and only Son, the Creator and Source of all light and life.

[37:37] It's not about the bread. It's about Jesus. Come to Him. Believe in Him. Trust in Him. And rest in Him. And 1 John, chapter 5 says this.

[37:49] This is the testimony that God gave us eternal life. This life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

[38:01] Put your faith in the Word of God. The Word of God is Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. Well, we're going to sing a song now, and then we're going to come to a time of communion.