Upside-down Kingdom: What Will We Eat?

It’s kinda weird to hear people in our culture speak publicly about the Thanksgiving holiday. Saying, “Please” and “Thank-you” are important; Canadians are famous for politeness. But heartfelt contentment and gratitude are rare in our culture.

Sure, we’re encouraged to make lists of all the stuff we’re thankful for – most people don’t find that difficult. The biggest trouble is that some of us aren’t sure where to send our thanks. It’s like having a stack of Thank-you cards for amazing gifts, but not knowing where the Thank-yous should go.

Today we’ve gathered in a church building this weekend in part to give thanks. Perhaps you’re not sure where to direct your “Thank-yous”. Thanks for being here or watching this service on your screen. Hopefully we can help your send your gratitude in an appropriate direction.

We’re going to read from Matthew’s gospel. To me it feels like an odd passage for Thanksgiving. It’s part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In Mt 5, 6, & 7, Jesus teaches his disciples how life in the Kingdom of Heaven is different than life in all the rest of the world. From the outside, Jesus’ Kingdom seems Upside-down.

In these paragraphs, Jesus provides a unique perspective on his heavenly Father’s care for his creation.

Read Matthew 6: 25-34

Jesus really knows his heavenly Father. Because Jesus is God from before the creation of the world, he has been with God the Father from the beginning. From countless years of observation, Jesus knows how his Father treats his creation; he knows his Father’s approach to caring for the world.

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Matthew 6:26a (NIV)

If Jesus hadn’t drawn attention to how his heavenly Father provides food for birds, I’m not sure I would have marveled at it.

Over the years, we’ve kept chickens on-and-off. Chickens consume a pile of feed and kitchen scraps. But unless you have a birdfeeder, do you pay attention to what wild birds eat?

Yet wild birds are fed – usually well-fed! Purple martins eating mosquitos on the wing. Turkey vultures catching thermals high in the sky, looking for carrion to clean up. Or robins stalking in the grass, cocking their heads for worms. Swans, bitterns and geese, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, God placed each kind of bird in the food chain. I don’t know about you, but just the thought makes me say, “Wow God; that’s amazing!”

And then Jesus compares his heavenly Father’s care for the birds to God’s care for you:

Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26b (NIV)

Humans are valuable to God because we bear his image. We are created and called to tend and take care of God’s creation.

Jesus invites you to depend on your heavenly Father for food, just as wild birds do.

One of the songs in the OT invites you to marvel at how God provides food for all animals:

All creatures look to you

to give them their food at the proper time.

When you give it to them, they gather it up;

when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. Psalm 104:27–28 (NIV)

It’s an invitation for to trust God to care for you too. If God cares for his bats, toads, and snakes, he’ll care for you too. It’s an invitation to faith.

That kind of faith is a stretch. Not everyone has cupboards stocked with bread and canned goods or a regular supply of milk in the fridge. Jesus’ assurance that his heavenly Father provides daily food might sound too good to be true.

Yet in the OT, there are examples of God providing daily food for his covenant people. After God freed them from slavery and led them through the Red Sea on dry land, the Israelites are hungry in the wilderness. No grocery store or farmers’ market are in sight. The Israelites grumbled and complained about hunger, worried that they’d die of starvation in the wilderness.

That night, God flew in an enormous about of meat. A huge flock of quail landed in and around the whole camp. They had roast quail, smoked quail, pan-fried quail, quail soup, quail salad, sweet & sour quail, BBQ quail, quail wings in a honey & garlic sauce, and with the leftovers: quail-à-la-king! Listen:

The Lord heard you when you wailed, “If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt!” Now the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat it. You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it—because you have rejected the Lord, who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’” Numbers 11:18–20 (NIV)

The next morning, people wondered what the white flakes around the camp were. When they experimented, it turned out to be food. “It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey” (Ex. 16. 31b). They asked each other, “what is it?” so often, that’s what they called it, in Hebrew: “manna.”

But the story of God’s loving kindness and generosity goes beyond food. Forty years of food in the wilderness was just an appetizer for all the good things God has in store. Moses describes the Lord’s care, in his farewell speech just before God’s people enter the Promised Land:

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:3 (NIV)

Jesus brings the word of life from his heavenly Father to a generation hungry for food, hungry for loving-care, hungry for a Father to give us everything we need for life and contentment.

It’s an invitation Jesus makes to you too. Count on your heavenly Father to provide what you need for each day. It’s an attitude of trust Jesus demonstrates his whole life.

Earlier in this chapter, when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he teaches them to depend on our heavenly Father:

Give us today our daily bread. Matthew 6:11 (NIV)

It’s an attitude you’re invited to confess in the words of the HC:

I trust God so much that I do not doubt

he will provide whatever I need for body and soul,

and will turn to my good

whatever adversity he sends upon me in this sad world.

God is able to do this because he is almighty God and desires to do this because he is a faithful Father. Q&A 26

Trusting your heavenly Father for all you needs is a relief and an act of faith. It takes maturity, experience, and situations that stretch your trust in God’s love. It’ll stretch your confidence that God will provide whatever you need for body and soul.

There are no shortcuts. It takes practice. Faith comes from letting go of your self-reliance and trusting God to provide. When you hit the end of all your resources and endurance, you’ll find our heavenly Father is there, full of love, compassion, and all manner of good things. It’s a discovery you’ll make again and again on the journey of faith.

Let me be clear: we’re not talking about blind faith. You develop this kind of faith with your eyes wide open to God’s goodness and love. Some of you are in a Bible study exploring God’s grace for his people. Nothing shows God’s grace more than God’s rescue plan.

· Human sin and wrongdoing cut us off from God b/c God in his holiness and justice won’t leave sin unpunished. Sin leads to death.

· The trouble is, I can’t consistently do good, at least, not up to God’s standard of holiness. I can’t save myself.

· That would be the end of the story . . . except:

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16–17 (NIV)

· Jesus was condemned to die on the cross. That’s where his heavenly Father put the full penalty for human sin on Jesus. He paid the price for all our sin.

· But he rose 3 days later. Jesus’ resurrection demonstrates that sin and death are defeated. All who have faith in Jesus are raised to life with him.

· We’re rescued to tend and take care of God’s creation.

· You’re invited to accept Jesus’ offer of life through faith in him.

· And after Jesus has lovingly saved your life and graciously adopted you into his family, do you really think God would allow you to starve to death?

· God provides everything we need for life and service in his Kingdom!

Listen to Jesus’ invitation to his followers:

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’

or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’

For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Matthew 6:31–32 (NIV)

Your heavenly Father knows what you need. In his generosity, God provides for our needs.

You are invited not to worry.

You’re invited to trust God will provide all you need.

Thanksgiving is an annual holiday to celebrate God’s providence and to remind you to give thanks to God for all his good gifts. We’re reminded in the NT:

Every good and perfect gift is from above,

coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,

who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1:17 (NIV)