Jesus the Provider

Feeding 5k

As we kick off a new year, we go into a time where everyone wants to think about how they can reinvent themselves. How they can become the best version of themselves. What disciplines they can create to become that person. They RESOLVE that next year at this time they will be a different person.I was thinking about a story that I could tell you where I had successfully kept a New Year’s resolution, but I literally could not think of a time. So I’ll ask you, Who’s ever had a new year’s resolution fail? Maybe the better question is, who’s ever completed a new year’s resolution? So, I thought it was important that during this time we visited a characteristic of God that is very different than that. Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. That Jesus that was there at the beginning with God the father is the same as the Jesus that is working in our lives today. So tonight, we’re going to talk about a character trait of God that has been the same yesterday, today and forever.

There’s a guy in the Old Testament, his name is Moses. When we zoom into the story of Moses, the people of Israel are in captivity by the Egyptians. Moses is born in Egypt but ends up leaving, it’s a whole story that one day we will get into, but today we’re focusing on the later part of his life! He guides the Israelites out of captivity behind a pillar of fire and clouds and they end up in the wilderness. They’re in the wilderness for forty years, and at some point during this time they run out of food. They get hungry. Starving, actually. Like literally, they were about to die. They call out to God and he sends down something called manna. It’s a type of bread. So each morning the people went out and they picked up this manna off the ground and they had just enough to eat. Whteher they grabbed a lot or a little, they had just the right amont. The Lord provided for them. Who knows what language the Israelites spoke? Hebrew, right! In Hebrew, names carried great significance. They named God Jehovah-Jireh. The God who provides.

So the Israelite people came custom to know that God would provide, and they start expecting this. There’s athis prophecy that there will be a new moses, a new prophet who cries out to God for bread, and God will send bread again. If you fast forward a long time to the new testament, we finally get the