Talk About Fast Food! Series

Intro:

1. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) recently released new data on the number of people worldwide that are being affected by the world food crisis, and that number is exceeding 1 billion for the first time in human history. To make matters worse, the WFP also announced that the amount of food aid currently available for those most in need is at a twenty year low, and the organization is currently facing a $4.1 billion budget shortfall.

Food prices have increased dramatically around much of the world as a result of the recent financial crisis, and an estimated 150 million people were added to the ranks of the chronically hungry in 2008 alone. There have been food riots in many of the hardest-hit countries, and the situation is only expected to get worse.

Recent food shortage statistics released by Oxfam are disturbing:

* Chronic hunger, or the lack of a sufficient amount of nutritious food, currently affects 1 in 6 people worldwide.

* 13 million children are born every year with growth and development issues due to the mother’s malnutrition.

* Many of the world’s poorest people spend 80% or more of their annual income just for food, and even this is often not enough to provide them with adequate amounts of food.

* More than 24,000 people die every day due to hunger related causes.

* The percentage of overseas development assistance allocated to agricultural development has dropped dramatically in recent years - from almost 20% in 1980 to less than 3% today.

* In the developing world, 50% to 60% of all childhood deaths are hunger related.

* More than 5 million children die every year simply because they do not have access to adequate amounts of food and water.

2. Who is responsible for food shortages - man’s rebellion against God! God never created a world with food shortages.

3. Day three - the InExhaustible supply of food.

Trans: The Self-Existent God not only brought ever thing into Existence - including a planet made just for mankind; not only did He turn on the lights; not only did He make a perfect climate; but He put an inexhaustible supply of food for mankind. Gen. 1:9-13

I. FIRST, APPEARING OF THE EARTH MAKING FOOD POSSIBLE.

9-10

9 Then God said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so. 10 God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good - the water must be removed before human beings can benefit from the earth that God created for them.

The water went into underground reservoirs, rivers, lakes, and seas.

"Some of these reservoirs were open directly to the waters descending from above, others were formed as great subterranean chambers within the crust itself. All were interconnected by a complex network of tubes and waterways, so that in essence they were all "gathered together unto one place."

Although in one "place," the waters had assembled in numerous distinct basins, so that God called this "gathering-together of the waters Seas" (i.e., a plural term). These were, of course, not the same as our present seas, since the antediluvian arrangement of continental and marine areas was completely changed at the time of the Flood." [The Genesis Record]

The dry land appeared, "Surveys of the ocean floor and the mid-Atlantic rift indicate that all the continents were once joined together in a supercontinent, which fits verse 9. Some believe the changes that came at the time of Noah’s flood may have broken the single land mass apart." [Complete Biblical Library Commentary]

This is another example of God’s power and sovereignty. He can make the sea stay in their place; He can part the Red Sea or Jordan rivers; He can bring universal judgment on the entire planet in the Flood.

"8 "Or who enclosed the sea with doors When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; 9 When I made a cloud its garment And thick darkness its swaddling band, 10 And I placed boundaries on it And set a bolt and doors, 11 And I said, ’Thus far you shall come, but no farther; And here shall your proud waves stop’?" Job 38:8-11 (NASB)

"7 He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the LORD; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. 9 For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." Psalm 33:7-9 (NASB)

"7 At Your rebuke they fled, At the sound of Your thunder they hurried away. 8 The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them. 9 You set a boundary that they may not pass over, So that they will not return to cover the earth." Psalm 104:7-9 (NASB)