God's Answer For Life's Uncertainty Series

And so the Lord has been giving them manna to try to change their desire for bondage. But now they move into the beginning terrain of the promise land. And the Bible lets us know that the Lord cuts off the manna, whereby they begin to eat the fruit of the land. They go from garlic and onion to manna, and now fruit. And God says now I am trying to transition you to want something even better than manna, which is the fruit that’s better than garlic and onion. Garlic and onion is pungent; fruit is sweet. And so I’m trying to change your desire to want something better. In my Sunday School preparation for the sermon today I was reading my Bible; and what you will find is that this is the second time they’ve tasted the fruit of the land. In Numbers chapter 13, they send spies into the land; and the spies come back with the fruit of the land. And this is the second time they’ve tasted the fruit; and God says, ‘here is the problem. The first time you ate it, you treated it like a sample; this time it’s an appetizer.’ You’ve had a taste of the land of promise before, but you thought it was a sample; and now I need you to see it’s an appetizer. The reason why your neighbor is quiet is because they don’t know the difference between a sample and an appetizer. When you go to Sam’s, they give you a sample. That’s it, keep on moving. When you go to a restaurant, they give you an appetizer. That is to say that when you taste this, don’t get up and leave. Why? Because that is not the end of the meal; that’s just the beginning of the meal; and it is meant to wet your appetite for you to desire what the cook still has waiting for you in the kitchen. And I don’t know who I came to drop this on, but every blessing of God is not a sample that you walk away from; it is an appetizer that’s meant to wet your palate for something greater that God has in store for you. I wish I had somebody who just believed that more was on the way.

- That better was coming down the road in the land of promise.

- That greater has been ordered.

- That God has more on the way.

God says, ‘Do you just want that little bit, or do you want the fullness of what I have coming?’ What do you really hunger for? God is to get them and you to the place of desire that you don’t just want the sample; but you desire the full meal. Too many of us are filling up on spiritual chips; that when God says ‘here is what I’ve promised you’; you cannot fathom to consume what He really has for you, because you’re stuck on samples and filled on appetizers. And so what many of us do, we box what we came for, take it home and put it in the fridge; knowing that we may eat it later or we may not. And so many of us have all of these fillers (in Egypt and on the outskirts of promise) that when God brings you the fullness of what He really has, you box Him up and put Him away, because you’ve filled up on the preliminary stuff.