Whole Wheat Or White?

Whole Wheat or White? 11-13-05

Have you been to a Subway restaurant lately?

There’s lots of reason’s to go. There’s that menu where all the sandwiches have 5 grams of fat or less, made famous by that Jarred guy. I’m sure you have heard his spiel: I used to weigh 378 pounds and then I started eating at subway and now I’m at my old high school weight of 165 and feeling great. Thank you Subway! Don’t ya just hate that guy? I think when I really started to dislike that Jarred guy was when he made that commercial where he’s standing in a pair of pants that look like they would obviously fit me and he has room in them to walk around. He could have talked about losing weight all day long without giving us that little visual. I was lounging on the couch the first time I saw that commercial minding my own business eating a roll of uncooked cookie dough that somehow, suddenly, lost it’s appeal.

I got up from the couch, wrote Jarred a little letter: I I have a copy right here:

Dear Liar:

I have been eating at Subway since before you were born and my left thigh ways 8 pounds more than your whole body. What drugs did you really take?

P.S. if you want to sell some of those old jeans of yours from the commercial please let me know.

If you haven’t been in a while I’ll tell you something else about Subway. They have always had a million different combinations of meats and cheeses and veggies, fixins, whatever you want to call them. I always get behind some skinny guy “on a diet” who can’t figure out what he wants and then after a thirty minute construction project on his sandwich the counter lady asks him “and what kind of dressing would you like on that” Which guarantees the automatic answer “what kind do you have?” This guy has eaten lunch there everyday for the last three years and he asks everyday “what kind do you have?” Everyday she replies:

We have Ranch, fat free ranch, peppercorn ranch and ranch lite. We have Italian, zesty Italian, creamy Italian, French, German, Russian, and blue cheese, honey mustard, Catalina and thousand island. Which would you like she asks, to which he invariably replies “ I think I just want it plain, I’m on a diet ya know.”

If you regularly go to Subway you have probably at one time or another have experienced everything that I have just described, but now it’s worse, now at the very beginning of the line, just as you are about to get started there are six or seven different types of bread.

I have seen people who simply were not capable of making a timely decision: whole wheat or white, and now they have bombarded them with:

White, wheat, honey oat, Jalapeno, Parmesan oregano, Italian or Monterey, whatever that is.

Can you imagine that people get so wound up in what kind of bread that they have on their sandwich that it turns into a career decision. For some it almost seems to be a life altering decision.

We really shouldn’t be that surprised. you know it’s been that way for at least two thousand years. Turn with me if you will to John chapter 6 verses 26-30.

Just to set the stage a little-bit. Here in John 6 we see Jesus being questioned by a crowd who had the day before seen him feed five-thousand men with 2 fishes and 5 loaves. Many of them had come to Him today because they had been fed by him yesterday and while they still did not appreciate what he could truly give them they did at least follow him in hopes of more bread.

John 6:26-30

26 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.

See they still did not realize that they were in the presence of the Son-of –God that they were in the presence of eternal life, their minds were on food, they were concerned with mere bread and so the material things of life had blinded them. Lets read on:

27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."

Where have we heard that concept before: “do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life”

It rings of the same message we have heard so many times in the New Testament:

Matt 6:19-21

19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.