A Table In The Wilderness | A Table In The Wilderness

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Okay, good morning everybody. My name is AJ. I'm one of the interns here. The first sermon will be from this text. It's from Psalms 78 verses 12 through 20. In the sight of their fathers, he performed wonders. In the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan. He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap. In the daytime He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a fiery light. He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers. Yet they sinned still more against Him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert. They tested God in their hearts by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God, saying, Can God spread a table in the wilderness? He struck the rock so that the water gushed out and streams overflowed. Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people? This is the word of God. Good morning. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to be back after a week of sickness. And Lisa's almost recovered herself, but she's at home today, which is right and good because she needs to rest. It was, well, what you all have been through, too. Many of you have faced this stuff this year. It's been a weird year for illness, right? And if you haven't got it, I hope you don't. OK, I'll just tell you that. It's great to have you here. So this series, actually, we kind of started 10 days ago on Ash Wednesday. So that Wednesday night, we looked at this theme, and you might be going like, Why? Why would you pick a theme like a table in the wilderness? It doesn't seem like much of a hook. You know, it's not like, what do you do with that? Well, I think... It is more apt today than ever before for all of us to consider because I think a lot of people are facing their own wilderness. Wilderness is not just a piece of geography, although when you are out, especially for the children of Israel, in the middle of what we would say is nowhere, what we mean by that is there are no resources that are at your disposal out in the desert like that. And where life is marginal, that is, it's very possible in a desert, you're not going to last long. A lot of people, I think, are facing that reality today, even in the middle of a city or in the middle of abundance, and yet at the same time, it doesn't feel like abundance. Does it feel like a time of abundance to you? I think wilderness is a time when we are caught between all sorts of realities going on, and we're not quite sure what's going on as well. So we right now are caught in certain economic realities. And I wrote this like 10 days ago, and the line is, Caught between economic realities, warring nations. Whew. a tidal wave of information and misinformation, a sense of apocalyptic doom and despair, and the feeling of helplessness in some ways with the inevitability of, well, advancements in AI and surveillance. All of a sudden, it's like you can get surveilled 24/7, 365, wherever you are. We aren't sure where or why or where we're going or what's going on. And if you don't feel disoriented, Well, maybe in the next week or two you will. It's just that time of the year. But here's the point with this whole understanding. By the way, I don't have this in the slides, but the word for wilderness in Hebrew is midbar. It starts with an amem, and then it's dabar. The word dabar in Hebrew is word. It's the word, and God said dabar Let there be light. Mid, with the mim in front of it, means without. And so what often happens, wilderness is a place that kind of is beyond words. It's without words. It's the feeling of, I can't put my finger on it. I can't figure out what's going on. I feel disoriented. This place feels, and wilderness for Israel was a place of chaos and loss and lack of provision. There are a lot of negativities to it, but at the same time, it wasn't. It was a place of God's providence and protection and His presence. So here's the point. And this I do have a slide on. The wilderness does not need to be bewildering. Don't you like that little play on words? I don't know in English if bewildering and wilderness go together or not, but I just thought often you're in the middle of a place and you're just bewildered. I don't know what to make of this. Well, I think what Asaph has here in our text today helps us understand whenever we feel like we're in the wilderness. So Psalm 78, we're going to explore these three points of what helps orient us in a wilderness time. And they may not seem like, well, I'll explain where I'm coming from with these points. But the first is, why is story important? The second is, what is God's story, the story of God from this text? And then finally, what's the end? Like, where are we going? What's the end of the story? So why is story important? This i...