The Dining Room
Dr. Larry Thorson
Our current sermon series is based on the classic sermon, My
Heart Christ’s Home by Robert Munger, which has challenged over 10 million
people to walk more closely with Jesus. Munger
helps us understand the Christian life by
envisioning the human heart as a home with many rooms. Becoming a Christian
involves inviting Jesus into your heart to make His home there, as we see in
Paul’s prayer from Ephesians 3:
I pray that
out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit
in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through
faith. (Eph. 3:16-17)
But that is just the beginning, for
Jesus doesn’t want to only make His home in our heart, but also to renovate
each “room” in our heart – each of which represents a different aspect of our lives.
Today we’re going to look at “the dining room,” which Munger says is “the room
of appetites and desires.”
But before we do, let’s hear from
God’s Word in Isaiah 55:1-3,6-7[1]
1
"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no
money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine
and milk without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor
on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is
good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.
3 Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David. 4 See, I have made
him a witness to the peoples, a ruler and commander of the peoples. 5
Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will
come running to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for
he has endowed you with splendor."
The dining room is the room of appetites and desires. Many houses today don’t have dining rooms per
se. Your dining area might be the
kitchen. For others it might be wherever
the big screen television is.
Regardless of where we eat, we all have appetites and desires that have
to be met on a regular basis.
For the past fifty years or more our appetites and desires as
Americans have exploded. While the
economic downturn and recent environmental awareness has tempered this some,
the last fifty years have seen us as Americans moving toward bigger and better
and more in almost every area of life.
For instance, the Washington Post a couple of years ago ran an article
on
estimated that
Americans that year would spend 22 billion dollars
(6 times the
annual budget of
including the
run-of-the-mill ones most of us use), and highlighted
some which
included such things as a shower described as “a
human carwash
with five shower heads, four body sprays, [and]
instant
steam.” There were some with heated marble floors, a
thermostat
controlled heated toilet seat, a plasma TV on the wall
next to the
tub, portable speakers connected to a wireless ipod
transmitter,
and a remote control panel for the toilet.[2]
This trend toward bigger and better is not just something
we see with
bathrooms in the
That is, with
one notable and very important exception –happiness! Our level of happiness has
actually gone down in the last 50 years! 20% more people in our era say they
are “very unhappy” today than in the 1950’s. The rate of depression is 10 times
higher! We Americans might have bigger malls, nicer lawns, and better cars; we
might dress better, have better hair, better computers, better appliances … and
way better bathrooms… than ever before … but we are less happy.
What’s happening here? The prophet Isaiah describes a very real
human thirst and hunger – so intense that it demands to be filled. And yet it
is clear that what is being talked about is not water and food for our physical
bodies, but about something spiritual – something that will help “your soul
to live” (vs.3). What is being
pointed to is that we are a people who are spiritually thirsty and hungry.
There is deep within every human being an emptiness that needs to
be filled. The Scriptures say that what we are
missing is
God. We were created by God to be in a relationship with Him – to have Him at
the center of our lives. But our problem
is that we try to control our own lives – what the Scripture calls sin and it
has left us separated from God, leaving a void in our lives. It is this void
that we experience deep down as a hunger and a thirst that longs to be
satisfied.
I used to think that was true only for people who had never
invited Jesus as their savior. But the
longer I live the more I see it true for everyone. The rv’s, the boats, the sea doos, the
vacation condos, the cruises, the fancy phones, the new computers and all the
other toys I could name sit in our homes trying their level best to fill us up.
We magnify the problem by seeking satisfaction in the
wrong things. That is, because we are empty, we try and fill
the emptiness with other things – material possessions, pleasure,
accomplishments, activities – trying to fill up the emptiness within. But
because they don’t last, we end up thinking more will fill us – and so we
pursue what is better or fancier or bigger or newer – thinking that better or
fancier or bigger or newer will satisfy us.
But they never will. Not because those things are all bad – but
simply because we aren’t made to be filled by those things. It is why God asks
His people this question in our text: “Why do you spend money on what is not
bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?”
This is what Dr. Munger’s second chapter on the Dining room in My
Heart Christ’s Home is all about – what it is that we are centering our
lives on…what it is that we are pursuing. On the menu for dinner in his dining
room, Munger writes, were “…… my favorite dishes: money, academic degrees,
stocks, with newpaper articles of fame and fortune as side dishes.’ These were
things I liked …. There was nothing so very bad in any of them, but it was not
the kind of food which would feed the soul and satisfy true spiritual hunger.”
In our text today we also hear God responding to this thirst
and hunger.
And the first way He does is by offering to satisfy
our hunger. Note how many
times God invites those who are not
satisfied to “come”
to Him: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come
to the waters;
… come by and eat! Come buy wine and milk.”
God wants to
fill us up – wants to satisfy our hunger.
God doesn’t just meet our hunger by giving us rice and beans. God wants
to fill us up by blessing us with the best: – “… eat what is good,” God calls out to His people (vs. 2), “and
your soul I’ll delight in the richest of fare.” God wants to completely satisfy our hunger and
fill our lives with what is best!
Notice to whom it is offered. It is available to all –
no matter who
you are – God offers it unconditionally.. “You who
have no money,
come buy and eat,” God says! “Come buy wine
and mile
without money and without cost.”
God doesn’t say “You have to be able to pay in order to have your hunger
satisfied.” He doesn’t say, “Those who have what it takes to eat at the banquet
can come.” No! He opens the banquet to anyone! “Come, you who have nothing to
give in return for what I have to offer. Come you who don’t deserve it. Come
you who
have sought to
fill your emptiness with all kinds of things of this
world but have
found it unsatisfying. Come you who believe that
you can’t come
– you are all invited to come and be filled.
The problem, for many of us is that though we’ve begun a
relationship
with Jesus, at times we fall into the mentality which believes we can find
happiness in something outside of God. But what our text reminds us of is that
this is really a lie – and that real life is found in knowing Jesus and serving
Him with our entire being.
So how do we receive what God want to give us? Well according to
our text today, we start … by hearing God’s offer to us. “Listen,
listen to me!” pleads God in verse 2 – something He
repeats in
verse 3: “Give ear … and hear me, that your soul may
live!”
Listen to God today! God is
speaking to every one of us.
And God is
saying, “Give ear, and come to me. Hear me, that your
soul may live!” Hear God’s
invitation this morning – hear Him
offering to
fill the spiritual hunger deep within you!
And then do this – respond to God’s invitation by seeking your satisfaction
in Jesus!
Munger in his chapter on the dining room has Jesus saying it this way:
“Stop striving for your
own desires, your own ambitions, your own satisfactions. Seek to please him.
That food will really satisfy you. Try a bit of it.” And then
Munger says: “And there
about the table he gave me a taste of doing God’s will. What flavor! There is
no food like it in all the world. It alone satisfies. At the end everything
else leaves you hungry.”
My prayer for us today is that all of us would recognize that the
hunger and thirst that we experience in our lives within is really a deeper
yearning for God, and that in recognizing it, we would stop seeking to satisfy
our longing in other places, and instead hear the offer of God to unconditionally
satisfy our hunger. And then in hearing it, that we might come to Jesus and
find true
satisfaction in first knowing Him, and then in serving
Him. Let’s talk to Him about it right now. Let’s pray.