Blessed are those who can hear these hard words of Jesus and not turn away!

Blessed are those who realize – there’s no place else to go to find eternal life!

Blessed are those who are willing to have their sins and shortcomings removed and to be filled with all the fullness of God!

So who are you going to follow?

If we got out your checkbook and saw where all the money went, where would we conclude eternal life could be found?

If we followed you around for a day and saw how you spent your time, where would we conclude that eternal life could be found?

Let me ask it another way, when you consider your faith in Jesus Christ – do you recognize that even that faith is the gift of God?

Or do we think that trusting in Jesus Christ is a favor we’ve somehow done for the Lord? Is Jesus “Holy” to us?

Do Jesus’s demands upon us scandalize us? Or will we say “Yes Jesus, I really DO need to be filled with your fullness! I’m not anything on my own.”

Note: Poor recording quality – I’m working on it.

Around Christmas time you can sometimes still see signs and bumperstickers that say “Wise men still seek Him!”

It’s true and that is the reason we are reading Proverbs today along with our Gospel reading.

In the Book of Proverbs, God catalogued wise sayings. One of them was a reminder to God’s people that His wisdom is always available to those who seek it, who admit they’re simple and need God’s wisdom to deliver them. They needed to feast on on the Wisdom God supplied and keep living in their own foolishness and stupidity.

So why were the leaders and even the common people so shocked when Jesus said they needed to eat and drink the gift of God? …