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[MUSIC] Speak to our hearts, O God. May we have listening ears. [music]

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Amen. And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph and said, "Give us bread, for why should we die in thy presence?

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For the money faileth." Genesis chapter 47 verse 15 reading from the King James Version. The subject of the message, "Give us bread." It came unto Joseph and said, "Give us bread." This is a cry made in time of famine.

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"Give us bread." Bread is the sustenance of life. It is what keeps us going. It provides strength for the journey, energy for the trials.

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Bread is meaning. We all need bread. Each of us in some way is engaged in the search for meaning. We say in our hearts, "Give us bread."

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Bread to satisfy the hunger of our heart. Bread is our means of salvation. We cannot live without bread. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray,

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give us this day our daily bread. Now this plea is made to Joseph. There is a famine. This famine had been predicted by Joseph.

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He told Pharaoh about it when he interpreted his dream There would be seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. They set about to make the necessary preparations to see that they would be protected, that the needs of the people

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would be met. And we notice that this famine came to Canaan. Canaan is a land known for its fertility. Canaan is where we think of the people of God

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as being located, his chosen people. And the fact that the famine comes to Canaan should remind us that even in a world of plenty, that there may be those who live in poverty.

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It's possible to be surrounded by an ocean and yet not have water to drink. As the saying was, water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

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But the famine comes to Canaan. The cry is give us bread. Joseph's brethren make the pilgrimage to Egypt crying for bread.

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They had not only empty stomachs but they also had empty sacks as they entered Egypt. They brought money. They were prepared to pay the price.

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This bread was purchased at the marketplace, or it could be purchased at the marketplace, so they were prepared to pay the market price. And we do need bread to satisfy our biological needs.

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Both the sacred and the secular are related. There was a sense in which Canaan goes to Egypt for bread. There was a relationship between the people of God the people of this world. Give us bread. We need bread for survival. We need

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clothes to wear, we need houses to live in, we need food to eat. Give us bread. First we read that there is a famine in Canaan and Canaan has to come to Egypt for bread and then in the course of time the famine comes to Egypt. The famine comes to God's covenant people, it comes to those who belong to the

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community of faith, and then it comes to those who are in Egypt. Don't think that because you may be a child of God, you may be a pilgrim of the faith, and you have residents in Canaan, belong to the church, that we escape the famine. Tough times come to all. They come to people who are dwelling in Canaan, as

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as well as those who dwell in Egypt. You know, sometimes people think that because they are members of the church, because they are committed to Christ, because they have made a decision for him,

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they say, "Why should this happen to me? "I see people outside, you know, who, "outside the church, who are doing as well as I'm doing." Well, the famine comes to Canaan,

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and it also comes to Egypt. So both those who are in the church as well as those who are outside the church will encounter hard times.

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There are times when the cupboard is bare and the cry goes up, "Give us bread." There are times when we do not find meaning in human existence.

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There are times when our strength fails and we cry. "Give us bread." There are times when the soul hungers and is overcome by emptiness. The famine comes to Egypt.

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And notice that it comes to Egypt, the land of the Nile River, that place that is regarded as the breadbasket of the ancient world, and yet the famine comes to Egypt. does not dwell with us always, adversity comes. There are years of plenty and years of poverty. Few of us would have thought, we wouldn't have thought just a few years ago that when Texas was

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getting along so well, you know, with an economy established on oil, we wouldn't have thought that we would have had the kind of plunge in our economy that we have today. Some people thought it would just go on and on and on. But the famine comes to Egypt and the people bring money to buy bread and after a while their money runs out and then they present their cattle,

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their property, they bring their possessions, and then they give their land for bread. And then finally they sell themselves into slavery. They sell their personhood for bread. This event occurs in every age. We witness farmers who are in the business of raising food, going broke, losing their farms because of mortgages. And the cry is for bread to

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find meaning in life. Give us a way to live. Help us survive. Give us bread. We We see the hungry in our land who cry out for bread. And we see the economic downturn in our state and we see it in our nation, a nation which was once radiant with prosperity and we find ourselves in an economic slump and we find

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ourselves having been one of the leading nations of the world as far as prosperity is concerned and now we are considered one of the leading nations in the world as far as our debts are concerned. Give us bread.

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Give us strength, give us meaning. Help us to find satisfaction in life. Lord, give us bread. Well, when this cry was made during the French Revolution,

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Marie Antoinette said, "Give the people cake," when they cried out for bread. But what is really needed is not a dessert, people need a dinner. And the cry is for bread.

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What shall we do? That's the question. We must look for sources of redemption. And so the Egyptians came to Joseph, the prime minister of Egypt.

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Joseph is the provider. By his arrangements, provisions were made to feed the people. There were storehouses in Egypt that contained grain. There was bread there and they were asking for it.

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Joseph the provider, the one who has been instrumental in providing bread in this starving land, that there is bounty in the midst of their poverty. And so they cry for this bread.

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And if we would derive meaning from our existence, we must relate ourselves to the source of life. They had to relate themselves to Joseph. He was the means.

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And there is one who hears our feeble cries "and who pities our groans when we cry out "for meaning in life, when we cry out for strength in life, "when we cry out, give us bread."

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So the cry is heard, and the need is met. And Joseph gives them seeds, so the story goes, to sow in the land. They don't leave Egypt in search of greener pastures.

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And many people run from here to there thinking, well, it's gonna be better here than somewhere else. But they don't leave Egypt in search of green pastures. They stay right where they are

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and they learn to make the best of a bad situation. And that's what we are called to do in life time and time again. When we find things very difficult for us,

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when we cry out for bread, we can't run away from the situation that we are called upon to stay where we are and by the grace of God, make the best of that situation.

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So, they're given seeds to sow. And I think that's a message for us as a people. You know, when we look at our condition, so often we find ourselves just being consumers.

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Some people try to go through life saying, gimme, gimme, gimme. Give us this, give us that. Some are too satisfied just to be on the welfare rolls.

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But it's a message for us in that somehow, some way, we are called upon to be producers, not just consumers. And on a nation that is strong must be a nation of producers.

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One of the problems we're finding out today in our nation is that we are buying more from other nations than they're buying from us. And that's creating a crisis, not only in our nation,

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but it's creating a crisis in our world. But here the call is give us bread. There is hope. And so they receive from Joseph

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Seeds to sow in the land. Seeds to sow. Not only, not only do they receive bread,

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but they receive seeds. You know, it's not only just to ask for a fish. It's so much better when you learn how to fish so you can catch your own fish.

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And so Joseph gives them seeds so that they can plant these seeds that they can have their own bread. They are given seeds.

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Oh, in the midst of all of our difficulty, the wonderful thing about it is God gives us some seeds to sow that will strengthen us. He gives us -- he makes it possible for us

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to have the seed of faith. You know, the seed is such a -- just a tiny little thing. It's always been a mystery to me how tiny a seed is and what comes from that tiny seed.

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But what you ought to do is to sow it. Sow it. Sow it in the morning. Sow it at noontime.

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Sow it in the evening. Whatever may be the time that you have, sow the seed. That little tiny seed. Sow it while you have the chance.

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Joseph gave them seeds to sow. Seeds to sow. And even in a time like this, in a time of famine, when things are difficult in the midst of tough times.

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God wants us to sow the seed of faith. Seed of faith. Jesus said that if you have the faith even of a tiny busted seed, that you can move the mountain.

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And so God calls upon his people to sow the seed of faith. Keep faith, not only in yourself, would keep faith in God that the eternal still provides for his people and that God through his grace has not left us alone. So the seed of faith. Well these people were to give so

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much of what they produced to fare well in their harvest. 20% one-fifth was to be given as a tax to the government. And you know that's not much different from what we are facing today. Some of us you know the government is asking for a bigger bigger piece all the time. One-fifth, 20% was to be given. But you see it's

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all in relationship to the throne. It's all in relationship to the ruler of Egypt. Well, we have a ruler who is above all of us. And our living is to be in relationship to him. And when we get ourselves right in relationship to the ruler of this universe, then our human situation changes. So it's in

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relationship to the throne that they make some revolutionary changes and they began to sow seeds of faith, seeds of hope, seeds of hope. Yes! That somehow there is always hope. That there is always this opportunity to strive, to strive to go on and on. And you see this survival depends on love. The seed of love that we are to

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embrace life in spite of times of famine. We embrace this life. And so the cry "Give us bread." This cry is answered. God always answers this cry when we come and and rightly relate ourselves to the throne of grace, the cry for bread is always answered.

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Can't you hear those children of Israel as they cross the Red Sea and get out there in the wilderness and the cry is give us bread, give us bread, give us bread?

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And God rained down manna from heaven, They had bread. They had bread. Cry for bread is always answered by the eternal. And then we turn the pages from the Old Testament to the New Testament and we see God's son Jesus Christ. The multitude has followed him all day and they are weary and they need bread.

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And that was the disciples who said, "Lord, send them away. Send them away." But he says, "No, do not send them away. See what they have.

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What resources do they have?" And they found there a lad with some loaves and two small fish. He said, "Well, give it to me." And they brought it to him.

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And when they brought it to him, he blessed it and a miracle occurred. fed the 5,000. A miracle. That God always performs a miracle, just a gift of the seed. The seed that you have in your hand is a miracle that God has placed within our reach. A miracle. God always works miracles. It's a miracle to see what a seed produces. It's a miracle.

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And oh I know, they sowed the seeds and we sow our seeds. But it's God who really works a miracle there. God is at work. He's at work always performing miracles in our lives. You know some people don't see that.

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"Oh Reverend, you talk about bread. I heard my own bread. I got up and I worked and I went through this. I went through this, I made my $40 this week, I did it. I don't see why God had anything to do with that.

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Well, some just don't understand. When you look at that bread on the table, you need to look farther than just the bread you see there. Because back of the loaf is the snowy flour,

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and back of the flour, the meal, and back of the meal are the wheat and the shower, and the Son and the Father's will. God's behind it all.

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It's God who gives us the strength. It's God who wakes us up. It's God who enables us to go to work on Monday morning. It's God who gives us bread.

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We only cooperate with him in the process of sowing, sowing, sow, give us bread. God answers by giving them through Joseph seeds to sow. God answers our cry today by giving us seeds to sow, seeds of faith, seeds of hope, seeds

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of love. He gives us seeds to sow, gives us a faith that will sustain us in tough times. He gives us strength in the midst of our weaknesses. God gives us hope to lift us over the hills, and God gives us power to just keep on going on.

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And he leads us from actuality to potentiality, and that one who does that, who dwells in our midst, is the one who speaks, saying, "I am the bread of life. I am the help that you need. I'm the hope that will guide you through the night. I'm the love that will never let you go.

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All you have to do is call on me. I am that bread, that heavenly bread. And so, he gives it to us in the midst of all of our trials. And you know the wonderful thing about it, when you think about it,

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you plant the seeds, you know, you put it in the earth, is buried there. You know, after you do all that, all you can do is wait. You ever think about that? All you can do is just wait for it to come up. You can't make it come up. All you can do is wait. And that's the miracle of it all! That's so awful in life! We can do all that we know to do, and then

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that I'm doing all of that, just wait on God. And that's the mystery, I call it the mystery of our history. That in the midst of it all, what we've done, all that we know to do, I used to hear my mother say time and time again

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that I did all I knew to do, and I just left it to God. And God always steps in, God always steps right in and performs a miracle in our lives, just wait on him. Oh, it's dark.

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It's a dark night, Isaiah says. Oh, we are out here in Babylonian captivity, and it's dark. But we have some seeds of hope that we have planted.

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We have some seeds of faith that we have planted in the midst of the darkness. And we have some seeds of love, and we'll just wait. We'll just wait on him.

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We'll wait for the seeds to produce an abundant harvest. And we'll just wait on God. Just keep waiting. And he says, in answering that, he said,

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"They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, "and shall mount up with wings as eagles, "they shall run and not be weary, "and they shall walk and not faint."

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- That's good. - That's good news. That when your soul seeds of faith, hope, and of love, that there is a harvest.

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There is a harvest. There's a harvest of good works. There's a harvest of happiness. There's a harvest that only is made possible by the power of God in our lives.

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So we come now to extend the invitation to Christian discipleship. ship. Now maybe someone here, maybe the seed of faith has been deposited in your life. Maybe you've moved to Austin, you don't have a church home. Seed of hope, seed of love. We ask you to come forth now and unite with the people of God as we

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extend this invitation to those who believe in Jesus Christ and who accept him as Lord, sowing, bringing in the sheaves, sowing and reaping. I invite you to come now. [piano music]

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Sewing in the morning, Sewing seeds of kindness, Sewing in the noontime, ♪ On the dewy ♪

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♪ Waiting for the harvest ♪ ♪ On the time of reaping ♪ ♪ We shall come ♪ ♪ Which He does see ♪

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♪ Bringing in the sheaves ♪ ♪ Bringing in the sheaves ♪ ♪ Bringing, bringing in the sheaves ♪ ♪ Bring it in the stream ♪

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♪ We shall come rejoicing ♪ ♪ Bring it in the stream ♪ ♪ Bring it in the stream ♪ [MUSIC]

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♪ Bring the wind ♪ ♪ We shall talk rejoicing ♪ ♪ Bringing in the sheep ♪ ♪ Sowing in the sun ♪

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♪ Joy ♪ ♪ Going in the shadow ♪ ♪ Fearing me the clouds ♪ ♪ No ♪

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♪ Their tides changing ♪ ♪ Biding by the harbour ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ And the tide of repentance ♪

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♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ We shall come ♪ ♪ We shall come ♪ ♪ We shall come rejoicing ♪

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♪ Bringing in the sheep ♪ ♪ Bring him in ♪ ♪ Bring him in ♪ ♪ The sheep ♪

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♪ Bring him in ♪ ♪ Bring him in ♪ ♪ Bring him in ♪ ♪ The sheep ♪

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♪ Bring him in ♪ ♪ We shall go ♪ ♪ With Jesus here ♪ ♪ Bringing in the shaves ♪

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♪ Bringing in the shaves ♪ ♪ Bringing in the shaves ♪ ♪ We shall march ♪ ♪ Rejoicing ♪

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♪ Bringing in the sheen ♪ [MUSIC]