GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD

In this month’s Reader’s Digest, a mother tells of how her daughter who was only three year olds when her baby brother was born. The family had just moved into their new home shortly before they brought the new baby home. A couple of weeks later, her daughter suggested that they move.

When her mother asked why pointing out that this was their new home , her daughter sighed and said she was tired of living in a house with a baby in it!

Now the Bible has something to say about sibling rivalry. If we were to explore all the Bible has to say, we would be here all day and find ourselves in every story. Right off the bat, right from the starting blocks, before the horse gets out of the gate, we are plunged into a horrific bloody story of brother killing brother.

However, the first word in Scripture cannot be the last. The story itself does not tell us why God accpted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s offering. Whatever the reason, Cain, the older brother, an apple of his mother’s eye, murders Abel whose ‘blood cries out from the ground." Here is the first murder, committed with deliberate deceit against a good brother and a good man.

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A Polish story captures this murder. It begins as Adam & Eve are standing on the bank of a brook, and before them lay the corpse of Abel, who had been killed by Cain. As they sat there, not knowing what they should do with the corpse, suddenly a little bird fell from a nearby tree. The little bird was still very young and could not fly. The fall killed it. Adam & Eve looked at the dead bird and saw that it was a raven. Soon the old raven flew by, and when he saw that his young one was dead, he scratched a hole in the ground with his feet, and laid it inside. Then he scratched the hole full and flew away. Adam and Eve observed all this and followed the raven's example. They made a hole in the earth, laid Abel's corpse in it, and covered it with earth. This was the first human grave.

This just in ........ A Berks County man will face homicide and related charges in Northampton County Court for allegedly killing his brother and cutting up the body. Stephen Austin, 26, of Birdsboro is accused of killing 22-year-old Jonathan Austin at their mother's home in Upper Mount Bethel Township in May of this year. Austin said Jonathan was manipulating their mother into buying him things,. He told police that his brother swung at him first, and that he hit his brother in the head with a crowbar, took his body into his Jeep, then drove into a field near their mother's house off Institute Drive where he left the body and went shopping with his wife.

He returned later with the tools needed to cut the body up. He was arrested with his brother’s head and hands wrapped in bloody blankets in his jeep.

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Then there is the tragic story of Isaac & Ishmael, half-brothers, both sons of Abraham, but Sarah, the mother of Isaac, was so insanely jealous of Ishmael, who really is Abraham’s oldest son, that she forced Abraham to sent both Ishmael and his slave mother Hagar away, which Abraham obediently did. Now that is where things take a turn. Jews and Christians believe that Isaac was the son the Abraham offered up to God in that mysterious and disturbing test where God instructed Abraham to sacrifice his son on an alter. The Muslims believe that the son Abraham offered up to God was Ishmael.

The popular show "The West Wing" tackled the problem of terrorism after September 11 by airing an special episode entitled "Isaac & Ishmael. In this episode a group of students are ‘locked’ down while visiting the White House, a regular occurrence at the White House when there is a breach of security.

The time ‘locked down’ is spent by the students asking the White House / west Wing staff questions related to terrorism and Muslims. Josh explains that when we in the west thinks of Muslim extremists - we need to think about the Klu Klux Klan - an extremist white supremacy group that has Christian leanings. Then Toby takes over and explains that when one thinks of the Taliban we need to think of Nazis - because the Taliban extremists are as likely to kill their own as they are to kill Americans or Australians, or Spanish or English or Canadians.

The Hezbollah - established in Lebannon is an umbrella group of radical extreme Shite Muslims whose desired goal is to eradicate Israel and all Jewish people from the face of the earth. The Hezbollah opposes the west, seeking to establish an Islamic state modeled on Iran and it is a bitter enemy to Israel as is Iran. It is also linked to Syria, who is also a bitter neighbour to Israel.

Here is a breaking news story. New Delhi, Police today arrested a teenager who allegedly killed his nine-year-old brother he was babysitting in a fit of rage after the younger sibling refused to go to bed in an East Delhi area. Suhail (9), one of seven siblings, was yesterday found dead in his house - his throat slit.

A few years ago a study was released that showed that Jews and Arabs shared a common genetic heritage - passed from father to son - which would indicate that they had more in common with each other than with any other group outside their respective cultures. When the prophet Mohammad first came on the scene. he was as much a Jew as a Jew could be. He offered Jews a new religion, while at the same time offering them a staple diet of Jewish customs and rituals. If you want to win people over you are best to ‘adopt’ their culture.

When the Jewish Rabbi’s did not embrace Mohammad’s new religion, Islam, ( meaning Surrender to God ) and Muslims - (meaning people who have surrendered to God -) he denounced them. He then requested his followers of Islam - which served to unite the Arab countries against Rome - to turn and pary towards Mecca - where Mohammad was born - instead of turning toward Jerusalem to pray. And a whole new extremely fast growing religion was born.
Islam now stretches as far away as India and Africa, but it would do well for us to remember that Mohammad first built his new religion on the precepts of both Judiasm and Christianity. Mohammad was especially cruel towards Jews.
It needs to be noted at this point in the sermon that the vast majority of Muslims, are law abiding citizens of the countries in which they live. There is a radical Islam at work in the world today that seeks to -eradicate evil - which is seen as being the western civilization that allows people to break God’s laws arbitrarily.

In those countries that practice a radical Islamic interpretation of the Qu-ram, if you steal - you lose your hands, and if you continue, eventually you lose your feet. Recently, a 16 year old mentally ill girl was personally hanged by the judge, he actually put the noose around her neck for having sex with men outside of marriage. In our country, under our laws the men would have been charged with sexual abuse, but in Iran, they walked free. Only the girl died.
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PENALTIES imposed by Iran's religious mullahs include: Theft: Amputation of hands or feet for persistent offenders. Adultery: Death by stoning. Unmarried Sex : 100 lashes. Conversion to a Religion other than Islam - Death. Sodomy: Death for adults, 74 lashes for consenting child. Lesbianism: 100 lashes, or on the fourth occasion death. Homosexual Kiss: 60 lashes. Touching - death.

Now in an attempt to bring this all together, and I am surprised as to how the sermon has arrived to this point, but it all began when reading some commentaries on the only miracle mentioned in all four Gospels - The Feeding of the Five Thousand. What many people aren’t aware of is that there is another miraculous feeding of four thousand recorded In Matthew and Mark.

William Barclay makes what is a truly the amazing connection between these two feedings based on the two very different types of baskets used to .....

In the feeding of the five thousand the basket is a particular Jewish basket, used by Jewish people to carry around ‘kosher’ food so that they would not break the Jewish religious laws. The other basket was used by Gentiles and was much larger - more like a hamper and perhaps used to store clothes.

Barclay notes that the first feeding of five thousand occurred in the spring when the grass was still green. In the feeding of the four thousand, the people sit on the ground, it is late summer, early fall, and the grass is no longer green because of the heat of summer. From this also we know that Jesus in the 5000 feeding was among Jews in Jewish territory, and in the 4000 feeding he is the area of Decapolis - or the place of ten cities and among Gentiles - non-Jews.

As Barclay points out, the truly wonderful aspect of both these feeding stories reveal a great truth to us about God: Jesus not only shows us the compassion and mercy of God towards the hungry Jewish people, but also shows us the compassion and mercy of God towards the Gentiles, which included anyone not of the Jewish faith, including those people who became adherents of the Muslim faith, who we also know were descended from Abraham and have the same genetic code as their Jewish brothers and sisters.

The Gospel of Christ, when looked at very closely, seeks to overcome all human obstacles that seek to divide us and cause us to kill our brothers. In Christ, there is neither Jew or Arab, black or white, male and female, Catholic or protestant, French or English, for we are all God’s children, but then right from the very beginning the Bible teaches us that brother will kill brother, and because of human sin, we need a Saviour. God sent his one and only Son ........

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