Well, good morning. I'm here on Main Street in Brigham City this morning to talk about auto parts. No, actually not auto parts. But what I do want to talk about is who's right next door to them. McDonald's.
Because today we're going to talk about food, and I'm going to talk about the connection, the developing connection between us. And our phones. And the subtle seductions that come in the internet when it comes to food.
Well, let me give you some background first, because McDonald's is a fascinating business model. In my lifetime, it has radically transformed how people eat food outside of the home. And it was basically set on the idea that convenience is everything.
So originally the McDonald brothers decided to make a place that was very fast. That was their point. In fact, the original name of McDonald's wasn't their last name. I told it to be quiet to be noisy. Wasn't their last name, it was actually a speedy thing, a speedy food thing.
And Ray Kroc, 15 years later, as a As an aggressive businessman, he bought the business, and he continued to do that and to internationalize the business. But the point about McDonald's is that when it comes to how we eat food, In my lifetime, it radically changed with the entry of places like McDonald's. And other places, of course, followed suit. It's not too well known, but the idea of doing speedy service like that was something that was invented more by White Castle in the Midwest and around Chicago, but they really didn't take the business opportunities of it that McDonald's did. Interesting enough, McDonald's has grown so fast.
Did you know that they have actually 40,000 stores, 40,000 restaurants? That have the McDonald's brand all over the world. And out of that 40,000 restaurants, only a quarter of them are in the United States. Three quarters of McDonald's restaurants are all around The world. In fact, when I finished my two weeks in Vietnam a couple of years ago, And we were headed towards the airport in Ho Chi Minh City.
Right there at Ho Chi Minh City, at the airport was a McDonald's, and my friend Charlie and I said, Let's have something other than rice and fish for a while. And we went into McDonald's, and inside, It was just like the McDonald's at home. It was a taste of home all the way over in Vietnam.
So McDonald's has done a remarkable job in terms of how they've expanded and how they have changed the culture of how we eat food. Today, what I want to talk about is a similar idea about how we eat food. That's going to be radically changed by the internet.
Well, so in this setting with picnic tables. We automatically presume there's going to be food. of one of the things we do when we come to a place like this picnic tables park But there is no food. But I want to talk about what happens when we get to the point in the radical transition away from McDonald's That we don't have to go to McDonald's for food. We don't have to go to them.
They'll come to us, and that's the radical change. that I'm talking about.
Well, there's been an explosion of Companies that will actually make and deliver food to you, not just restaurants, but kind of factories. In my humble opinion, I think it's going to go even more this way in the future, so that people become more and more dependent on the internet just to feed themselves. And I don't need these right now. Yeah. Online food ordering has just taken off in the last decade or so in ways that no one really ever expected.
In fact, Pizza Hut was one of the first to really pioneer how to order pizzas online and have them delivered. That's what they do. But in this internet era where online use is going to just skyrocket in so many ways. And delivery options will start to change and start to get better, then you're going to see some remarkable changes, remarkable changes that are of the same caliber of how a culture consumes food as when McDonald's came on the market back in the 50s. There's a company like Snapfinger today.
Snapfinger is a company that does online ordering for multiple restaurants, and it's a service that they provide so the restaurants themselves don't have to figure out how to hook up to the internet and do something like that. The ordering is easy. That's the easy part today. The delivery is the trickier business, I think, but that's changing rapidly too. There are companies that do meal kit delivery where they put together a kit of food, the raw ingredients, and then expect you to do a little prep, but just a tiny bit of prep.
But those have become very, very successful because of the health food aspect of what those things can do. Places like Blue Apron and HelloFresh do that, and it's really taking off as kind of a trend. In the delivery food business. And then there's a fascinating thing that's happening. And I think this is where things are going to go eventually.
That they call virtual restaurants or ghost kitchens, where someone buys a factory out in the middle of town on the edge of town that has low rent. It's just a factory, it's a warehouse basically, and they set up a kitchen inside a warehouse kitchen and they put together food that's just meant for delivery. And they're called ghost kitchens because they aren't really a restaurant. No one can eat there. They're only meant for delivery, for preparation there and delivery.
And these are taking off like wildfire right now.
So you're going to have these kinds of like factories in warehouses that will prepare food for you and then deliver it to you in a timely manner. What's fascinating about this is that it promises to be healthier for you. Like, you know, services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh are like that. It's probably going to be healthier for you. There'll be economies of scale because now, in a warehouse where a lot of food will get delivered fresh, instead of you having to go out to a restaurant, to a grocery store and pick through the lettuce and see which is good, the tomatoes and see which is good, you have these warehouse deliveries of some of the finest produce in the country.
And because of the economies of scale, it'll be cheaper than what you could do if you went out and buy it for yourself. And thirdly, with the advent of AI. It'll be individualized. That is You will tell it what you like. You'll tell it, you'll rate different recipes that it invents for you, that you eat, and you tell it what you like and what you don't like.
And you give that about a year of it coming to an idea of what makes you happy in food. And then you'll be able to get to a point that when you're feeling starting to feel hungry in some part of the day. You can just go on your phone and say Feed me, said Something that will please me. And it will already know you well enough to do that. And so these factories should be slightly automated, maybe much automated, I don't know.
But they can customize the orders of the food that come to you as though you went to a restaurant where you knew the chef and the chef said, Let me make you your favorite dish, I know what it is. And AI plus this delivery service and ordered food will be able to provide for you a connection to food like we've never known in our existence before. And I think Unlike today, it'll be cheaper because the economies of scale. That kind of dependence day to day on your food coming through your phone. means your phone is going to be your source Have food.
Is there a dependence on that that's dangerous on the backside? And what does the Bible have to say? about food? And are we looking to the wrong place for food. where the right place will actually give us life.
Let's look at a few verses. It's kind of funny when you think about it. Does the Bible talk about food?
Okay. I just to be clear. The adage, you are what you eat, does not come from the Bible. But food is an important issue. It's extraordinarily important, but kind of from a metaphorical perspective, but not really a metaphorical perspective.
It turns out that biblically, The food you eat is actually the metaphor. for the real food that will change your life, that will bring life itself. It's kind of a reverse metaphor. Every time you eat, you're actually reinforcing a fundamental and daily need that you have. And through that design of our biology, God's trying to tell you there's something that you need every single day.
in order to find life every single day on a repeated basis.
Now, Jesus uses the food metaphor, and in the Old Testament, also as well.
So, let me read you a few verses. And we'll talk about food, but we're going to talk about Real Food. real food, not just cheeseburgers and popcorn. Let me read a couple verses for you. Here's one, and this will tell you that that's exactly where we're coming from.
In the Lord's Prayer that we see in Luke 11:3, he says, in the prayer, pray like this. give us each day our daily bread.
Now, you might have read that and thought, well, he just means. cheeseburgers and popcorn.
Well, in a way, it is. It's something that he says back in the Sermon on the Mount: you don't really need to worry about all these things to provide you physical life. You need to worry about the kingdom of God, and all these things will be provided to you. But he's really hinting at something much bigger. That is, Directly from the hand of God is where our daily bread comes from.
That is, our source. of life on a daily basis.
Now, he reinforced that back in Psalm 78.
So, if I read Psalm 78, 21 through 25, the psalm is talking about the Exodus process. Trip. And how grumbling the Israelites were, and how yet God still continued to feed them. While they're out there, so let me just read it for you. Psalm 78:21 through 25.
God is interested in feeding us.
So, therefore, When the Lord heard, he was full of wrath. That's What the Israelites were doing. God was full of wrath against them. A fire was kindled against Jacob. His anger rose against Israel.
And because they did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power, Yet Yet. He commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven, and he rained down on them manna to eat. and gave them the grain of heaven. Man ate of the bread of angels, and he sent them food in abundance. God's in the business of providing.
our daily bread. And again, We're not just talking wheat. We're talking about something that's essential every day for life for us. The whole manna experience was something as well that God was trying to teach them about the fact that what we eat right now is a metaphor for the necessary food, the necessary bread that we need to eat all the time. And so Moses explains this to them in Deuteronomy.
In Deuteronomy 8:3, he says this: very curious. Moses says, And he humbled you? And he let you hunger and fed you with manna. which you did not know, nor did your fathers know. Why?
That he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that. It comes from the mouth of God. We know this phrase. In fact, it's known throughout secular culture. Man does not live by bread alone.
and lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
So, the trust relationship that the Israelites had with God, he said, We'll go out in the desert. And their first observation was, oh, there's no water, there's no food here. And he says, Trust me, I will provide. I will be the source of what you need every single day to live. And that was not only God's promise, that was God's heartfelt desire.
He wanted to feed them. He wanted to be the source. He wanted to be the place that they looked to all the time for their needs. And that's what bread symbolizes. It symbolizes our daily need For life itself.
And bread is the basic, the basic fundamental food. in that sense, the metaphorical necessary minimum. that you need to stay alive. That's what he's getting at.
Now, when you move into the New Testament, Uh John's Gospel is especially good. And when we talk about Jesus being the bread of life, we always go to John 6.
So let me quote you a few things there, and you'll see how the metaphor. is being used in a way to tell us about the true bread.
So this is what we read in John 6. I'll start around 31. Kind of coupling back to what we talked about on the Exodus experience. Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. As it's written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.
And Jesus then said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, It wasn't Moses. It wasn't Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you... Here comes the true bread. from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
And then they said to him, Sir, give us this bread always. And Jesus said to them, I am. The bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. Our essential source of life is Jesus Himself.
And like bread? If you pardon the metaphor. He needs to be consumed every day. He needs to be where you turn every day for the source of life. And Jesus wraps up the whole Exodus thing by that, by saying that the bread that God gives, in the real sense, not the metaphorical food sense.
The true bread from heaven. Is Jesus Himself. I am the bread of life, who, like the manna, was provided out of heaven from the Father for you, so that you might have life. And if I skip down in chapter 6 to verse 48, He continues, I'm the bread of life. He repeats it again.
49. Your father's ate man in the wilderness. And they died.
Okay. But this, this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.
And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. If I jump to 58. This, this is the bread that came down from heaven. Not like the bread your your fathers ate and died. No, whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.
The true bread. Not your wheat-based or gluten-free bread. The true bread is what You consume and use and turn to to give you what you need every day to sustain life. God made us that way. He made us to repeatedly need food to sustain life.
And that repeated consumption of food, of bread, the necessary minimum, is something that's trying to tell us that there is a necessary Fundamental food that we need in order to find life on a daily basis, not just once.
Now that's real bread. That's real food.
So as we as we turn our eyes back toward the internet, I fear for people who will become overly dependent on the internet looking for something that will feed them.
Something that they need every single day.
Something that, if you took their phone away from them, they'd say, Well, how am I supposed to get by today? I need that. I need that every single day. I need that every single day. They're talking like it's bread.
They're talking like it's the source of life for them. And I think that's the back end seduction when we talk about And just ordering food, ordering pizza. being dependent on that for our physical food. But in terms of our spiritual food, in terms of the real food, Where do you turn to be nourished? The Deuteronomy passage and the commentary that Moses makes on the entire manna issue is that.
You live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And who does John say Jesus is at the open of his gospel? The word. Jesus himself. We live day by day, nourished by God's Word, and God's Word is incarnated in Jesus Himself.
That's true food. That's true bread. That's where we should turn for daily necessities. And not the internet. You know, at the end of the day, The food you eat Makes more difference than just keeping you healthy or not healthy.
It's not a matter of how well you live today. 'Cause even as I stand here in this graveyard, Jesus made very, very clear that there is food you can eat that will keep you from dying altogether. And course. He's speaking I would say metaphorically, but it's not metaphorically. In the largest sense of reality, What you consume and what you rely on every day for your daily bread.
That is going to determine what happens to you in eternity.
So, Jesus is trying to tell us that the issues are much, much more important than good nutrition. The issue about what you rely on for the essential needs you have for life altogether, that's real. That's tangible. That's not just metaphoric food. That's real food.
So, the issue really at this point, when we get to the end of the story, here is What you rely on for your sustenance and what you rely on for what you need every day and for eternity, comes from your choices that you make. about what you eat. What do you consume? And as I stand here, it snows. Brave.
reminds me that many people have been deceived. about what kind of food they need to rely on for life. Glad you've been with us, and we'll talk more next week about issues and seductions of The pocket messiah.
