Fresh Manna 2021

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Strong Tower Radio

Fresh Manna By Raymond Holmes

Sean Brizendine

C. Raymond Holmes

My Father and I

♪♪♪ Fresh manna fell to the ground as a gift from God while the Israelites were in the wilderness.

It was fresh from the ovens of Heaven, baked by the Master Baker himself.

How the Israelites must have anticipated the taste and the smell of each morning's delivery.

Just like the Israelites, you too can now experience the taste and smell of fresh manna.

Raymond Holmes, pastor of the Bessemer Christ Community and Greenland Seventh-day Adventist Churches, along with the assistant pastor, Sean Brisantine, who also pastors the Houghton Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Now enjoy this Father's Day message from them both.

I have been thinking for and praying for many months about what to say today.

But the book of Joel in the Old Testament says that when the Lord pours out his spirit, old men dream dreams and young men see visions.

So it was in the dream I had 1 night that I got the idea of what I should do today.

So these 2 messages that Pastor Sean and I are gonna share with you are actually testimonies, not prepared sermons.

I wanna read what he just read to the kids.

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

So that's what I'm going to try to do today.

And I hope to get that meaning to what I'm going to share.

He came to America when he was 12 years old.

His father had come first to get a job and earn enough money to send for his family.

And if I remember right, there weren't too many children at that time.

His family settled in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which is just across the border from the state of Illinois, not too many miles away, just north of Waukegan, Illinois, where my mother's family had settled.

And they also had come as immigrants from Finland.

Both of the families were Swedish-speaking Finns.

The Swedes called them Svensk-Finnor, and the Finns called him Suomen Ruotsalainen.

As a child, of course he grew up in Kenosha, but as a child I remember him as a very angry person.

Very often he got into a bloody fist fight with somebody.

They were usually up on McAllister Avenue in Waukegan, outside of a saloon, and they were bloody.

I remember 1 time after his fight with this guy, and we were walking home, which was only about a half a block away, and I asked him, who won?

And he said, who was standing when it was over?

And of course he was standing, but both of them were all bloody.

And I did notice that when he was in a fistfight, he always aimed at the head, the face, the nose, the chin.

And I remember that he hit my mother in the head too, sometimes, with his calloused bricklayer's hand on the side of the head real hard when he was angry with her for who knows what reason.

I remember at least twice when he was angry with me about something and I can't remember what it was, he would slap me real hard on the side of the head.

And I remember once my mother crying out, Carl, not in the head.

Of course, when he came to the United States, his name changed to Carl because they couldn't call him Cully in schools.

And he changed his name from Horlum to Holmes because nobody could pronounce Horlum the right way.

I don't think he was an alcoholic, but he did get drunk quite often.

And if I needed to see him for something, I had to look for him in the taverns.

You know, if I needed to ask him for a dime or a quarter for something or whatever.

I'd have to go up there to McAllister Avenue and check the taverns.

And I remember I had a problem with a bully when I was in grade school.

He would pester me on my way to school and threaten me and make my life miserable.

And I started walking to school through the alleyways instead of along the sidewalks to avoid him.

And finally, I told my father about him, and my father said, bring him home.

So the next time I saw Jackie Dixon, I persuaded him to come home with me.

And I thought my father would really get after him, you know, and put him in his place.

And he actually gave him an apple and that made me feel very, very bad.

In fact, the guy was worse after that and I still had to try to walk to school to avoid him.

I don't remember ever receiving a hug from my father.

And 1 of the things that I did as I grew up because I was afraid of him and I wouldn't use my first name because they named me Carl, Raymond.

When I went to school, I always wanted to be called Raymond because I didn't want His name.

But many years later, when I found the Lord, everything changed.

And I began to read my Bible, and this is the Bible, my first Bible right here.

And there's a beautiful picture inside of a young lady that I was dating.

And it's interesting that later, when I became a bricklayer, my father and I built that church.

But I was so impressed by the expository preaching of Pastor Robert Hedickel of St.

Mark's Lutheran Church, and I began to really read and study the Word of God.

As time went on, I began to think in a new way because in here I had discovered divine principles of life and I slowly began to apply them to my own life.

And I began to move from hopelessness to hope.

I didn't see much of a future for my life.

The future looked dark and grim, but as I read His Word, and I began to apply the divine principle, the future no longer looked so dark and grim.

And I vividly recall the day, I can still remember it, when my attitude toward my father completely changed.

And after high school I learned the bricklaying trade and I remember that day I was repairing a chimney in downtown Waukegan.

The chimney was a part of 1 of the stores in downtown Waukegan, so it was at least 3 or 4 stories high and the men had built a scaffolding, you know, from the ground up and around.

And my job was to tear down that chimney down to the roof and then rebuild it.

So I was way up there and suddenly everything looked different.

I just had to stop what I was doing and enjoy what was happening.

The sky looked bluer, the grass looked greener, and standing there high up on that scaffold, I miraculously understood my father for the first time.

He was a very ambitious young man as he grew up in the United States and quite idealistic.

And he became a bricklayer in the construction trades.

And somehow, and I don't know the details, he met and married a young lady from Waukegan, Ellen Marie Carlson, who was soon to be a mother after they married.

And In 1928, he began to build a brick house for his young family at 809 George Avenue.

How to Get Out of the Fire

It was fresh from the ovens of Heaven, baked by the master baker himself.

Raymond Holmes, pastor of Bessemer Christ Community and Greenland Seventh-day Adventist Churches.

Open your Bibles to the book of Daniel, I'm going to read chapter 3 beginning with verse 13, all the way to the end of that chapter.

Then Nebuchadnezzar, in Nebuchadnezzar, in furious rage, commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought before the king.

Nebuchadnezzar said to them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up.

Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music to fall down and worship the image that I have made well and good.

But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning, fiery furnace.

And who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands?" Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.

If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of your hand, O King.

But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up." Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

He ordered the furnace heated 7 times more than it was usually heated.

And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.

Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments.

And they were thrown into the burning, fiery furnace.

Because the king's order was urgent, and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

And these 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste.

He declared to his counsellors, Did we not cast 3 men bound into the fire?

They answered and said to the king, True, O king.

He answered, But I see 4 men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.

Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace.

He declared, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out and come here.

Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire, and the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king's counsellors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men.

The hair of their heads was not singed, Their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire came upon them.

Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him and set aside the king's command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own god.

Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the god of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other God who is able to rescue in this way.

Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

For most of human history, people have valued gold.

It's gold that stands behind our currency.

It's a glitter of wealth to anybody who wears it.

It's also a symbol of victory and achievement.

People strive for gold, like gold medals.

Students compete for gold stars in school.

In some cultures, People even eat gold, believe it or not, thinking that it's going to prolong their good health.

Sometimes they even treat arthritis with it, fill your teeth with it.

We tip our spark plugs in our cars with gold.

We get watches when we retire made out of gold, because it won't corrode or rust.

And it has come to be synonymous with long life, such as we speak of golden wedding anniversaries.

Now it's not surprising that Nebuchadnezzar, looking for a symbol around which to draw his nation together, searching for some way to represent the prosperity and the victory and the presumed longevity of his power and his reign, chose to erect a statue of gold.

Now from chapter 2, we know that he had a dream in which he saw 4 great kingdoms shaped like a giant statue, the top of which symbolized his own head, cast in gold.

And it was a very flattering picture that he had.

The golden head soon gave way to a silver chest and arms, then to a bronze belly and thighs, and then to legs of iron and feet of clay.

The dream, as Daniel was able to interpret it to the king, had a simple meaning, and it was this, that nothing made by humans lasts forever.

In time, even Babylon was conquered by the Medes and the Persians, and they gave way then to the Greeks, and they in turn gave way to the Romans, as represented by the iron.

In the end, all 4 would be smashed to bits by the coming of a kingdom, not made with human hands, as the Bible says, but which would stand forever.

Now, of course, that interpretation was a prophecy about the coming of Jesus and the kingdom of God.

It was good news for people who don't believe that government is the answer to human problems.

It was good news to those who believed that without a real spiritual revival, mere politics won't work, nor will military power.

But it was not very happy news for Nebuchadnezzar.

So he decided to thumb his nose at the message that he got from Daniel.

And he commanded the construction of a statue 90 feet tall and 9 feet wide.

And not just a head, but the whole thing was to be made of imperishable gold.

He built a visual aid to remind himself and his subjects, and anyone else who might be watching and listening, that as far as he was concerned, His legacy and his kingdom is going to go on forever and ever.

Everyone was commanded to come to the unveiling.

Thousands of people, thousands, expectant people, curious, Gullible people, ready to believe almost anything, especially if it demonstrated power.

Then they got the word of power from the king, And he said, whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.

There was no invitation, it was just a demand.

But what if you were there that day, but were not a Babylonian?

Suppose your loyalty belonged to a greater Lord than Nebuchadnezzar.

What if your religion had taught you that true prosperity had to do with purity of heart rather than gold and political power?

Suppose your king had taught you that the victory that really counted had to do with conquering the inner enemies of lying and lusting and hating rather than ruling over the people and the nations around you.

What if you had learned that true longevity is not measured in terms of healthy years spent in luxury, but in the number of days spent in uncompromised service to the kingdom of God.

Wherever you lived, If you were a Jew in Babylon or a Christian in Gogibbe County, when the music starts to play and everyone was bending, would you bow to Nebuchadnezzar's gold, or would you stand up for the kingdom of God?

Let's think for a minute about what we so often do, not about what we would like to do or should do, because so often we're so good and we're so clever at rationalizing and compromising, And we think, I don't really mean it.

I may bow down, but I'm not really worshipping.

I may spend my money on this, but it won't become my idol.

Or do we think just this once, okay, I'm going to give in, But just this 1 time, and then I'll ask God to forgive me.

Series

Fresh Manna By Raymond Holmes

How to Get Out of the Fire

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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