November 28th.

"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.

Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.

In that day the lovely young women and strong young men
will faint because of thirst."

"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Jesus draws from his understanding of the OT scripture and what it pointed to—that the sons of God will be able to hear the word of the LORD, as per Amos' delineation of the natural from the spiritual, and what the real famine was all about. Not a lack of food and water, which is temporarily for the body which is heading for destruction, and is not important in and of itself. A famine of hearing the words of the LORD is the all-important thing for the sons of God, because only that word is able to transform them from a natural creature like all the rest to a son of God, a citizen of another world.

"I have food to eat that you know nothing about...My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true.

I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."

All of God's holy men, who are His true sons, harvested from the fields of men, have been doing His work since the beginning. Jesus and the disciples and all of them from before were all brothers, though they weren't even aware of that, or who they might all be. That is the logic behind Jesus claiming that human families are nothing, and the ties that bind them are fine for them to adhere to and respect; but God's true sons (at the time Jesus and the disciples) were each other because they were all the chosen by God to be His, fashioned after all the chosen sons from the OT times—chosen to do God's work that the humans aren't aware of because the living God works and acts in secret, not openly. God's sons are invisible, just as God is invisible, hidden to the world of the humans. The sons "see" their Father by hearing His voice, what the humans can't hear. God's purpose and desire remains secret and invisible too, as seen in Jesus' work being secret from all but the handful of humans who were chosen to know it, so they could reap what their brothers before them had sown.

Perhaps the reason he (Onesimus) was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good—no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.

A harvest of sons who are pleasing to the Father is the fruit that the Gardener desires. What makes a son pleasing to the Father? A proper look at the firstborn Son and we will know. He denied being a human and living as one, all the things he could have had in the natural, in order to do the work of saving his brothers, which was the will of the Father. Everything was sacrificed for the Father and His family of sons, which was a death blow to the power of the animal nature to rule the human animals the Father is choosing to be transformed into sons.

We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

What pleases the Father is that the sons don't act like mere animals which can only truly take care of, be concerned about, and love themselves—the definition of a natural animal bound to the world of temporary, natural creatures like themselves by that nature.

I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me...I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.  

It takes a long time to "get over" ourselves. That is, to recognize and admit our condition, by the teacher's instruction, to accept it but to hate it because it keeps us from being pleasing to the Father. It is the thing that keeps us afraid we're not going to have enough for ourselves so we don't give our brother something to eat and drink, or the clothes we worked for and own, which are rightfully ours so we don't give them to our brother who doesn't have any. It makes us believe that we don't have enough time so we neglect the brothers who needed us because they were sick or in prison because they did the work on our behalf of believing in Jesus.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Righteousness was loving God with the whole heart, mind and soul—every bit of their strength and more than anything they desired to attain to for their selves. It was being watchful and careful about not oppressing their brothers, treating them differently than they naturally would want to treat them if they thought of them as competitors instead of brothers who were united for a common cause.

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

The word of the LORD for the Israelites was to love God with their whole being and purpose, and to love and care for their brother Israelite. These two commands are a sword against the sinful nature in the humans because the only way to obey those commands was to deny the animal cravings to satisfy and love the self all the time, and teach their children to do the same thing.

No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD.

This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

So often though they taught each other to be mere animals and be led by their instincts to get, have, contain and control what they could for themselves instead of teaching each other to  hunger and thirst for the right way, to please God. They were rooted and grounded in the natural world, their paltry existences driven to survive like common animals so they actually separated themselves from righteousness, the way of God, and hitched themselves to the self-serving nature of the wild animal which is so concerned for its own plight and dilemma that it cannot ever be truly concerned about God or what He wants/needs/requires from those whom He has specifically chosen to represent His ideas of how He wants His people to act and be (like Him and unlike the serpent, which is just the source and power of that wild animal nature which rules the humans).

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.' Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.

It's not an accident that the terms of the new covenant were about love, because it's what the old covenant was about, and an extension of what the Father commanded in the OT, everything a copy in anticipation of the better thing. To have a people who weren't like all the rest of the humans, who were set apart to their God by the bond of love and dedication to Him alone, which He deserved since He did and promised so much just for them, because they were special to Him, they represented His own true family. They were different than all the other humans who were ignorant of the living God so they had to make up their gods to suit their need to survive. Therefore they had gods of fertility and other things tied directly to their survival dilemma. Those were impersonal gods, across the board the same for all of them. The living God had a plan which involved a specific people who had specific commands from that God who had a personality and feelings.

The animal is concerned with feeding its own self (also its own brood if it's being compelled to via the powerful force of instinct to do so), gratifying all the various cravings and needs dictated to it by its nature, which it does until it expires. In this sense there is no purpose for the natural participants except to be a piece of this creation which keeps rolling along without a hitch—one tiny little part of the big machine, a number without a name. The natural existence means everything to these participants, the proof seen in their fierce compulsion to survive above everything else. Surviving at its most basic level involves the constant search for food and water, then everything else that is deemed important.

I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

The Father wanted to have a family of sons who aren't merely pieces of a big machine, but who are significant to Him, which is why it is so special when He has specifically chosen one to become transformed away from a creature that is merely surviving to one which can understand and know the Father's love for him, because he comprehends that the Father indeed has specifically chosen him, and is proving it all the time by the signs he is receiving which confirms the revelation over and over, that he is loved and that love is being shown in a real and powerful way i.e., it's not just talk and words but real action that the son receives.

We love because he first loved us.

When the son feels secure enough in the knowledge of that love of the Father for himself, he begins to become able to let go of his fierce need to hold onto and control everything around him, reacting with his defense walls that he has constructed around himself, not letting anyone get through. The love that he feels from the Father allows him to begin to love the Father back in a reciprocal way. Eventually he even begins to be able to love and take care of his brothers too, all which is the opposite of what the humans do all the time, driven by instinct to love and care for themselves, just like all animals instinctively do, compelled by a force they cannot control, what they didn't choose.

If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.