Desert, Group, Project | When God Calls You Beyond Yourself - Part 3 | Senior Pastor Keith Stewart

WHEN GOD CALLS YOU BEYOND YOURSELF
Desert, Community, Project | Part 3
Senior Pastor Keith Stewart
June 14, 2026

What do you do when God asks you to do something that feels impossible? The disciples faced a hungry crowd of thousands with only five loaves and two fish. Their first response was the same as ours: "We don't have enough." But what if the greatest obstacle isn't a lack of resources? What if it's forgetting who we're with? This Sunday, we'll explore one of Jesus' most famous miracles and discover a life-changing truth: God never intended for us to be the source—only the distributors of what He places in our hands.
 
Join us for Part 3 of our series, Desert. Community. Project.
"WHEN GOD CALLS YOU BEYOND YOURSELF"
 
In-person and online at Springcreek Church.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 

Icebreaker
 
Tell about a time when you were asked to do something that felt completely beyond your ability, resources, or experience. How did you respond?
 
Digging Into the Message
 
Read Mark 6:30-44. Why do you think Jesus first called His disciples to a solitary place before involving them in ministry to the crowd?
 
Pastor Keith described the desert as a place of: Separation | Preparation | Revelation
Which of those purposes resonates most with your current season of life? Why?
 
Henri Nouwen suggests that solitude reveals things we've been avoiding. What are some common distractions people use to avoid facing themselves or God?
 
Jesus looked at a crowd of hungry people and felt compassion. What is the difference between sympathy, pity, and genuine compassion?

The disciples saw a problem. Jesus saw an opportunity. When you face a challenge, are you more likely to focus on what you don't have or on what God might do through what you 
do have?
 
Top-Down or Bottom-Up? The message contrasted "bottom-up" thinking with "top-down" thinking. What is the difference? Can you think of an example from your own life where you've approached a situation from each perspective? Why do you think it is so easy to forget what God has done in the past when we encounter a new challenge?
 
What "five loaves and two fish" has God already placed in your hands that you may 
be overlooking?
 
Living the Sacred Rhythm
 
One of the key ideas from the message was:
"The disciples were never the source."
How does that truth challenge the pressure many Christians feel to produce results?
 
The miracle happened as the disciples kept returning to Jesus for more. What does daily dependence on Christ look like in practical terms?
 
Which part of the rhythm needs the most attention in your life right now?

Desert (being with God)
Community (walking with others)
Project (serving others)
 
What is one concrete step you can take this week?
 
Closing Reflection
 
Read this statement aloud:
"Their responsibility was not to manufacture the miracle. Their responsibility was to stay close to the One who could."
 
Spend a few moments discussing:
Where do you feel pressure to "manufacture" results?
What would it look like to trust Jesus deeply in that area?
 
Prayer
 
Pray for one another, asking God to: Draw you deeper into the desert place of communion 
with Him.

Strengthen your relationships in Christian community.
Show you where He is calling you to participate in His work.
Give you faith to trust Him with the impossible.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Amen. Have a seat. Y'all survived the rain coming in here. It's amazing. So grateful that you're here. Been praying for this service all morning. Actually, all week I've been praying. I feel God has really led me to today's message. We've we've been talking about desert community project. If you're not familiar with those terms, it's called the sacred rhythm. It's the sacred rhythm of Christ. It's the way he lived his life. And we're using that as a pattern for our discipleship. How do we spend time every day in the desert? How do we gather a community around us? And then how do we go out and we serve others, which is our project? Today I'm going to do a message. I'm calling when God calls you beyond yourself. As we get started, let's pray. Father, I believe sincerely that this is a message for the hour. I'm so grateful for how you've led my heart. I pray, God, that now you just give me clarity of thought and communication. And especially, Lord, as we are here, we want to hear from you, even more than from me. They want to hear from you. And so, God, I pray that you would energize the things I share from your word, that they would speak comfort where we need to be comforted, correction where we need to be corrected. God, guidance and direction for each and every step of our life. That's what we seek from you, and we pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. So today I want to look at one of the most famous miracles that Jesus ever performed. In fact, it's so famous that it's the only miracle that all four gospel writers chose to include besides the resurrection. It's commonly known as the feeding of the 5,000. Now, I want to remind you right up front that Jesus never did miracles to show off. Every time he did a miracle, it was to teach us something important about himself, and this miracle is no different. So I want to begin by just getting right into the text and give you a little bit of the setting for what's going on. So Jesus has been teaching and healing all day along with his disciples. He and his disciples decide they need a little break. And not just that, they need some time to be with God. So they went across, they're at the Lake of Galilee, or the Sea of Galilee, but it really is a lake. It's not a large body of water. So they're at the Sea of Galilee, and they decide they're going to go to the other side of the lake, get in a boat, go to the other side of the lake to get away from the crowds. And that's what this first point is all about. I call it our desert, called to be with Jesus. So here's how the Bible describes it in Mark chapter 6. The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest. So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. Now it's interesting in what we call the authorized version or the King James Version, it says, And they departed to a desert place. So get what's happening. Obviously, Christ and his disciples have been very busy in ministry, and they need a time to kind of recharge. And so he calls them away first to be with him. Notice what he said in the verse. He said, Come with me. And second, where he called them to was a solitary place, or as the King James said it, to a desert place. Of course, this is the language we're talking about in this series, that Jesus has a sacred rhythm to his life, and he calls us to that same sacred rhythm. It's called Desert Community Project. So the desert is the place we go to be with God. The community is the believers that we do life alongside, and the project is how we serve our neighbors. And like I told you in the first message in this series, the order really matters. You cannot reverse this sacred rhythm and get the same result. You cannot begin with what you want to do. You can't begin with going out there and trying to help others and serve others in your own power, in your own strength. And when that fails, then go ask your friends if they can come along and help you. And then when all else fails, cry out to God in prayer for help. It doesn't work that way. That's not the sacred rhythm. What we need comes from God, so we first spend time with God. Then we go and gather a community around us with which we do life and we do ministry, and then we go out to serve our neighbors. So the power of the spiritual life comes from being with God. That's our priority. It's why it always comes first. We also need the strength of others. You're never going to get very far in life on your own. And then you couple this empowerment of God with the others that we've gathered around them, and then we're able to go out and fulfill God's purpose for our life, which is to help others. So our project is how God calls on us to make a difference in the world. So the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 begins with a call from Jesus to go away to the desert to be with him. When Jesus calls on them to accompany him to a solitary place out into the desert, it's not just because they need rest, because the wilderness is the place of the God encounter. Every time you're in the wilderness, you see more of God. God reveals more of himself to us. Now, if you're not familiar with this, the desert is a very familiar theme in the Bible. Moses spends 40 years on the backside of the desert as God is getting him ready and prepared to go lead his people out of bondage. The Israelites, after they're set free from 400 years of Egyptian slavery, first thing on the agenda, 40 years in the wilderness, in the desert. The reality is most of the characters in the Bible, especially the ones that we want to emulate, did some wilderness experience or some desert experience. So I'm talking about Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Elijah, Daniel. Even many of the prophets of the Old Testament spent time in the desert. When you get to the New Testament, John the Baptist, his ministry is out in the desert. When you see the Apostle Paul give his life to Christ, the first thing on the agenda, he spends three years out in the Arabian desert. And remember with Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, right after he's baptized by John, he's called by God to 40 days to be in the wilderness. So what ends up happening is God is using the wilderness in some very special ways. And this leads us to a really important question. What's God's purpose for the wilderness? As I see it, there is a very spiritual purpose for God taking you into the desert. The first is this the desert is a place of separation. So God will always use the desert to purge and refine you. And by desert, I mean a place where you get to be alone with God. Now there's no question, our past environments have shaped us. We all bring baggage into not just our human relationships, but into our relationship with God that needs to be moved. With the children of Israel, it was a slavery mindset that they need to be freed of. For many of us, maybe it's some past wounds, maybe some hurts that still cling to us today. Think about the condition of the children of Israel when they went into their 40 years in the desert. The truth is they still feared Pharaoh more than they trusted God. And you see that at every downturn in the story. As soon as things get bad, as soon as there's problems, they begin to idealize what it was like to be in slavery in Egypt, and they see Pharaoh as larger than life. So their former slaveholders, these people instilled this true uh fear of Pharaoh in their life so that he became this insurmountable giant. And by the way, did you know that we have, as we've unearthed all these uh sarcophagus of the pharaohs, the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, do you know the average height of a pharaoh was somewhere between 5'5 and 5'11? I mean, we're not talking giant men here. I mean, we're talking about really average-sized men, or maybe even a little below average, but in their minds, the pharaohs were giants. Here's the second thing: the the the desert is a place of preparation. So God's primary purpose for leading his people into the wilderness is to strip us of self-reliance and transform us into a people radically dependent on God. Now, how did God go about doing that for his people in the Old Testament? Well, listen to what he said to them after the desert experience. He says, I've led you 40 years in the wilderness, your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal was not worn out on your foot. You have not eaten bread, nor have you drunk wine or strong drink, in order that you might know that I am the Lord your God. So God made their clothes last for 40 years. Imagine that. You wouldn't be stylish, but your clothes would be lasting, right? Uh you had to depend on God every single day for manna. Everything they had, and everything they ever needed, was being supernaturally provided by God Himself. So, in a similar way, God takes us into the desert experience to teach us to depend on him and him alone. Because the desert is a quiet place. There's no internet in the desert, is there? Smartphones, TVs, they don't work out there. Our technological addictions don't work in the desert. In the desert, we're separated from our work, from our families, from our friends, from our routines. We're very much alone. Alone with ourselves and alone with God. Now, if you've ever had much time in solitude or silence, I can tell you what bubbles up first are always the things that we've been using in our life to distract ourselves. Things like worry and anger and loneliness and helplessness and hopelessness. Henry Nowen wrote a great book. You ought to read it if you never have it. It's called The Way of the Heart. And in it, he describes this solitude and how it works in the spiritual life. I love this. It's a longer quote than I'd normally use, but it's really good. He said, In solitude, I get rid of my scaffolding. No friends to talk with, no phone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me. Naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken, nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude. A nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, to my work, to my distraction, so that I can forget about my nothingness and make myself believe that I'm worth something. But that is not all. As soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree. Anger and greed begin to show their ugly faces. Listen to this. I give long, hostile speeches to my enemies and dream lustful dreams in which I'm wealthy, influential, and very attractive, or poor, ugly, and in need of immediate consolation. Thus I try to run from the dark abyss of my nothingness and restore my false self in all its glory. Man, that's real. I mean, he's talking about what it's really like when we get alone with ourselves and these thoughts fill our minds. You know, we we rehearse some of the best speeches we'll never give to people that we're angry at. But it shows you what's filling the heart, doesn't it? Because the moment we get quiet, the moment we get all alone, all those thoughts come flooding to the surface of our life. This is why we don't like solitude and silence. This is why we don't like the desert. Because in our solitude, the layers get stripped away. Someone once wisely said solitude is the spiritual detox program of the Christian life. So when God wants to reveal to you an area of your life that desperately needs his healing touch, he's going to call you out to the desert. But there's a second purpose behind, or a third purpose behind the desert, and that is the desert is a place of revelation. Sometimes God takes us into the desert to show us himself. But more in so sometimes it's to show us us, like I said about solitude and silence. Sometimes it's to show God, God wants to show us himself. This is what the Bible says. Now let me show you what happened when Jesus calls his disciples to go away and be with him in the desert. As they hop in the boat, they sail to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The Bible tells us many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. So because the Sea of Galilee is not large, it really is a lake. And you can see the other side from where you're at, they see where the disciples and Jesus are going. And they say, wait a minute, they're not getting away from us. And they go running around the shoreline so quickly that they're there the moment they land. So you look at this and you think, man, these people are desperate. They need what Jesus has. And most commentaries, when they read this story, they say, Well, Jesus and these disciples aren't going to catch a break. There's going to be no rest for them. And while that's true, they're not going to catch a break from ministry. You need to understand that Jesus called them to the desert because the desert is a place of revelation. He's going to reveal something about himself that they've never seen before. And if you miss that point, you miss the meaning behind the miracle. So Jesus is about to perform a miracle that strikes them so hard that every gospel writer felt compelled to write up and retell this story. There's something different about this miracle, something different from opening blind eyes, making the lame walk, or healing leprosy. This miracle is a revelation of who Jesus is. Now, before I get there, I want to show you from this story how we go from the desert to community, then to our project. So the next point in the story is about community that we're called into cooperation with others. The first thing we see about Jesus when he encounters the crowd on the other side of the lake is we find the motivation behind our community service. And that is we enter into the suffering of others. Listen to Mark 6. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. So Jesus doesn't insulate or isolate himself from the problems of this world. When it talks about he felt compassion, the word compassion in the original Greek is this really funny word, it's splagnizomai. And splagnisomai means bowels or intestines. And really what it means is that he it's a gut-wrenching kind of emotion. It's something you feel deep in your soul. The moment Jesus sees these helpless, struggling crowds, he's struck by this compassion and he begins to feel their suffering as if it was his own. So this is the opposite of apathy. When I'm apathetic, I'm emotionally absent. I'm nothing. When I'm compassionate, I'm emotionally present. Karl Barth, the German theologian, described compassion like this. The term, that's like Nizomai, obviously defies adequate translation. What it means is that the suffering and sin and abandonment and peril of these men not merely went into the heart of Jesus, but right into his heart, into himself, so that their whole plight was now his own, taking it away from them and making it his own. To really feel compassion on others is to let their suffering enter into your heart. I think maybe the closest we ever get to this is as parents, when our kid gets hurt, right? Or when they're really sick, or they're in the hospital, or you're at the ER, and you're standing beside their bed, and you are literally helpless beside them. And what you're praying and you're asking is, God, let me switch places, right? Let me feel it, let me carry it, let me be the one who goes through this. Not them, Lord, because their pain, their suffering has entered into your heart. This is what the Bible says as a community, as the as believers, as the children of God, we're to feel compassion. We're to allow the suffering of others around us to not just make us feel like, oh, may I feel pity on you. Pity observes and walks away. Compassion comes to stay. Compassion says, I'm here, I'm here to help. So that leads us to the second thing we learn, community. If God asks you to do something, you can do it. Listen to this. This is Mark 6, 35 and 37. By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. This is a remote place, they said, and it's already very late. Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat. But he answered, You give them something to eat. So this is big, right? I mean, this is a huge crowd out in the middle of nowhere. It's late, they're hungry, there's not a jack in the box in sight anywhere. I mean, the disciples asked Jesus, say, Jesus, just dismiss the crowd and let them go out and defend or offend for themselves. But Jesus rejects that idea and instead tells the disciples to feed him. Now, what Jesus has just asked them seems impossible. And by the way, that's the kind of ministry we're called to, isn't it? We're called to do impossible things. The challenge is always, where are we going to look for our resources? Are we going to, are we going to excuse our inability, or are we going to ask the question, Lord, where do you want me to start? So how do I respond to the magnitude of need that surrounds me? Do I look at what little I have, or do I look at what how much God has? When this miracle asks of the church, is do you believe that God is going to provide for the ministry what it takes to get things done? If God has called you to do something, don't you believe He's going to resource that to get it done? So Jesus assigned the disciples the responsibility of feeding the people. And in doing so, he's making a point. If I ask you to do it, it's because I know you can. Listen to this from R. Kent Hughes, great pastor, wrote some wonderful commentaries. He said the disciples had a defective view of Christ. That was a problem. And very often that's the root of our problem. We don't see Jesus as he is. We see the same brokenness and limitations on Jesus. We put that on him that we put on ourselves. So when the disciples look around, they say, We don't have enough money, we can't do it. We don't have enough food, we can't do it. But never once do they look at Jesus and say, Okay, Jesus will do us, but you got to show us how. And this is where we have to look more closely at are you a top-down thinker or a bottom-up thinker? So let's look at the verse first for context. This is verses 7 through 10 of John 6. When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat? Now he asked Philip this question because Philip's from that area, by the way, in case you didn't know that. He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him, It would take more than a half a year's wages to buy enough bread for each of them to have a bite. Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up. Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many? Jesus said, Have the people sit down. There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down. About five thousand men were there. So in this passage, Jesus asked Philip a question, a local, where are we going to get enough food for all these people? Now you can practically see the wheels turning in Philip's head because he's wondering, you know, I mean, even if there was a place like that where we could get enough food, we don't have near enough money to pay for it. The cost alone would be more than a half a year's wages from one person to buy that amount of food, and even then, it'd just be a tiny morsel we obtained for every person. In other words, the need is beyond our resources. It's not just difficult. In Philip's mind, it's impossible. By the way, it's been estimated that it would have taken 15 tons of food to feed a crowd of this size. So after Philip, Andrew spoke up, hearing something maybe a little different in what Jesus was asking. All Philip saw were the reasons why this was impossible. But Andrew goes out on a limb and he says, you know, I know it doesn't it doesn't seem like much, and it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But we do have these five loaves and these two fish from this little boy. But then he asked the question, but how far will it go among so many people? And that's the question: is it enough? Does it even matter? But at least for Andrew, he had the courage to offer something other than despair. So when Jesus asked the disciples to provide food for the masses, it was a test. He already knew what he was going to do. He wanted to see how his disciples would process it. What questions would they ask? What suggestions would they make? And most of all, would they respond with fear or faith? He wanted them to think not just in terms of what they had, but also in terms of what they already knew. That's why Andrew brings this boy's lunch because he's thinking different from Peter or from Philip. So think of it like this Philip and Andrew are employing two different methods of information processing. In psychological terminology, we call these bottom-up processing versus top-down process. Bottom-up processing is when you look at something and you don't have a real intimate knowledge of it. So the way you look at it is based on your visual or sensory perception of a thing. That's bottom-up processing. It's about what you can see, it's about what you can take in with your eyes. You look at the facts that are presented to you about this situation. Top-down processing means I take that into account, but I also take into account what I already know. So I don't just begin with what I see, I start with what I already know, what I've already known and experienced. And I apply that also to what I'm looking at. So let me explain. The disciples at this point have already seen Jesus do a lot of miracles, haven't they? Including turning water into wine. So the question of how to provide food for the masses is not merely about this situation or current need, is it? It's about who they're with. It's about what he can do. It's about taking into account what they've already learned and experienced with Jesus and applying it to this new challenge. Philip failed to do that. He wasn't applying top down processing. He's stuck in bottom up processing. He fails to account for the greatest resource they have, which is Jesus himself. So let me ask you are you a bottom up processor or a top down processor? Especially when it comes to something new or challenging in your life. What I'm asking you is, if you've seen God move a mountain in your life, do you factor that into the next mountain? When you face another Goliath, do you say, well, God's got there, bid that, done that, already got the slingshot? I mean, are you looking at new challenges from the top down? Do I begin with a knowledge of who God is and what he's capable of doing, that he's been with you thus far and he's not going to let you down now? Are you living from the bottom up or the top down? Now I gotta tell you, this story has been very challenging to me personally. You know I planned this message? I planned this message back in January with no idea where we would be as a church right now. Throughout this ordeal of needing a new roof on the back side of our building plus 14 HVAC units at the same time, so we don't put new units up there and then damage a brand new roof that's been put into place. We have a rough estimate of a half a million dollars to do both. So I've had to ask myself, am I top-down thinking in this or bottom-up thinking? You see, the way I've been processing this is thinking, we're gonna have the money in January once the land closes. We just have to hold off until then. But these spring storms and this storm this morning is saying, you're not waiting on this roof. You can't wait on it. It has to be addressed. The problem is I've been looking at facts and available data. That's bottom-up thinking. To be honest, it's weighed on me very heavily. It's cost me a lot of sleep at night. It's I've carried a lot of stress about this. But my misery pushed me to my knees, and that's a very good thing. I sought God in my desert. I now feel more connected and more hopeful. And as I prayed and led our staff to pray, we're already seeing the hand of God at work. Last Sunday, uh, when they were going through the offering. We have two people cough count the offering every week that just comes in through the boxes, uh, so that we always have integrity around that, that nobody could ever be accused of stealing or anything like that. And the two people that counted the offering said, you know the thing that blessed our heart the most this past week? We found an envelope that had four dollars in it, and on the outside it said roof. And we as a staff prayed and thanked God for that person. Whoever that may be, and if you're sitting in this room right now, I want you to know we prayed and thanked God for you. Because that may have been the last four dollars they had in their pocket, and they said, I'm gonna give this and I want to make a difference. You know what else happened this past week? Uh a lady, a widow woman, came in on Monday and said, I have $50,000. I can't give it, but I'd like to loan it interest-free to the church. And you just have to pay me back when the land closes. Now you gotta know, we've been in this land deal for three years now. We've had three big offers that have lasted forever and never closed. And I and I just had to sweetly tell her, I said, Listen, I love what you're doing. I mean, the the staff told her this. I we love what you're doing, we love your heart in this. We can't guarantee that we're gonna close in January. I'm afraid we can't take a loan like that because I would feel terrible if we couldn't pay it back in a timely way. So she went home, she prayed, she called her adult children. The next morning she came back and said, Pastor, I want to give this to the church. And I was just a weeping mess. I mean, a weeping mess. And you just have to know, I mean, we value every gift, whether it's $4 or $50,000 given to this place. But when a widow gives us $50,000, you always do right by widows. God watches out over widows, they're a high priority. We have to steward every dime that we bring in here. We treat it as sacred. There's nobody here living high on the hog because of the offerings of Spring Creek Church. We live simple lives like everybody else. We steward the money to spend it as carefully as we possibly can. I've also had two wealthy individuals in the past week who've contacted me and have talked about making a substantial gift toward addressing this problem. Whether that materializes or not, all I know is this. If God can move one woman to give her last $4 and another to give $50,000, he's got us covered. Why should I worry? Why should I worry? Worrying won't change the outcome. Why not trust the God who's been faithful to us for 36 years that he's not about to disappoint us now? Can I share with you something else that happened this past week? Our student pastor, Laura Hernandez, just came back from student camp. We had a staff meeting on Tuesday of this week. She was sharing what the week had been like with the teens who attended camp. We have a very diverse student ministry. And she talked about how one teen shared that their mom had a no-cooking day one day every week. And we all assumed that meant mom was tired of cooking every night. And if you wanted to eat, you cook for yourself. You're going to take care of yourself, I'm not going to cook tonight. That's not what that meant. It meant that there's no food in the house, so mom's not cooking tonight. And nobody's eating tonight. We had another parent call our church in the past week and saying, my car was repossessed. They're living in a hotel. Single mom, my car was repossessed. She wasn't calling asking us to help her with a new car. She says, Can somebody come and pick up my teen and bring them to student ministry on Wednesday? That's what she wanted to know. So Laura and her leadership team began talking about the things they're learning. And they decided they wouldn't spend as much money on leadership training or materials. Some of the costlier events they had planned for this summer, they would redirect those funds to help provide a more substantial snack when the students gather, because for some of our kids, that may be the only thing they eat all day. Now I can't speak for other churches, and what I'm about to say is not meant as a judgment against any of them. But we're not spending money to make our student ministry a mini Disneyland full of entertainment. We're trying to be the church of what's happening now. We're not going to grow because we entertain kids better than other churches. We're going to grow because we love the kids we actually have, disciple them in the ways of Jesus, and get them turned on to the reality of the need that surrounds them without closing their eyes. Now, I don't know about you, but I would rather my tithes and offerings get spent on feeding hungry teens because if I feed the hunger in their belly while I'm feeding them Jesus, and that makes them know they're loved by God and by us in indescribable ways, then that's what we're all about. We may not have a lot of money as a church to do cool things, but we got more than enough money to do the right thing. And that's what Spring Creek has always been about. So back to our story. Keep this in mind. He wouldn't ask you to do it if he wasn't prepared to provide what you need. You may not be able to do what you're called on to do in your own strength and with your own resources. But if God asks you to do it, ask yourself, why did God, why did Jesus, why did Healy need five loaves and two fish? Couldn't he have done this miracle without any raw material? I mean, the Bible says that Jesus could make bread out of from stones. We know that Palestine's a very rocky country. Why didn't he just turn all those rocks into bread? I mean, that might have been a need or miracle. Everybody just have their own loaf. It's just, it was a rock a moment before, now it's a piece of bread. It's because Jesus wants us to participate in the miracle. You see, sometimes we feel like all we have to do is ask God to do it all. Just like the disciples, we say, we can't do that. There's not enough food. You're asking too much of us. You're asking us to feed 5,000 people with food intended for one. And you're right, it is impossible. But he's not asking us to do anything by ourselves. He's telling us he will do it with what little we have. Like Augustine once prayed, command what you will, O Lord, but give what you command. Now, what's really interesting is this miracle, as the disciples begin to distribute the bread, the bread increases. Evidently, what Jesus did wasn't make just a huge pile of bread over here and a huge pile of fish over here so they could see it in advance. You know what happened? Here's what the Bible says He gave them to His disciples to set before the people. In the original language, it actually says He was giving them to the disciples. So in the original language, it's past tense expressed in continuing action. In other words, every time they went back to Jesus for more, there was more to give. Because that's the way the miracle works. You see, we want Jesus to make a huge pile of resources that we can pick and choose from and get what we need. That's not the way the miracle works. You want to participate in this miracle, you've got to keep going back to Jesus. You've got to go back to Jesus, you've got to keep returning to Jesus. How many trips did it take going back to Jesus before they fed the whole crowd? How many times did Jesus have to multiply more bread and more fish? I don't really know, but I know this. This is the sacred rhythm being reinforced. This is the way life works. We got to go to Jesus for what we need. We got to get it from him. Because in ourselves we don't have it to give other people. Our desert always comes first, then our community, then our project. I can't give out of a deficit. I can't give to others what I don't have. I need to keep going back to him for what I need every single day. It's never one and done with Jesus. If you keep going back to him, he'll have everything you need. In fact, in the end, you'll have more than what you started with. To be in on God's miracle, you've got to be willing to live a certain way. Daily dependence, day by day, moment by moment. Seek him in the desert daily, and then take what he gives and give it away. And ultimately we we have our project, and that is we're called to make a difference. In the end, everyone in this miracle had more than enough to eat. By the end, the Bible says, Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, Go gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted. So they gathered them and filled the twelve baskets with pieces of five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. Now, some people try to reduce this miracle to everybody just starts sharing their lunch. But John presents it as something greater. The point is not just generosity, the point is that Jesus is doing what only God can do. This miracle is a reminder. And God says, no, I want to do something through your finances. When I wait for God to do for me, he's waiting to do through me. We wait as a church for God to do something for our church. He says, No, I want to do something through the church. In the long run, the Bible makes clear spectacular miracles seldom make a lasting difference in anyone's life. You know why that is? We too easily become spectators of the spectacular instead of participants in the miracle. When it comes to miracles, we get so mesmerized by them that we forget our responsibility. Miracles make us think that it's God's job to do everything. So we pray that God will perform a miracle and feed the hungry while we cling to what we have, acquiring more and more for ourselves and securing our own security. But Jesus' miracles don't let us off the hook. He says, you give them something to eat. In other words, don't just stand there and wait for food to fall from the sky. Share what you have. Don't just pray for a miracle, participate in one. Be a community of sharers. Share your faith, your hope, and your love. Share your money, your resources, your time. Share how much, how little or how much you have, believing that God will work through the tiniest morsels that are put in your hands. You see, God could have rained manna from the sky. He could have turned stones into bread. He could have done it any way he wanted to. Instead, he chose to work through people. He worked through a little boy who was willing to share his lunch. He chose to work through his disciples who passed it out. So often we wait on God to do something for us when he's waiting to do something through us. Now I told you earlier in the message, Jesus had called his disciples to go with him into the desert. So many people want to say, you know, well, that means that they just weren't going to catch a break. And sometimes ministry demands are so great that you just got to keep on doing ministry and neglect your spiritual life. That's the wrong lesson. In the desert, we see God like we've never seen before. And that's what Jesus is doing in the desert with his disciples. He wants to expand their understanding of him. Because you see, only God can feed his people manna in the wilderness. And so he wants them to see he's not just Jesus, he's not just a man. This is God in human flesh, recreating the miracle that happened a couple thousand years prior with manna in the desert. So I want to show you two things as we're wrapping up. One is how the recipients responded. So after the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, Surely this is the prophet who's come into the world. Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a high mountain by himself. So everyone has seen Jesus' amazing power, and everyone is thinking how that power can work for them and their purpose. And no one in this crowd sees what matters the most. Only God can supernaturally multiply bread. Rather than seeing how Jesus can serve them with his power, the miracles should have made them fall on their faces and worship God among them. And that leads to an important reminder. Why did Jesus do miracles? The reason Jesus did miracles is not so that we would ooh and ah. Not so that we would say, wow, look at what he can do. Jesus did miracles, not look at what he can do, but see who he is. The miracles were intended to help us see that Jesus is God. That message got lost in the feeding the 5,000. The people just didn't get it. The crowds remembered that Moses gave them supernatural bread from heaven to eat. They're now expecting Jesus to meet or exceed this standard. They're saying that if Jesus wants them to believe in him as the Messiah, then he needs to provide daily bread from heaven, perpetual. Keep on feeding him every day. Do that, Jesus will believe in you. In other words, they expect Jesus to perform another miracle. The fact is, Jesus has already performed many miracles and they refuse to believe. He's already told them and shown them all they need to know, and none of that brought them to faith. Instead, they persist in unbelief. J.C. Ryle points out so powerfully. They were always deceiving themselves with the idea that they wanted more evidence and pretending that if they had this evidence, they would believe. You've known a lot of people like this, haven't you? I just need more evidence. You show me more evidence, I'll really believe. But J.C. Ryle sums it up perfectly. Thousands in every age do the same. The plain truth is that it's a lack of heart, not lack of evidence that keeps people back from Christ. In the long run, the Bible makes clear spectacular miracles seldom make a lasting difference in anyone's life because it was never about the miracle itself. It's about what the miracle reveals. Jesus' miracles always have a deeper meaning. They demonstrate he is who he claimed to be. You see, if all you do is get a miracle and you miss out on Jesus, then all you got was a consolation prize. The real prize is Jesus Himself. That's what he's pushing us toward, that we would experience and we would know him. So what did Jesus intend to reveal to them? I want you to think back for just a minute about the parallels between this story and the story of the Exodus. Both stories are remarkably similar because both involve crossing a sea to go to a remote area. They both take place in a deserted area. Both miracles involve feeding God's people bread. In addition, Jesus has the people sit down in grass in groups of hundreds, which looks exactly like the way the Israelites camped out in the wilderness. And it wasn't long after the miracle that the Israelites began to murmur and complain, which is exactly what happened with Moses. So the outcome of both miracles is the same. And the Bible is showing us how that Jesus is recreating something that happened hundreds of years prior for the people of God. Jesus is God feeding his people manna in the desert. Because the desert is the place where God reveals himself. The desert is the place where we come up against our limitation. The desert is a place I return to again and again because I can only give people what God gives to me. Now, fixing this roof and replacing 14 HVAC units looks to me like being asked to feed 5,000 people. We know we're fully leveraged. We can't take out a loan to finance that. I mean, this is a non-starter. Money is tighter than it's ever been. Because of all these rising costs going on in our economy around us, giving has been cut back. We're already running at a deficit on our budget this year, so we're facing that too. And then Jesus comes to us as pastors and as leaders and as a church and says, feed them. You give them something to eat. Now, I, for one, I'm not counting on that money that may or may not come from the land closing in January. I'm going back to the one who started us on this journey. And if all I have is four dollars to put in his hands, I'm gonna sit back and I'm gonna watch him multiply it. The miracle, the miracle was never ultimately about bread. It was about Jesus. The disciples thought they were being asked to feed 5,000 people. What Jesus was teaching them is they were never really the source to begin with. The responsibility is not for us to manufacture a miracle, the responsibility is to stay close to the one who can. That's the rhythm. Desert community project. Go to your desert, be with Jesus, walk with others in community. Then take what he gives you and give it away. Because here's the best part. Every time you go back to Jesus, there's always more. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank you, God, that way back in January, you know where we'd be as a church and what word we needed to hear in this moment. I'm thankful, God, for how this has driven me to my own needs, to make me look at am I a bottom-up processor these days, or have I really becoming a top-down processor, like you intended? That I factor in everything that you've ever done, into every decision that comes our way. God, forgive me for my lack of faith. I pray now, God, that you're just going to move in every heart and life, that we would understand. We stand at a unique point in our history. In a time, very shortly, we will be completely debt-free. And at that point, we've got to decide what kind of church we're going to be. I, for one, want to be a church that's about your business. I want to be caring for those kids in our community that have a no-eat, a no-cook Wednesday or a no-cook Friday. I want to be caring for those families who are in desperate need but want their kids to be in this place and be exposed to good things. I want to be the kind of church that honors the widows among us who have such great faith that they would give $4 or $50,000. That God, we would be a place where that everybody feels that what you want to do for us, you first and foremost want to do through us. That God, each of us would look at our own hearts and we would look at our resources and we would ask, not what will it take, but what can I give to make a difference? And so, God, I pray that you're just going to have your way. Use this to strengthen our faith in you. Help us to understand, God, that you are more than capable. And if we keep going back to you, there's more than enough. I pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you all.