SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bibles, you can turn in your Bibles to uh Matthew chapter 14, Matthew 14.
SPEAKER_00: So we've been going through Matthew, the book of Matthew, last week uh we saw the scene of John the Baptist being beheaded.
SPEAKER_00: So we saw the death of John the Baptist, which is important because the first verse we're gonna look at, verse 13 this morning, picks up with that context.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Jesus is gonna withdraw from the crowd because he hears about John the Baptist's death.
SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the text, let me just kind of set the stage with talking a little bit about the idea of scarcity versus abundance.
SPEAKER_00: In our society, we're often told there's no such thing as a free lunch.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this phrase is popularized by economists, and it encapsulates in a deeply ingrained cultural belief that everything comes with a price.
SPEAKER_00: Now, our city here relates to this idea in an interesting way because we have an addiction in our city not just to drugs, not just to substance abuse, but to dependency.
SPEAKER_00: And we have generations of people who grow up dependent upon a scarce resource, whether it's food stamps or going to be on SSDI or some other kind of fixed income, uh, there is this um meagerness about uh a life only having that as your source.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you have had horrible things happen.
SPEAKER_00: And the wonderful thing about the country that we live in is that there are these safety nets that exist where when everything hits the fan, you have at least some kind of check that's coming in or some kind of resource that's coming in.
SPEAKER_00: But what I want to do is I want to take, I want to contrast that life of living in a way where you're living off of a scarce resource and turn your attention to this story in the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're going through this one of the biographies of Jesus' life, is which is the book of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: And it's giving us these different scenes of where Jesus is doing ministry.
SPEAKER_00: He's got his twelve apostles that follow him around, that are learning from him.
SPEAKER_00: He's got his crowds that he's teaching.
SPEAKER_00: And he um has this scene that we come across with the feeding of the 5,000.
SPEAKER_00: The mindset of scarcity can permeate our daily lives.
SPEAKER_00: We're skeptical of free offers, always looking for the catch.
SPEAKER_00: We guard our resources carefully, afraid that we won't have enough even in our relationships.
SPEAKER_00: We often operate with trans a transactional mindset, keeping score of favors given and received.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the idea of just scarcity and that there's not enough.
SPEAKER_00: Man, we know that idea in Baltimore City.
SPEAKER_00: But what we're gonna see in our story this morning is not just enough, but a super abundance.
SPEAKER_00: What is gonna be challenged here is not just the resource, the idea of resource, but your perspective on resource.
SPEAKER_00: And so I hope that this sermon this morning is deeply personal for you.
SPEAKER_00: This text is deeply personal, and I want you to think about the resources in your own life.
SPEAKER_00: It's the the Matthew 25, when we get there, it's a whole passage about stewardship.
SPEAKER_00: And we have there is this idea that we have entrusted to us relationships, opportunities, and resources.
SPEAKER_00: And there seems to be this expectation from heaven that we will do much with those three things relationships, opportunities, and resources.
SPEAKER_00: So this sermon and this text this morning is about this resource of food.
SPEAKER_00: And um, and so let's look at the text um a bit more.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read it to you and then we'll go through it verse by verse, unpacking it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Matthew 14, verse 13 says this when Jesus heard about it, he withdrew from there by boat to a remote place to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: When the crowds heard this, they followed him on foot from the towns.
SPEAKER_00: When he went ashore, he saw a large crowd, had compassion on them, and healed their sick.
SPEAKER_00: When evening came, the disciples approached him and said, This place is deserted and it's already late.
SPEAKER_00: Send the crowds away so that they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They don't need to go away, Jesus told them.
SPEAKER_00: You give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_00: But we have only five loaves and two fish here, they said.
SPEAKER_00: Bring them here, Jesus said to them.
SPEAKER_00: Then he commanded the crowds to sit down on the grass.
SPEAKER_00: He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them.
SPEAKER_00: He broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone ate and was satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: They picked up twelve baskets full of leftover pieces.
SPEAKER_00: Now those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
SPEAKER_00: Crazy, crazy miracle that we see Jesus do in the midst of the death of his friend.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just talk for a second about this moment that we're brought to here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus heard about it.
SPEAKER_00: What's the it?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, John, who got beheaded.
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist got beheaded.
SPEAKER_00: And John was a relative of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He was the forerunner for Jesus, and he ends up brutally murdered.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus hears about it, and what does he do?
SPEAKER_00: He withdraws from there by a boat to a remote place to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: I love that phrase because it gives me, as a follower of Jesus, to want to be alone sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: And I especially appreciate that because I'm an introvert and I like being alone.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes when junk happens in your life, you don't really want to be the life of the party.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be up at the front of the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to have all the attention on you.
SPEAKER_00: You just want to get in a boat and go away for a little while.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus did that, and that must be okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now, he doesn't get to have the alone time that he wanted.
SPEAKER_00: There's another occasion in Mark chapter 6 where it relates to the same time, but Matthew doesn't give us these details.
SPEAKER_00: Mark tells us that he takes his disciples to be alone for a little while.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this moment to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, they don't get their alone time like they wanted.
SPEAKER_00: They probably get their time in the boat, but when they get to the other side, here's this crowd that has followed them on foot from the towns.
SPEAKER_00: We're dealing with the Sea of Galilee, this northern body of water where Jesus does most of his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: He's interacting with the normal people, the blue-collar people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's primarily where he's at because when he gets to Jerusalem, it gets hot up there with the persecution and the elites, the spiritual elites, and just the animosity that's thrown.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus ends up in Galilee most of the time, and that is where he's at.
SPEAKER_00: In our world of scarcity and self-preservation, Jesus responds to this grief with verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: He went ashore.
SPEAKER_00: When he went ashore, he saw the large crowd and he had compassion on them.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the last time we read that Jesus had compassion on the crowds?
SPEAKER_00: It said that he saw the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: They were like sheep that had no shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: And he had compassion on them.
SPEAKER_00: Here, Jesus is gotta have that just hollowed out pain in his soul over the death of John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: He felt deep sorrow.
SPEAKER_00: He was, it says in Hebrews chapter 2, that he was a man and in all points tempted.
SPEAKER_00: He felt the same type of pain you feel when you're going through it.
SPEAKER_00: He felt it, felt it, and yet in this moment he has compassion on them.
SPEAKER_00: Despite his personal loss, he is moved with compassion.
SPEAKER_00: This compassion wasn't diminished by his own grief, but rather overflowed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' response to challenges, Jesus' response, it challenges our notion that personal pain limits our compassion capacity for compassion.
SPEAKER_00: But no, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the most compassionate people that I've met over the last decade are the people that are living with so little and are suffering immensely.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you guys know Mike, who is in our church.
SPEAKER_00: Um he's deaf because he had um what was it?
SPEAKER_00: It starts with an M.
SPEAKER_00: I did this on Tuesday night.
unknown: Meningitis.
SPEAKER_00: Meningitis.
SPEAKER_00: He had meningitis in 1993, lost his hearing, he has horrible diabetes.
SPEAKER_00: He's had half of his foot amputated.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's had the other half of his foot, basically his bones, his words, his non-medical diagnosis of it is that his bones are all just floating around in his foot.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's got pins and a boot, and he's in the um in recovery for the next two months.
SPEAKER_00: And yet you go and you see Mike and he tries to stay positive.
SPEAKER_00: He tries to not play the pity party, right?
SPEAKER_00: He tries to say, like, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be an encourager.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have spent time with Mike, and you know that his life, his story, is a story of immense suffering.
SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's a part of his life.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how that works, where some people just live incredibly painful lives.
SPEAKER_00: Others of us pass through seasons of intense pain and then pass on to good seasons.
SPEAKER_00: Either way, you should know from your own human experience that sometimes it's surprising who is compassionate on us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes some of the meanest people are the people who are well off, they're doing well.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like they have everything you could ask for, and they're cruel, they're not generous.
SPEAKER_00: And then it's the people that are hurting that are so kind.
SPEAKER_00: And anyway, here's Jesus in his moment of pain, having compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus healed the sick in the crowd, demonstrating that God's compassion is active and it's transformative.
SPEAKER_00: In 2 Corinthians, Paul has gone through one of the darkest moments of his life.
SPEAKER_00: He's traveling, if you were to look at a map, he's traveling kind of around Macedonia, modern-day Macedonia.
SPEAKER_00: He's left Turkey, gone into Macedonia, and then kind of come down the coast into Greece.
SPEAKER_00: And he's running from it for his life.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know where his friend Troas is.
SPEAKER_00: And he describes the pain in his life.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine there's no cell phones.
SPEAKER_00: Like you go traveling, how do you know you're like, how do you find somebody, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like you're sending letters.
SPEAKER_00: It's like that would be really hard to find somebody else, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and yet he's responsible for all these baby churches that he's planted.
SPEAKER_00: He's getting persecuted.
SPEAKER_00: He's got people attacking, like false Christians attacking his baby churches that he started.
SPEAKER_00: And he says in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 that he despaired of life.
SPEAKER_00: It's the language of almost being suicidal, almost out of hope.
SPEAKER_00: And he says that God is the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our suffering, that we may be able to comfort others with the comfort that God has given us.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_00: The God of all comfort is your God.
SPEAKER_00: And he pours comfort into your life so that you can then turn and comfort others.
SPEAKER_00: And here's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Rather than saying, Nope, I need to just put my own self-care first.
SPEAKER_00: I need my spa day.
SPEAKER_00: I need to get away.
SPEAKER_00: And I need to just take a break from all you crazy people trying to get healed.
SPEAKER_00: I need to be emotionally healthy so that I can then have compassion.
SPEAKER_00: No, here, Jesus, and I'm not saying that that's bad.
SPEAKER_00: All I'm saying and showing here is that Jesus, your Jesus, has this infinite resource of compassion.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean you always do.
SPEAKER_00: But it does show us that the God we serve and the spirit that indwells us is like this.
SPEAKER_00: Our life can resemble these patterns as the Holy Spirit is at work in our life.
SPEAKER_00: When others would say, Man, you should be out of the game, you should be done for the count, we're able to keep going and showing compassion towards others.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is that resource for us.
SPEAKER_00: It challenges us, these two verses challenge us to reconsider our view of God's compassion.
SPEAKER_00: It's not limited by resource that can be depleted by tragedy or personal suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it is an ever-flowing stream of love and care that can transform lives even in the darkest moment.
SPEAKER_00: Spend time this week.
SPEAKER_00: Would you just spend a moment this week letting God love you?
SPEAKER_00: Spend just a moment just instead of trying to bring to him the good things that you've done or the things that you need, just would you spend a moment just gazing at him in the way that that that you can in a way that is just beyond what you can see, but what you can imagine, who Jesus is and who he's presented here, would you just spend a moment quietly letting him love you?
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the next section, verses 15 through 17.
SPEAKER_00: When the evening came, the disciples approached him and said, Well, this place is deserted.
SPEAKER_00: Wonder where they got off the boat at.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get the crowd to its all-time high.
SPEAKER_00: Get a personal record for Jesus in terms of his crowd.
SPEAKER_00: No, the disciples are like, these people are going to be hungry.
SPEAKER_00: We need to send them off to go get some food.
SPEAKER_00: Send them into the surrounding villages.
SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, a practical need brought before Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus replies, they don't need to go away.
SPEAKER_00: You give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_00: And they say, but we only have five loaves and two fish here.
SPEAKER_00: Five loaves and two fish.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you heard this story before?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard this story.
SPEAKER_00: You know where we're going, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I read it to you a minute ago, but Jesus challenges the disciples' limited perspective with a seemingly impossible task.
SPEAKER_00: This is important because when we say that we are a Christian, we're taking on the term that was given.
SPEAKER_00: It was a label given to Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Really, what Christians were called were disciples.
SPEAKER_00: You go read the story of the early, the first generation of Christians, we're called disciples.
SPEAKER_00: And what that refers to is just being a mentor, a follower, an apprentice of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so here is how Jesus does stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're apprentices of Jesus, it's important for, because it's like just because Jesus is in heaven, if we're a follower of him, it doesn't mean he does stuff different now that he's in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So the patterns, these stories are helpful because it's like, oh, okay, that's how Jesus works.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he asks me to do stuff that seems impossible, that challenge a perspective of limits.
SPEAKER_00: This command from Jesus, it reveals Jesus' desire for his followers to participate in his ministry of compassion.
SPEAKER_00: It also sets the stage for this demonstration of his abundant provision.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus could have said, hey, Peter, that's a great idea.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, guys, we're gonna be done.
SPEAKER_00: We're all gonna go, you all go and find some food in the surrounding villages.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like, nah, we're not gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And I love Jesus for that.
SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that he's like that.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's willing.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when the children of Israel were set free from, the children of Israel were set free from Egypt, and God sends them across the Red Sea into the wilderness, or he sends them not across, he sends them right up to the Red Sea, and they're at the wilderness, and Pharaoh decides to chase them down.
SPEAKER_00: So you've got Pharaoh's right on their tail with his army, coming across the desert, but then you've got two mountain peaks on the sides.
SPEAKER_00: And you've got the this sea blocking them in the front.
SPEAKER_00: And the Israel, the nation of Israel, the children of Israel, they feel trapped.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, God, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: You brought us out here to die.
SPEAKER_00: Moses, what's gonna happen?
SPEAKER_00: And Moses tells them, stand still and see the deliverance of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But the narrator who writes Exodus, Moses, who's telling us the story, he says, God intentionally stuck them in a place where it was impossible.
SPEAKER_00: God set them up.
SPEAKER_00: God set them up so that he could demonstrate his power.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus says to his disciples, hey, you, you go and find something to feed them, and they're like, well, you know, we only have these five loaves and these two fish.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the last time that there is a setup.
SPEAKER_00: That there's a setup.
SPEAKER_00: There is this point in history where God sets the stage with the greatest setup.
SPEAKER_00: And it's when he has Jesus, who is the perfect man and is God at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: And he allows Jesus to be betrayed and to be crucified on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: It is the perfect setup.
SPEAKER_00: It is the backdrop in which redemption, resurrection, justification, the defeat of evil, the defeat of death occurs.
SPEAKER_00: God is all about this pattern.
SPEAKER_00: I guess that's what I'm trying to say.
SPEAKER_00: Is like this is not just God setting up his disciples for something impossible is not like a one off.
SPEAKER_00: You look throughout the Bible over and over again, God really likes this idea of the impossible and.
SPEAKER_00: And then working through humans to overcome the impossible so that everybody else is like, whoa, you got the coolest God.
SPEAKER_00: Your God's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: How can I know your God?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It's important to know this because sometimes you get in your life and you're like, it's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how we're gonna get out of this.
SPEAKER_00: This is an impossible situation.
SPEAKER_00: And you should be like, oh yeah, I heard that song before.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: That tune, you ever hear a tune and it gets stuck in your head?
SPEAKER_00: This should be one of those tunes that's stuck in your head.
SPEAKER_00: The impossible tune that God sets people up.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he's cruel, but because he loves to deliver and he loves to show his strength and his power in these impossible settings.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the disciples respond and they say, We've got these five loaves and two fish.
SPEAKER_00: It's meager, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's not enough.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples are focused on what they lack rather than what Jesus can do with it.
SPEAKER_00: This is all we've got.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And again, map it onto your life.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes all you've got is the five loaves and the two fish, and you're just like, see, this is how impossible it is because this is the resource.
SPEAKER_00: The moment of tension invites us to consider this.
SPEAKER_00: Do we trust in our limited resources or in God's unlimited power?
SPEAKER_00: Can I ask you this?
SPEAKER_00: Because I know that many in our church are on a on a fixed income.
SPEAKER_00: We have this beautiful pleasure of being a church that a majority of people are either on food stamps or disability or on Social Security, and you don't have anything else.
SPEAKER_00: And the scope of your vision of thriving and flourishing and being fruitful is intertwined with a narrative around that monthly check.
SPEAKER_00: You even have a pattern of doing your month to month based off that check and what's going to come in.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want you to, at this moment here in the story, I just want to ask you, are you, is your vision, is your trust, is your focus on those limited resources, or are you open to God doing more with your life?
SPEAKER_00: Are you?
SPEAKER_00: You're open, good.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that means, but I would dare you to not be defined by that check.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be defined by those limits.
SPEAKER_00: But say, offer yourself to God, which is the next section that we come into, verses 18 and 19.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus say to them?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Bring them here to me.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, bring the bread, bring the fish to me.
SPEAKER_00: Then he commanded the crowds to sit down on the grass.
SPEAKER_00: He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them.
SPEAKER_00: He broke the loaves and he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.
SPEAKER_00: We get this, these four verbs: taking, blessing, breaking, and giving.
SPEAKER_00: Taking, blessing, breaking, and giving.
SPEAKER_00: In the taking, he physically takes the bread and the fish.
SPEAKER_00: It it symbolizes his willingness to work with our meager offerings.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds us that God doesn't need much to do great things.
SPEAKER_00: Would you be willing this week to just have a conversation with God and say, God, maybe you just even pull it up on your phone?
SPEAKER_00: Like, God's not afraid of looking at your cell phone and just say, like, God, here's my bank account, you know?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the latest letter that I got from my doctor.
SPEAKER_00: You know, here's my condition.
SPEAKER_00: And just say, God, here's what I've got.
SPEAKER_00: Would you take it?
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that he does is this blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus looks up to heaven with the bread and he gives thanks.
SPEAKER_00: This action acknowledges the Father as the resource of all provision.
SPEAKER_00: It challenges our self-reliant culture and reminds us to seek God's blessing in all that we do.
SPEAKER_00: So again, let's just keep using the uh analogy of the check, the paycheck, the social security check, the SSDI check.
SPEAKER_00: You get that.
SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you, take that check to the bank, put it in your bank.
SPEAKER_00: But besides that, pray.
SPEAKER_00: Say, God, would you thank you for this?
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for providing me with this paycheck, with this money.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that I have, it comes from you.
SPEAKER_00: You are the one.
SPEAKER_00: The next action is that he breaks it.
SPEAKER_00: The act of breaking the bread is preparing it for distribution.
SPEAKER_00: It foreshadows Jesus' own body being broken for us, and it suggests that our resources often need to be broken or transformed by God to be most useful.
SPEAKER_00: And then the giving.
SPEAKER_00: The giving.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gives the bread to the disciples to distribute.
SPEAKER_00: This involves the disciples in the miracle, making them active participants.
SPEAKER_00: It demonstrates how God often wants to work through human hands to distribute his blessings.
SPEAKER_00: God works through us.
SPEAKER_00: Your life is not a cul-de-sac.
SPEAKER_00: You are this pass-through of the power, the love, the patience of God, the comfort of God, all that God can do, you are this pass-through of blessing to the people around you.
SPEAKER_00: That does not mean that you take your check, your social security check, and you give the whole thing away.
SPEAKER_00: But it means that you're operating from a position where you understand that God, I'm doing life with you.
SPEAKER_00: The money that I interact with, I'm doing it in relationship with you.
SPEAKER_00: And you can take this thing here that I have, and you can multiply it.
SPEAKER_00: You can use it for the good of others.
SPEAKER_00: The key here is this the importance of bringing our inadequate resources to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And what do we see?
SPEAKER_00: We see this just abundance that flows out.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone ate and was satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: They picked up 12 baskets full of leftover pieces, and then it gives us this count of 5,000 men as well as women and children.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone was ate and satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that awesome?
SPEAKER_00: This was not like rations.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this wasn't like in World War II where we had to like have those stamps where we rationed out supplies.
SPEAKER_00: No, this was the abundant provision where they they everyone is sitting there.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
SPEAKER_00: They're all eating, and they get to the point where they're satisfied, or we would say, I'm full.
SPEAKER_00: And then they go through and they pick up 12 baskets full of leftover pieces.
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Amazing thing that God does.
SPEAKER_00: It demonstrates that with God, scarcity becomes abundance.
SPEAKER_00: God's resources are limitless.
SPEAKER_00: What seems impossible to us is easily accomplished by God.
SPEAKER_00: God provides abundantly.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just meet our needs, but he goes above and beyond our expectations.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't waste anything.
SPEAKER_00: The leftover fragments are carefully collected.
SPEAKER_00: He teaches it, he's teaching good stewardship through this.
SPEAKER_00: God often works through human participation.
SPEAKER_00: We see that all through the text.
SPEAKER_00: It's just this incredible story about God's provision in the midst of great lack.
SPEAKER_00: Can I show you a few pictures?
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you a couple of pictures.
SPEAKER_00: In this is a picture from 20 um 2017.
SPEAKER_00: 2017.
SPEAKER_00: This is on the second floor of the Compassion Center.
SPEAKER_00: If you're new with us, the Compassion Center is a relief center that we run.
SPEAKER_00: It's three blocks from here, down Eastern Avenue.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a storefront.
SPEAKER_00: And it was owned by the Lutherans for 60 years.
SPEAKER_00: It's still owned by the Lutherans.
SPEAKER_00: We just kind of run it for them.
SPEAKER_00: And I came in and inherited this is the food pantry.
SPEAKER_00: And we would do a Wednesday morning chapel for people that were homeless.
SPEAKER_00: And we would have on this paper right here was a list of what could go in each person's grocery bag.
SPEAKER_00: You could have two cans of beans, you could have one thing of peanut butter, you could have a rice aroni and maybe one can of Vienna sausage.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we would give out to those that were homeless.
SPEAKER_00: So that's where we started, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then we started talking and finding out the grocery stores were donating food.
SPEAKER_00: Trader Joe's was the first one.
SPEAKER_00: And we could drive down to Trader Joe's in Columbia and they would load up our minivan full of groceries.
SPEAKER_00: And we could bring that back, and with that, on Fridays, we were able to feed about 35 to 40 families.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem was that I was working on a team in the neighborhood here with Wolf Street Elementary School and with City Spring Elementary School and with Catholic charities and with the Assisi House and some other stakeholders in the neighborhood around food.
SPEAKER_00: And there was just more than 40 families in this neighborhood that were facing food insecurity.
SPEAKER_00: Yet all of Perkins' homes was over there too.
SPEAKER_00: And so 40 wasn't enough.
SPEAKER_00: So we started to work together with the local government to get Whole Foods right here to see what are you doing with your old food?
SPEAKER_00: Would you give it to us?
SPEAKER_00: And through a little bit of use of a really nice lawyer that worked at City Hall, they sent a semi-threatening letter on our behalf to Whole Foods and said, How dare you throw any food away?
SPEAKER_00: That could be given to the neighborhood, which was good because they shouldn't throw the food away, right?
SPEAKER_00: They should collect it in baskets like we see from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So they said, Hey, come on over on Saturdays and Sundays.
SPEAKER_00: And then it was Tuesdays.
SPEAKER_00: And we started collecting food.
SPEAKER_00: And we're building relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And then March 2020 came.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what happened in March 2020?
SPEAKER_00: The whole world shut down.
SPEAKER_00: COVID.
SPEAKER_00: It was crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And so we became, because of those relationships, our center, we started getting phone calls because you got all these restaurants down here that are clothing, closing with fresh food in their refrigerators and freezers.
SPEAKER_00: Where do we donate it?
SPEAKER_00: Come and pick it up.
SPEAKER_00: And then they were like, come and we're just gonna go out of business.
SPEAKER_00: They just kind of threw in the towel.
SPEAKER_00: They gave us like all their inventory, they gave us all their everything.
SPEAKER_00: It was crazy, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then we had a volunteer that she said to me on one of those days, she said, Listen, if you take your truck that you've been picking up food with, just a rent a small 16-foot truck, take it over to Amazon.
SPEAKER_00: And um, they're gonna give you some stuff on Friday.
SPEAKER_00: I talked to them, I talked to a guy over there on the phone.
SPEAKER_00: So I said, okay, you know, so I go over there with the truck.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first load that we picked up.
SPEAKER_00: You see the yellow tubs?
SPEAKER_00: It was about enough, it was about enough yellow tubs, kind of half full, some bread racks, to fill up the bottom of a 16-foot box truck.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought this was great.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'll come back next Friday.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Yep, I'll see you next Friday.
SPEAKER_00: So came back next Friday.
SPEAKER_00: That Friday he said, Here, here's my number.
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, we exchanged numbers.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the next week I missed his call on a Tuesday.
SPEAKER_00: I only got the call, I got my voicemail, I looked at it on Thursday.
SPEAKER_00: So by the way, don't ever leave me a voicemail.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna get it right away.
SPEAKER_00: So I got it on Thursday, and he's like saying, Hey, we got some extra food over here.
SPEAKER_00: Can you guys come over?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I missed that.
SPEAKER_00: So I was there the next day with the truck, and I said, Hey, I saw your, I got your voicemail about some extra food.
SPEAKER_00: You know, what happened?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Yeah, we had$17,000 in stake that we had to throw away because nobody came to get it.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, where's the person scheduled to come on Tuesday?
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Well, you know, there's not many of you, there's only a few of you guys that come over with a truck right now and get food, and nobody was able to come over.
SPEAKER_00: So from that moment, Adolfo and I made a pact that we would never say no to them when they called.
SPEAKER_00: And so from that point of May 2020 to this day, we have been going to that Amazon as well as 11 other sources for food.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as of um last week, when I checked, that Amazon has, as of this month, for this year, year to date, has given us six million dollars worth of food.
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: You guys have been over there.
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of like what it looks like as we're setting up tables.
SPEAKER_00: This is a couple years old now.
SPEAKER_00: It's you know, we've we fill it up more than that.
SPEAKER_00: Amazon's our biggest source.
SPEAKER_00: And and I and we don't really like there's no real official um uh relationship that exists there, so that's really kind of a it's a hidden secret.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather you not tell everybody and their mother that we get all that food from Amazon, but we're very grateful for it.
SPEAKER_00: And we feed, you know, every every Tuesday and every Friday, we feed between 300 to 400 families out of the compassion center.
SPEAKER_00: We now work with the First Roots Farm.
SPEAKER_00: So three years, I guess the rest of the story, and I know I'm a one minute over my timer here, but the rest of the story is that three years ago, we're a little church.
SPEAKER_00: Now so we went from renting renting the truck, we would get a call from Amazon.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, hey, we got food, come get it.
SPEAKER_00: So I'd have to call Penske.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a truck?
SPEAKER_00: They say yes.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we would run to Penske, pick up the truck, drive to Amazon, get this stuff, unload it here, go back to Amazon, drop off the truck, get our vehicle, and come home.
SPEAKER_00: Because we thought it was just a COVID crazy.
SPEAKER_00: I've never seen this kind of thing before.
SPEAKER_00: Who gives away six million dollars of food?
SPEAKER_00: That's not normal.
SPEAKER_00: Like mid-COVID when everybody's out of paper taber towels and toilet paper, we had it on our pallets.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming in, we're freak wrapped, all the colour box.
SPEAKER_00: It was crazy, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just and piled up to the ceiling in that center.
SPEAKER_00: It was insane.
SPEAKER_00: And so um three months, so we've been leasing a truck, right?
SPEAKER_00: We signed a lease, but but our costs incurred, it's not it's not like a normal little church like this could pay for a truck and the fuel.
SPEAKER_00: You know, insurance, commercial insurance is like$900 a month.
SPEAKER_00: I did not know that until I did this.
SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't learn that in seminary.
SPEAKER_00: $900 a month for commercial insurance.
SPEAKER_00: So I I got we but we got to this point where we're getting just loads, like so much that we couldn't even fit it into the center.
SPEAKER_00: So I talked to my friend Matt, who's been in the he's been a pastor in the city for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: He works with the chaplains, he's got a bunch of relationships.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Josh, you have what other small churches need, which is the food.
SPEAKER_00: And they have some money, they can help pay for the transport of the truck.
SPEAKER_00: So we created this cost-sharing program where now we fill the compassion center first.
SPEAKER_00: It's usually between 15, 16 to 23 pallets of food goes into the center, and then once we're overflowing, we know when we get a call and it's coming in from Amazon, we tell Carlos, our driver, we say it's got to go somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: And we have all these partner little food banks, 45 food banks across Baltimore City, where we can take food to, and they pay us a transport fee per pallet.
SPEAKER_00: It's super cheap.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's this cool thing that God's done, amazing thing of God just this abundance, super abundance.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we've got now we have a warehouse that we work with Matt on, and that warehouse last year, this time, it was empty.
SPEAKER_00: Now the warehouse is overflowing.
SPEAKER_00: So we don't have just the compassion center, we have an overflowing warehouse.
SPEAKER_00: We sent 27 truckloads, semis, down to North Carolina for the hurricane destruction.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that crazy?
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's way bigger than our church, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's just this big, all these people working together, and God's providing the finances.
SPEAKER_00: So I love the story of feeding the 5,000 because I feel like we get to participate in it.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll take that center on Tuesday.
SPEAKER_00: If you come over there today, you'll see we've got some good food in there, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna give it away after church.
SPEAKER_00: So our church, if you're new with us, we give away, we do a distribution right after this.
SPEAKER_00: It's the only group that gets to actually go into the center and receive food and pick their own food.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that happens on Tuesday and Friday is um us filling bags with food and handing it out the door.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you go over there today, what you'll see is we've got a ton of food, and it's all gonna get distributed on Tuesday, and we're gonna clear out all that whole front area, and probably by you know, within a couple of hours, the whole thing just fills back up with food.
SPEAKER_00: It's just this amazing, crazy miracle.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's I I don't know, maybe that's normal in your world, but with food prices how they are, that's insane.
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So, all that to say, I just wanted to encourage you in your own life.
SPEAKER_00: You we we have a nickname in this in the Latino community.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to say it in Spanish, but they call us the little big church.
SPEAKER_00: The little church that can do big things.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that awesome?
SPEAKER_00: It's really God that does these big things.
SPEAKER_00: He lets us just be a part of it.
SPEAKER_00: So let's do this.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray and let's just say, Lord, we we give, we offer ourselves to you.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we look at it just like, man, that looks like five loaves of bread and two fish, and that's not enough.
SPEAKER_00: There's not enough that can be done with this.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, God, you are this God that just you blow the top off with resources, and you let us steward over it.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, where we look at our lives and we just are like looking at limits and lack, scarcity, God, help us to change the perspective.
SPEAKER_00: You may be working through scarcity, maybe that you're redirecting and you're you're doing something, but it doesn't reflect your ability.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't uh it doesn't reflect your provision what we lack in our life.
SPEAKER_00: And so, God, we just offer ourselves to you and what we've got, and we pray that you would show yourself strong in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Glorify yourself in and through our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.