SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: Please take your Bible and open it to the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 14.
SPEAKER_01: We've been working our way through this gospel.
SPEAKER_01: We've arrived in chapter 14, verse 13, at what is likely a very familiar passage to most of us.
SPEAKER_01: One that we've heard before.
SPEAKER_01: It was obviously important to the early church because it is one of the few miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ that is recorded in each of the four gospel accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I had a, one of my grandfathers was a storyteller.
SPEAKER_01: He always told the same stories over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: But as I grew older, one of the things that I noticed was that each time he told the story, it was a little bit different.
SPEAKER_01: Something was not quite the same.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there was a little tweak there, maybe there was a little detail forgotten here, maybe there was an added detail that I didn't know was there before.
SPEAKER_01: Grandpa always had a story to tell, and he was always telling it in a little bit different way.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that was on purpose, maybe it wasn't.
SPEAKER_01: Very similar situation when we come to the gospel accounts, especially one that has the same account, the same situation in each of the four gospels.
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit different in each one.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe the surrounding contexts are a little bit different.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of the details are a little bit different.
SPEAKER_01: But when we come to the scriptures, we know that those details are there for a reason.
SPEAKER_01: Those differences, those surrounding contexts are there for a reason.
SPEAKER_01: They help us understand what, for example, in this case, Matthew is trying to tell us as his readers about the situation.
SPEAKER_01: For example, in John's Gospel.
SPEAKER_01: John's Gospel is followed by the very next day that the people that Jesus fed in the story of the feeding of the 5,000 follow him to another community.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, You aren't coming after me because of how glorious I am.
SPEAKER_01: You're not coming about the miracles that you've seen.
SPEAKER_01: You're coming because you want another free meal.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew doesn't tell us that.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because Matthew wants us to see something different.
SPEAKER_01: So let's read Matthew chapter 14, if you'd follow along in verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.
SPEAKER_01: When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, and he healed their sick.
SPEAKER_01: Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, This is a desolate place, and the day is now over.
SPEAKER_01: Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus said, No, they don't need to go away.
SPEAKER_01: You give them something to eat.
SPEAKER_01: They said to him, We only have five loaves here and two fish.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Bring them here to me.
SPEAKER_01: And he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said, A blessing.
SPEAKER_01: Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, and they all ate and were satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.
SPEAKER_01: And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
SPEAKER_01: This is an event where Jesus is clearly shown to be Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: That He's indeed Emmanuel, God with us in a wonderful and exciting way.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is Yahweh who has come to be with his people, not simply to provide a meal for whoever pays for the entrance ticket to his speaking engagement, but to provide salvation for those who trust in him as their Savior King.
SPEAKER_01: And this account prepares us to wrestle over being temporarily satisfied with the things of this day, versus being eternally satisfied with the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: John is dead.
SPEAKER_01: John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of the Lord Jesus, who prophecy said would come and level the path for God's promised Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: John is gone, he's out of the way, the forerunner is out of the picture.
SPEAKER_01: The one who is gone before Jesus is no longer present.
SPEAKER_01: And so that means that things are now moving on to the next stage in God's program because the way is prepared.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's just Jesus on the road.
SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the road is a hill.
SPEAKER_01: And on that hill is a Roman cross.
SPEAKER_01: We're told here that Jesus wanted some time by himself.
SPEAKER_01: We see that often in the life of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He took time to recharge.
SPEAKER_01: Spending time in prayer and in solitude.
SPEAKER_01: And here he goes on a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee to a sparsely populated area.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it could be translated as wilderness, a desolate, desert-like place.
SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it, we can all relate to that kind of situation.
SPEAKER_01: The stress of life has zapped away your energy.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's busyness, maybe it's health issues, maybe it's job issues, maybe it's family fights.
SPEAKER_01: And you just need some downtime.
SPEAKER_01: You need to crash a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: No interruptions.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's away from people, just quiet, no questions, no pestering, no arguments.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you go into your room and you shut the door for a little while, or you go to your basement, or you go to your workshop, you get settled in and you're just beginning to experience what you so desperately need, and then there's the knock on the door.
SPEAKER_01: Or there's the kid screaming outside the door, or the phone rings, or you get that that notice from the boss that there's an emergency that you've got to deal with.
SPEAKER_01: What happens inside of you?
SPEAKER_01: Groaning?
SPEAKER_01: Shouting?
SPEAKER_01: Tears?
SPEAKER_01: Pain?
SPEAKER_01: Agony?
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: For Jesus, it's thousands upon thousands of people.
SPEAKER_01: Notice that at the beginning of the passage, he leaves the crowds to get away.
SPEAKER_01: And when he gets to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and he steps out of the boat, those crowds have grown to great crowds.
SPEAKER_01: He leaves one crowd for a bigger crowd when all he wants is some quiet time.
SPEAKER_01: The picture we get is a Benny Hinn stadium full of people, with thousands upon thousands of people full of excitement and curiosity and hope.
SPEAKER_01: People wanting to come for healing.
SPEAKER_01: Except in this situation, there's real healing because the great physician is here.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when we are interrupted in a time like that, when all we want is some downtime, we want some alone time, and then that is interrupted, we we complain.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we refuse to answer the phone or the text message, or we refuse to ignore the knocking on the door, the pounding, or we just ignore the screaming in the hallways because of the kids fighting.
SPEAKER_01: And knowing human tendencies, I sometimes wonder if these disciples of Jesus weren't groaning themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, here they come again.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, Jesus doesn't.
SPEAKER_01: He steps off the boat and we don't see him step off the boat and walk further into the wilderness where the crowds of people are unable to follow him.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, we're told he has compassion.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's awfully hard to have compassion on those who interrupt you when you need compassion.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's hard to have compassion when all you want is some quiet.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's hard to have compassion on others who need compassion, genuinely, when you just don't have the energy to give it.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, though, had compassion.
SPEAKER_01: This is a word that's used 14 times in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_01: Of those 14 times, eight times it's used of Jesus having compassion.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a word that means to be moved in your guts.
SPEAKER_01: Really, to be moved inside of you, that you have this strain within that is straining to reach out and to provide something for someone else.
SPEAKER_01: It's an emotion that results in caring and in action.
SPEAKER_01: And so that leads us to an important question.
SPEAKER_01: If God Himself demonstrates compassion to other people, even in those moments when he so desperately needs to get away, shouldn't we work to emulate that?
SPEAKER_01: I know that's so hard, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: So hard.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a key element, because human nature is not given to compassion, especially when you have no energy to be compassionate.
SPEAKER_01: That's not our tendency.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus is teaching the disciples here, sort of under the surface, that at times compassion for others overrules personal desires.
SPEAKER_01: That's a hard lesson to learn, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus is climbing into a boat, he crosses over the Sea of Galilee to go to the other side, and the crowds, on the other hand, don't have boats.
SPEAKER_01: So they're seeing where he's headed, and they start marching around the lake.
SPEAKER_01: Except this is a really big lake, that's why it's often called the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus takes the short crowd across the lake, and the people are marching miles around the lake.
SPEAKER_01: Several miles on foot, including crossing the Jordan River.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, there is no historical record, no archaeological record, a bridge crossing the Jordan River at that time.
SPEAKER_01: So imagine somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 people crossing the Jordan River with no bridge and with no ferry.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have any record of that crossing the river to follow Jesus to get to the other side, and all along the way they're gaining people.
SPEAKER_01: So that when they get to the other side, this crowd has grown to a great crowd.
SPEAKER_01: And all Jesus wanted was to be alone.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted some peace and quiet.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted some time for rest and recovery, but how could he look at the mass of humanity trudging along the shoreline, wanting to see Him, needing compassion?
SPEAKER_01: How could he look at them and simply ignore them?
SPEAKER_01: How can we, when people come looking for us to take them to Jesus, to show them Jesus, to take them to the throne room of heaven, how can we turn away because we simply want to do something else or want to be left alone?
SPEAKER_01: Now don't hear that and think that there isn't time for rest and recovery.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what's going on here.
SPEAKER_01: There are times when Jesus did get away.
SPEAKER_01: But here we see specifically his heart for the needs of people.
SPEAKER_01: And he took the time to meet them even when he so desperately needed that.
SPEAKER_01: His personal desires were temporarily set aside to meet the needs of people.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, as Jesus is healing the people and teaching them on that seaside, time passes.
SPEAKER_01: The early afternoon turns into late afternoon, and the warm spring sun lowers over the western horizon.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps the disciples were starting to get hungry or simply realizing their chance for downtime is escaping.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever the case, the disciples come to Jesus with a perfectly legitimate request.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Jesus, send the people away.
SPEAKER_01: It's time for them to go home.
SPEAKER_01: They need to eat.
SPEAKER_01: Send them away so that they can go find some food.
SPEAKER_01: It's a normal, perfectly normal request in the course of daily life.
SPEAKER_01: But this isn't a perfectly normal situation.
SPEAKER_01: Because this is on the side of the Sea of Galilee that is desolate.
SPEAKER_01: Sort of a transition between some grassy hillsides and desert.
SPEAKER_01: It's sparsely populated.
SPEAKER_01: There might be a few scattered villages separated by a few miles.
SPEAKER_01: Those villages might contain a few hundred people at most.
SPEAKER_01: So the people would have to walk quite a ways to find food.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine a few villages of a couple hundred people being invaded by 5,000 or more hungry people.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps in their excitement to follow Jesus or to be healed, people hadn't thought about what the day would entail and they hadn't packed enough food for their excursion.
SPEAKER_01: And now, when the time for an evening meal has approached, they don't have anything to eat.
SPEAKER_01: I remember hunting with my dad in the cold North Dakota Falls and wishing at the end of a long day that we didn't have to walk all the way home to get a warm supper.
SPEAKER_01: Because by that time I was frozen solid.
SPEAKER_01: You know those kind of days, right?
SPEAKER_01: Where maybe in the busyness of the day you just haven't had time to eat, or maybe you forgot and maybe there wasn't time to stop, and you just kept going.
SPEAKER_01: You get to the end of the day, and now you realize I'm hungry, I need to eat something, but there's nothing close.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps, perhaps it's just the disciples that are thinking ahead.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's all the people, maybe they've been receiving some grumbling responses and reactions from people.
SPEAKER_01: We don't tell, we're not told, we don't know.
SPEAKER_01: But it's really not the problem of the 12 disciples to figure the situation out, is it?
SPEAKER_01: These are people doing what they want to do.
SPEAKER_01: They're here to follow Jesus, they're here to hear Jesus speak, they're here to be healed.
SPEAKER_01: They came of their own volition, they're responsible for their own choices.
SPEAKER_01: But what's interesting is that it's the disciples who notice the problem.
SPEAKER_01: They're looking around at the multitudes of people, almost uncountable, sitting on the grassy hillsides and they do some quick calculations in their minds and determine that they needed to move things along.
SPEAKER_01: People needed to get on going.
SPEAKER_01: It's nearing the evening, and people needed to eat.
SPEAKER_01: So they noticed the problem and they determined to solve it in a perfectly natural and logical way.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus tells people it's time to go home.
SPEAKER_01: They need to eat, they need to rest.
SPEAKER_01: We need a little downtime.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever been going along in life, maybe, maybe in your job?
SPEAKER_01: And you come across a situation that is normally in someone else's area of responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe we could even think about it in home life.
SPEAKER_01: Say as children, you you've assigned your children certain tasks, certain responsibilities, like taking out the trash.
SPEAKER_01: And it comes to the end of the day, and the trash hasn't been taken out.
SPEAKER_01: What do you do?
SPEAKER_01: It's not your responsibility, the responsibility to belong to somebody else.
SPEAKER_01: Your boss says to you, I need you to do this, and you say, But that's not my responsibility, it's so-and-so's responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: And your boss looks at you and simply says, No, you do it.
SPEAKER_01: It's your children's responsibility to take out the trash.
SPEAKER_01: They haven't done it, and so what do you do?
SPEAKER_01: You grumbly, grumblingly do it.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you do a double take if somebody says to you, like your boss, you do it, and you say, No, that's not right my responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: That's not in my job description.
SPEAKER_01: And your boss says to you, Well, it is now.
SPEAKER_01: You do it.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what's happening here.
SPEAKER_01: Things are moving along nicely, everything's going as it normally does with crowds of people around Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: The disciples have probably been working hard, expending energy controlling the crowd, directing traffic, having people sit down in groups.
SPEAKER_01: And when it's time for Jesus to send the people away, he says to the disciples, Oh, you didn't know they're staying for supper.
SPEAKER_01: Talk about the shock of your life.
SPEAKER_01: If that were my job, I'd want to quit on the spot.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, there's another job.
SPEAKER_01: I can find another job.
SPEAKER_01: How do you feed 5,000 or more people with an hour's notice?
SPEAKER_01: Especially when there are no cities.
SPEAKER_01: There are no caterers.
SPEAKER_01: There's no calling up a restaurant for delivery.
SPEAKER_01: Much less grocery stores with abundant amounts of food.
SPEAKER_01: How do you do that?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, Do you know you feed them?
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a purposeful emphasis here.
SPEAKER_01: There's an extra pronoun in the original language in verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: It says, if Jesus says to his disciples, No, you, you do it.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm talking to you.
SPEAKER_01: You guys take care of it.
SPEAKER_01: No, don't send them away.
SPEAKER_01: You feed them.
SPEAKER_01: I can just imagine doubting Thomas saying to one of the other disciples, Is he serious?
SPEAKER_01: He can't be serious.
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: And this tells us something about Jesus and about the disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Let's think first about the disciples.
SPEAKER_01: In essence, Jesus is telling the disciples to take responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: Because they have a little bit of a history of avoiding responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: A pattern of theirs.
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 15, verse 23, the disciples want to send someone away from Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus responds to them anyway.
SPEAKER_01: Later in chapter 19, verse 13, the disciples want to send the little children away from Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, No, no, let them come.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, No, you feed them.
SPEAKER_01: You disciples, feed the people.
SPEAKER_01: We might say, but Jesus, they don't have the ability to feed 5,000 or more people.
SPEAKER_01: They had no way to provide for that large amount of crowds.
SPEAKER_01: But see, Jesus is ordering the disciples to meet the needs of people, not by what they have, but by trusting Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: The disciples had nothing more than five loaves and two fish.
SPEAKER_01: That's either the daily amount of food needed for a young boy, let's say six to ten years old, or it's his lunch.
SPEAKER_01: It's either what he needs for the whole day, or it's what he needs for his lunch.
SPEAKER_01: Not a whole lot of food.
SPEAKER_01: One little Boy.
SPEAKER_01: And we might say, well, a 10-year-old can sometimes eat a lot of food.
SPEAKER_01: Well, okay.
SPEAKER_01: But it's almost, it's almost despair-like.
SPEAKER_01: Put yourselves in the disciples' feet for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I got a boy's lunch.
SPEAKER_01: We have a few loaves and some fish.
SPEAKER_01: These are probably like small pancake size flat loaves.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe like modern pita bread, kind of like that.
SPEAKER_01: Some small smoked fish.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, we've we've searched and searched among all the people, and all we have is this.
SPEAKER_01: It's not enough to give all of these people a crumb.
SPEAKER_01: Nowhere near enough for ten people or a hundred people.
SPEAKER_01: Much less five thousand weary and hungry people.
SPEAKER_01: And there's an important lesson there, I think, for following Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes he calls us to serve him by serving others.
SPEAKER_01: And that service to others may sometimes require looking beyond our own inadequacies.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes Jesus may call us to follow him and to do something in service to him or to other people, and we say, I can't, and he says, I know.
SPEAKER_01: Do it anyway.
SPEAKER_01: How often is our first response to Jesus something like, oh, I can't do that?
SPEAKER_01: We often look first at ourselves and we make a judgment as to whether we feel able to do something, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to doing something that God wants us to do, when it comes to serving others in the body of Christ, when it comes to speaking about Jesus to other people, even people that we feel like we can't communicate well with, we're just like the disciples.
SPEAKER_01: We focus on why we are unable to do something.
SPEAKER_01: We all, let's admit it, we all have our own versions of, but Jesus, I only have five loaves and two fish.
SPEAKER_01: And he's responding with, I know.
SPEAKER_01: The other gospels tell us that Jesus asked them, how much, do you have any food?
SPEAKER_01: How much do we have?
SPEAKER_01: He knew.
SPEAKER_01: In the next section, we're going to see how Jesus knew very well that there was a storm coming on the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_01: When he made his disciples get into a boat.
SPEAKER_01: He knew.
SPEAKER_01: So too, when Jesus calls you to follow him in obedience and to do something for his will and for his glory, he knows.
SPEAKER_01: He knows exactly what you have and what you don't have.
SPEAKER_01: He knows exactly what your inadequacies are, he knows exactly what your strengths are, he knows exactly what you need to accomplish his purpose.
SPEAKER_01: We should not be so quick to push off what the Lord is asking of us simply because we're looking at our circumstances with human eyes.
SPEAKER_01: We need to look at things from God's perspective, trusting that he will use our limitations, our inadequacies for his glory, because in the end, God may take our meager offering to him and multiply it into something that we cannot imagine.
SPEAKER_01: The reason for that is because of the person involved in this situation.
SPEAKER_01: Something we often forget.
SPEAKER_01: We look at the situation either from the end result, a whole bunch of people got fed, or we look at the situation from the disciples' perspective.
SPEAKER_01: When Matthew is really wanting us to look at the situation from Jesus' perspective.
SPEAKER_01: Mark chapter 6, verse 38, Jesus told the disciples to find out how much food they had.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_01: 5,000 or more people.
SPEAKER_01: And the only one who had the wherewithal to leave home with some food for the day was a little boy.
SPEAKER_01: One little boy.
SPEAKER_01: They did a search, and all they found was one little boy who brought his lunch.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus told the disciples, have the people sit down in groups.
SPEAKER_01: And he takes the loaves and the fish, and he looks up to heaven and he gives thanks.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are you, O God of the universe, for giving us this food.
SPEAKER_01: He has the disciples come and he divides the bread and the fish between the disciples, and they give it to the people.
SPEAKER_01: What we need to recognize is that Matthew's painting a portrait of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And the portrait portrays Jesus not as some mean, vindictive parent teaching his disciples by making them squirm, as he tells them to do something that they're incapable of doing.
SPEAKER_01: No, that's not what's going on here at all.
SPEAKER_01: No, this is this is this is about Jesus, not about so much the disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Because Matthew is showing us that Jesus, this Jesus, is the God of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: We are to notice the impossibility of providing food for these people in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: Who else in the Bible provided food for a massive number of people in the middle of the wilderness?
SPEAKER_01: I'll give you a hint.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: God did.
SPEAKER_01: What did he do?
SPEAKER_01: He gave them bread from heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And they said, Well, bread's not enough.
SPEAKER_01: You need to give us some meat.
SPEAKER_01: So he gave them meat.
SPEAKER_01: What does Jesus do?
SPEAKER_01: He gives them bread.
SPEAKER_01: He gives them meat.
SPEAKER_01: We're to notice that Jesus in the wilderness is giving Israel food in a miraculous way, just like God did in the days of Moses.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the bringer of food.
SPEAKER_01: He's the giver of bread.
SPEAKER_01: He's God in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: He's the greater Moses.
SPEAKER_01: But this miracle is not exactly the same as that one in the desert so many thousands of years before.
SPEAKER_01: It was like frost in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: Once the sun comes up, the frost disappears.
SPEAKER_01: That was like the manna.
SPEAKER_01: It lasted only for a day, or at most two days on the Sabbath, and people were to gather what they needed for the day and consume it and not have it left over.
SPEAKER_01: But this food which Jesus gives is real bread and real fish that lasts.
SPEAKER_01: It's left over.
SPEAKER_01: It's gathered up.
SPEAKER_01: And you'll notice that there are twelve large baskets fulls.
SPEAKER_01: These are baskets that are large enough to have to be carried by two hands.
SPEAKER_01: Large baskets full, twelve, one for each tribe of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: That lasts and it gives sustenance to people.
SPEAKER_01: Leftover manna in the desert rotted and brought death, but leftover bread from Jesus gives sustenance.
SPEAKER_01: And have you noticed that what Jesus has to do here is create living matter.
SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
SPEAKER_01: To give the people bread from just a few small flat loaves, Jesus has to create grain, barley, wheat, a living plant that is crushed, mixed with some oil and baked.
SPEAKER_01: He has to create fish, a living creature.
SPEAKER_01: This is no normal healer and teacher expressing things to people on the hillside.
SPEAKER_01: This is the creator, God, giving them bread and meat, just as Yahweh did in the desert.
SPEAKER_01: This, Matthew is telling us, is Emmanuel, God with us.
SPEAKER_01: Now most of the people wouldn't know what was going on behind the scenes.
SPEAKER_01: They're merely told to sit down and eat.
SPEAKER_01: But the disciples knew.
SPEAKER_01: The disciples knew that this was going to be a disaster.
SPEAKER_01: They couldn't feed these people with this.
SPEAKER_01: But God so often takes what we see as insufficient and he multiplies it for his purpose and for his glory.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine that little boy's story at the end of the day?
SPEAKER_01: He goes home and his mom takes his lunchbox and opens it up and looks in it, and it's overflowing.
SPEAKER_01: There's no longer full loaves and full fish, but pieces of both that are filling up crammed inside of that lunchbox.
SPEAKER_01: He came home with more than he left with.
SPEAKER_01: Can't you hear it?
SPEAKER_01: Mom, you're not gonna believe what happened today.
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of that boy, service to Jesus sometimes means giving up what we have to give it to Jesus for his use.
SPEAKER_01: The boy gave up his lunch.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I would have done that.
SPEAKER_01: I treasured my lunch.
SPEAKER_01: And if I was hungry, I probably wouldn't have been willing to share it.
SPEAKER_01: But that little boy gave up his lunch, not knowing what would happen with it.
SPEAKER_01: He just trusted the disciples.
SPEAKER_01: And if he had not given up his lunch, and if the disciples had not handed the meager amount to Jesus, we may not have this account.
SPEAKER_01: And the people would not have been fed that day.
SPEAKER_01: And the demonstration of Jesus as the Lord of all creation giving food in the wilderness would not be recorded for us to connect the dots to see this Jesus is that God.
SPEAKER_01: And here is a demonstration for the disciples that in the Lord's hands a little is more than enough.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't need what we have, he doesn't need us.
SPEAKER_01: But he is pleased to stretch our faith when we give what we have to him for his use, be it a penny or our lunch, or our time, or even ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We should not wait until we have more, because we may never have more.
SPEAKER_01: We should not wait until we feel ready because we may never feel perfectly ready.
SPEAKER_01: We should not wait until we learn more to share about Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Just do it.
SPEAKER_01: Give Jesus what you have and who you are, because God is never intimidated by the size of your problems.
SPEAKER_01: We are, aren't we?
SPEAKER_01: So often we are vastly intimidated by the size of our problems.
SPEAKER_01: But God is never intimidated by the size of our problems.
SPEAKER_01: He's never daunted by the monstrous, insurmountable hurdles that seem to face us day after day.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus taught his disciples, and he's teaching us now, that when we give of ourselves to him, no matter how little it is or what we are giving, he will accomplish his purpose through it.
SPEAKER_01: There are no hurdles that he cannot jump.
SPEAKER_01: There are no barriers that will stop him.
SPEAKER_01: This gets us into unnecessary details.
SPEAKER_01: But one of the questions that I've always wondered is when did the miracle really take place?
SPEAKER_01: Did the miracle happen when Jesus broke the bread and the fish and gave it to the disciples, or did the miracle happen when the disciples handed it to the people?
SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
SPEAKER_01: We're not told, but it doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_01: And the fact that it happened shouldn't surprise us.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus isn't merely feeding people.
SPEAKER_01: No, if we know our Bibles, we know that Jesus is redeeming a new people.
SPEAKER_01: He's not redeeming them from slavery to another nation.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he's redeeming them from slavery to sin and death.
SPEAKER_01: And if he can create food in the wilderness, then he's powerful enough to deliver us, is he not?
SPEAKER_01: Multiple occasions of this in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Kings chapter 17, the widow of Zarephath had enough flour and oil for one more meal for her and her son, and then they would eat that meal, and then she said they would die.
SPEAKER_01: It's all they had left.
SPEAKER_01: And this audacious prophet comes and says, No, make me a little cake first.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just make me a little cake first.
SPEAKER_01: What does she do?
SPEAKER_01: She makes him a little cake, and what do you know?
SPEAKER_01: There's enough more for her and her son.
SPEAKER_01: And that scenario repeats itself day after day after day after day.
SPEAKER_01: God provided.
SPEAKER_01: God provided in a situation almost exactly like this in 2 Kings chapter 4, verses 43 and 44.
SPEAKER_01: Food just started coming.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew amazingly records that everyone ate and was satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: Get that.
SPEAKER_01: They were satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: This word means not merely to have enough to eat, but to have more than enough to eat.
SPEAKER_01: Because this word was used outside of the Bible to refer mainly to the fattening of cattle.
SPEAKER_01: The people had enough to be fattened by the food.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps we could say that 5,000 or more people were stuffed with five loaves and two fish.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, the disciples gave what they had to the Lord, and yes, he used it.
SPEAKER_01: And in the end, needs were met by the power and the grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: But the reason that it all took place is because Jesus is God.
SPEAKER_01: He's the God of the Bible in flesh and blood.
SPEAKER_01: The same hands that created the world, the same hands that hung the stars in place, or the same hands that created bread and fish right from his hands.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew tells us that there were 5,000 men besides women and children.
SPEAKER_01: The word besides, that's the way it usually is translated, actually means without.
SPEAKER_01: It could be that Matthew intends for us to know that there were only men at this gathering.
SPEAKER_01: And if that's the case, then it would make it more like a political gathering of the time, where they're interested in Jesus kind of rising up and throwing out the Roman government.
SPEAKER_01: They're checking out to see if he really is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, John tells us that immediately after this event, what they wanted to do was to take Jesus by force and make him king.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's what's going on here.
SPEAKER_01: It could be that Matthew is also following the normal cultural pattern of only counting men in that situation.
SPEAKER_01: If that's the case, then the number of men, women, and children could run upwards of 10,000 people or more.
SPEAKER_01: That makes the miracle even more astonishing, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: As if creating out of nothing could be more astonishing.
SPEAKER_01: So when Jesus told the disciples, no, you feed them, they could have.
SPEAKER_01: By faith and trust in the one who supplies all of our needs, they could have obeyed and provided food.
SPEAKER_01: And when Jesus goes further, he teaches them and as well as the early church and even us that when we trust Him to use what we have for His purpose and His glory, He does.
SPEAKER_01: It may not be in the way we expect, but He will use it.
SPEAKER_01: See, Jesus is ultimately preparing these disciples for about a year later, when after the crucifixion and resurrection and his ascension into heaven, these same disciples would be left without Jesus leading the fledgling church.
SPEAKER_01: That early church did not have much.
SPEAKER_01: But what they had given to their Lord accomplished much.
SPEAKER_01: So they learned a lesson so that a year later, when thousands of people were coming to faith in Christ, they had the faith and the trust in Jesus to know he's going to provide a way for this.
SPEAKER_01: That's what happens when God's people, full of faith and trust, come together.
SPEAKER_01: They know that Jesus can do it.
SPEAKER_01: And they trust that he will.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus is also teaching us about who he is.
SPEAKER_01: As I said before, in John's gospel, we're told that the very next day, the same crowd of people sought out Jesus in another community, coming in droves, and Jesus looks at them and says, You are seeking me not because you saw the signs, that is, the signs of his deity, but because your stomachs were full.
SPEAKER_01: And he continued on that day to tell them that they were seeking out the wrong kind of bread.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus is the bread of life.
SPEAKER_01: And whoever comes to him will never hunger.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's teaching them.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, listen, this is not about bread in the desert.
SPEAKER_01: This is not about a few fish.
SPEAKER_01: This is about being satisfied for eternity.
SPEAKER_01: So there are practical lessons here for our service to the Lord, and there are also theological lessons.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is God, and He's proven it.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus doesn't just provide bread to eat when there is none.
SPEAKER_01: He's not a vending machine that you put in a few dollars and out comes a lunch.
SPEAKER_01: No, he's the one who came to give life that satisfies for eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, may we be satisfied in you alone.
SPEAKER_01: So often we we confess we find our satisfaction in things that don't last, that don't matter.
SPEAKER_01: So often our trust gets eroded because we look at life through through human eyes.
SPEAKER_01: We look at life from our own perspective and circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive us for our nearsightedness.
SPEAKER_01: Give us eyes to see and ears to hear who you are.
SPEAKER_01: And give us faith to trust that you will take what we have, who we are, and use it for your glory day by day, moment by moment.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, you are the one that we want to be glorified.
SPEAKER_01: We don't want to be able to say to you, hey, look at what I gave you, Jesus, and look what you did.
SPEAKER_01: It's no.
SPEAKER_01: It's all about you.
SPEAKER_01: We lift you up, we praise you, we magnify you for the praise of your glory, and along the way we give you thanks for life in your name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.