Good evening. Let's open tonight's
service with hymn number 126 in the hardback timbrel, 126,
Rock of Ages. Let's all stand together. ? Achametas, clap for me ? Let
me hide myself in thee ? Let the water and the blood ? From
thy wounded side which flowed ? Be of sin a double cure ? Save
from wrath and make me pure Could my tears forever flow Could my
zeal no longer know These four sins could not atone Thou must
save and Thou alone In my hand, O Christ, I bring Simply to Thy
cross I cling ? While I draw this fleeting death breath ?
? When my eyes shall close in death ? ? When I rise to worlds
unknown ? ? And behold thee on my throne ? ? Hark, the ages
laugh for thee ? ? Let me hide myself in thee ? Please be seated. Good evening. Let's open our
Bibles to Acts 16. Acts chapter 16. I want to read the account of Paul
and Silas being put in prison and the conversion of the jailer. The gospel, as it always does,
caused conflict in the city of Philippi. It broke with tradition
and it threatened the income of the man who had a servant
who was a fortune teller. And we'll begin reading in verse
22. And the multitude rose up together against them and the
magistrates rent off their clothes and commanded to beat them. And
when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into
prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely. Who having
received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison and
made their feet fast in the stocks. You see the, the hardness of
this jailer," in verse 24. And at Bindite, Paul and Silas
prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard
them. And suddenly there was a great
earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and
immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bands were
loosed. And the keeper of the prison, waking out of his sleep
and seeing that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword
and would have killed himself supposing that the prisoners
had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice
saying, do thyself no harm for we are all here. Then he called
for a light and sprang in and came trembling and fell down
before Paul and Silas. and brought them out and said,
sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved and thy house. And they
spake unto him the word of the Lord and to all that were in
his house. It's amazing how some will take
this passage of scripture and justify baptizing babies. This is clearly a reference to
those who heard the gospel in their house and believed. And he took them the same hour
of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized he and
all his straightway. And when he had brought them
into his house, he set meat before them and rejoiced. believing in God with all his
house. Let's pray. Our merciful heavenly father, we ask that you would give us
a spirit of praise and worship. Lord, our circumstances aren't
near what Paul and Silas's were and yet they were drawn to rejoice
and praise Thee and lift up their petition to Thee. Lord, You sent
an earthquake and You loosed their bands. Lord, we are in
need of You to to shake the foundations of our lives, that that which
cannot be shaken might stand true. Lord, that you would loose
whatever bands might keep us from thee. Lord, that you would
cause us to run unto thee and to rejoice in the glorious person
and accomplished work of thy dear son. Lord, give us the same spirit
of faith that you gave to that jailer. We ask it in Christ's
name, amen. Let's stand together again. We'll
sing hymn number 176, 176. Break Thou the bread of life,
dear Lord, to me, As Thou didst break the loaves beside the sea. Throughout the sacred page I
seek Thee, Lord, ? My spirit pats for thee, O living Word
? ? Bless thou the truth, dear Lord, to me, to me ? ? As thou
didst bless the bread by Galilee ? shall all bondage cease, all
fetters fall, and I shall find my peace, my all in all. Thou art the bread of life, O
Lord, to Thee ? My holy word, the truth that
saveth me ? Give me to eat and live with thee above ? Teach
me to love thy truth for thou art my God O send Thy Spirit, Lord, now
unto me, that He may touch my eyes and make me see. Show me the truth concealed within
Thy Word, And in thy book revealed, I see
the Lord. Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles to Mark
chapter 8. Mark chapter 8. This is the second time that
the Lord has fed a multitude with loaves and fishes. In Matthew's account of this
miracle, he tells us that the 4,000 in this group was not counting
the men and the children. So we can conclude from that
that the crowd was much larger than 4,000 people. But I've titled this message, Satisfied
in the Wilderness. You and I, like these people,
have been led by the Lord into the wilderness where there's
no sustenance for our soul. and only he can feed us. I'll show you where this title
comes from. We'll read these verses together.
Mark chapter 8 beginning in verse 1. In those days, the multitude
being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples
unto him and saith unto them, I have compassion on the multitude
because they have now been with me three days and have nothing
to eat. And if I send them away fasting
to their houses, they will faint by the way, for divers of them
came from far. And his disciples answered him,
from whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in
the wilderness? It's a good question. And he asked them, how many loaves
have ye? And they said seven. And he commanded the people to
sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves
and gave thanks and break and gave to his disciples to sit
before them, sat before them. And they did set them before
the people. And they had a small, they had a few small fishes.
And he blessed and commanded to set them before them. So they
did eat and were filled. And they took up the broken meat
that was left, seven baskets. They that had eaten were about
4,000 and he sent them away. Satisfied. to be content, to be filled, to not murmur or complain, to
have the grace to rejoice in the Lord always, to never worry
or doubt or get angry or be afraid. What a beautiful thing that is. As we consider how discontent
we can be, we must respond to this idea of being satisfied
with, Lord, increase our faith. I want to be satisfied. I want
to be satisfied with exactly where God has me. I want to be
satisfied with what he's given me. And most especially, I want
to be satisfied with Christ. We're not satisfied with how
much of him we see, or how much of him we know, or how much we
love him. David said in Psalm 17, verse
15, as for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness, and
I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness. As long as we're
in this body, there's a certain discontent, isn't there? There's
a discontentment with our unbelief and with our sin and with our lack of being satisfied. I love what Paul said. Turn with me to Philippians chapter
4. Here's a man who had learned
by experience how God had provided for him
in every need. And he says in Philippians chapter
4 in verse 11, not that I speak
in respect of want, for I have learned in whatever state I am
in, therewith, to be content. I know both how to be abased
and how to abound everywhere and in all things. I am instructed
to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer
need. I can do all things through Christ,
which strengthens me. religious people love to quote
that last verse and claim success and things that God did not promise
success in. He's talking about being content
and he's talking about being able to say I can Christ strengthens
me, I can be content, I can be satisfied with where I am. These apostles, these disciples
ask the question, from whence can a man satisfy these men with
bread here in the wilderness? We're talking about a satisfaction
that doesn't have anything to do with our circumstances. Matter of fact, the Lord often
leaves us in difficult circumstances until he causes us to be content with
him and with where he has us. At which point, he often delivers
us from those circumstances but it doesn't matter at that point.
It doesn't matter if he delivers us or not because he's brought
us to that place of being content in whatever state we're in. A few things they see in this
verse of scripture and that is that a man can't satisfy me. This contentment, this peace,
this rest can only come from God. How oftentimes we look to
men for our contentment and we get discouraged and disappointed
and dissatisfied because of the way men are. How oftentimes we
look to our own selves, this man, to try to find some satisfaction
and contentment. The disciples said, from whence
can a man satisfy these men? The Lord said, feed them. He's
already brought them through this experience once. And he
said the same thing. What do you have? And they said,
well, a few loaves and a few small fishes. But what is that
among so many? That was a little boy. His lunch
is what it was. And now the disciples have gathered
up their own supplies and concluded that they have seven loaves.
And I love the way Matthew says it in our text that we just read. It says, a few small fishes. Matthew says, a few little fishes. We'll see the truth of that in a moment. But
David said in Psalm 142, I look to my right hand, I look to my
left hand, refuge failed me and no man cared for my soul. There
was not another man that could meet my need. When my mother
and my father forsake me, then the Lord took me up. The Lord's going to put us in a place where we can't
get help from a man. As long as we can find help from
ourselves and help from others, we're not likely to be shut up
to Christ. And what a blessing it is to
be out in the wilderness and to be able to come to this conclusion.
What man can satisfy this need? We can't help ourselves. The Lord brings us to that place
where he brought Peter, drowning in the sea, looking at the winds
and the waves, and he had no place to go but to say, Lord,
save me. Lord, save me. And immediately
the Lord reached forth his hand. Not only can men not satisfy
the needs of the soul, but the wilderness can't satisfy it.
Thus the name wilderness, an inhospitable place. It's the
world we live in, a dry and thirsty land, a desert, a place that
cannot give life, it can only breed death. And though we find
ourselves often looking for satisfaction in the things of the world, when
the Lord brings us out in the wilderness and says to us, feed
them. And we see a need for our souls
to be fed. We realize that the broken cisterns
of this world and the moldy bread of this world and the polluted
waters of this world can't satisfy. From whence can a man satisfy
these men with bread here in the wilderness? Here in this
desert place. The Lord sent the children of
Israel into a wilderness for 40 years. And they had to depend
upon him daily for bread that came from heaven. And the Lord
taught us. to seek our daily bread. He said the Gentiles seek after
the things of the earth, but you seek first the kingdom of
God. You seek him first. And all these other things, your
father knows what you have need of. All these other things will be
added unto you. Seek him first. The wilderness cannot provide
what the sinner needs, what the soul needs, only the Lord can
do that. Solomon tried, he tried women,
he tried wealth, he tried wine, and he tried wisdom. He said,
I applied my heart unto wisdom, and even that was vanity. And
he's not talking about the wisdom of God, he's talking about the
knowledge of this world. the achieved knowledge that men
get from understanding the things of this world. He said, I applied
my heart to that. And even that was vanity. The Lord puts his people in a
wilderness so that the only water that they can draw from is from
a rock, a smitten rock. The only bread that they can
eat is that which comes down from heaven. The apostles said,
how can a man feed such a multitude in the wilderness? Well, a man
can't and the wilderness can't provide. Oh, what a blessing it is to be found Satisfied in Christ. All the appeals of this world
and all the appeals of our flesh and all the appeals of man-made
religion are based on being dissatisfied. Just look at all the advertisements
that we're bombarded with every day. You can't be satisfied unless
you have this. The lust of the flesh, the lust
of the eyes, the pride of life, oh I just need more. And religion
is all about that. You can't be satisfied unless
you do more. You have to work harder. Maybe
in the end you'll have done enough. Men by nature are dissatisfied.
We see it in politics. The politicians appeal to men's
dissatisfied state. I'm going to make it better.
And we're going to provide something. We're going to have a better
day. Why? Because they know that men
are discontent. And but for the grace of God,
you and I would be discontent. We would not be able to say with
the Apostle Paul, I am content in what other state I'm in, whether
I'm abased or abound. I've learned that. By God's grace,
I've learned it. He's taught me. I didn't learn
it on my own. The Lord had to take me out in
the wilderness and put me in a place where it was impossible
for a man to satisfy me. And I couldn't find any contentment
in the wilderness itself The Lord had to perform a miracle.
He had to perform a miracle of grace in my heart. He's the one that sat me down. Oh, the natural man thinks that
gain is godliness. You know, God's blessings, turn
with me to 1 Peter chapter six, 1 Timothy six. 1 Timothy chapter
six. Verse three, if any man teach
otherwise and consent not to wholesome words, even the words
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according
to godliness, He wants to dispute things. He wants to gain an advantage
in arguing with you and put himself in a position of authority over
you because he's learned more. That's what he's talking about.
He is proud knowing nothing but doting about questions and strife
of words where have come envy, strife, railings, evil surmising. perverse disputing of men of
corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain
is godliness. If I can gain an advantage over you, that is evidence that
I'm more godly. If I can gain in possessions,
that's the evidence that God is blessing me. In religion,
if I have a bigger church and a bigger denomination and more
people, that's evidence that we're enjoying the blessings
of God. Men of perverse mind think that gain is godliness. That gaining something is the
evidence of godliness. from such withdraw thyself, but
godliness with contentment is great gain. And here's the mystery
of godliness that Christ was manifested in the flesh, to be
content with Christ in whatever circumstances I am in. And the
Lord will take us out into the wilderness and he'll let us try
to help ourselves and he'll let us look to others to try to get
help. and will come to that place,
what man can satisfy such a great need here in this wilderness? That was the whole purpose of
this miracle. The whole purpose of the Lord
bringing them to this place. 2 Samuel, 1 Samuel chapter 22,
you remember when David gathered together his army. And the scripture
says that those who were distressed and those who were in debt and
those who were discontented came to the cave of Adullam and they
joined forces with David. They were in distress. They didn't
have any place else to go. They were in debt. They had a
debt they couldn't pay and they were discontented. And adulum,
if you remember, translated means justice. And justice is exactly
what the Lord Jesus accomplished at the cross when he offered
himself to his father as a sacrifice for our sin. And contentment
is being content with him, with what he did, not trying to add
to what he did. Just being completely content. That's godliness. Godliness with
contentment is great gain. The world says gain is godliness. If I get more, then that's the
evidence of God's blessings. No. No, the opposite is actually
true. The Lord's gotta put me in a
place where I don't have anything. I don't know anything. I can't
do anything. I'm in the wilderness and there's
no man here to help me. Now I have Christ. He has shut
me up to Christ. Lord, to whom shall we go? You
alone have the words of eternal life. Now godliness with contentment. Brethren, God will bring his
children. Again and again and again. Every time we try to find
satisfaction and contentment somewhere else, the Lord's gonna
strip us and disappoint us and we're gonna find ourselves in
distress and in debt and discontented again and again and again until
we say, oh Lord, save me. Lord, I'm drowning, save me. Another thing I see in this story,
it was the Lord that took them into the wilderness. He took
them there. Just like he took the children
of Israel for 40 years out into the wilderness. You know, when
Jacob came, I remember when Joseph was in Egypt and Joseph sent
for his father, Jacob and his brothers, and they all came down
to Egypt. How'd they get to Egypt? Well,
you just think about the map there for a moment. And the land
of Goshen is what I understand, the land of Goshen where the
children of Israel were, is the delta of the Nile, right
there as it goes into the Mediterranean. There wasn't a Suez Canal. There
was no water between Egypt And Israel was dry ground. And it's just a couple of days
journey, maybe a week or two for a group that large to get
down to Egypt. Why didn't Moses go back the
same way Jacob came? No, they had to go south and
they got stuck between the Egyptians and the Red Sea. And God came down in a cloud. And that cloud provided light
for the Israelites and darkness for the Egyptians. And God opened
up the sea and led them into the wilderness. And for the whole
next generation, they spent in that wilderness. Sometimes we refer to it as the
wandering in the wilderness. They weren't wandering. They
weren't wandering. They were following a pillar
of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. God was leading
them every step of the way. He kept them in the wilderness. The Lord Jesus led these 8, 10,
11, 12,000 people. He led them out into the wilderness.
This is his church. Everything about this story is
about the people of God. It's about the Lord feeding his
people. A man couldn't feed them. They
couldn't find any sustenance in the wilderness. The Lord put
them there. He takes us from the land of
leeks and melons and places us where we have to drink water
from a rock and get manna from heaven. Sometimes God uses the unbelief
of others to put us in that place. Think about Limelech. We've been
talking before service tonight. We're talking about politics.
Who knows? We may lose all of our liberties.
We may lose our prosperity. This country may be over with.
I don't know. I don't know. Maybe God's going
to use the evil of other men to put us in a place where life's
going to get hard. I pray it's not so, and I hope
not. But the Lord's done it before. He used a man by the name of Elimelech
who was going through a hard time and decided he'd move his
family to Moab. And they get to Moab and he dies
and his sons die and his wife, his wife, Naomi, is left a widow. You remember when she came back,
she said, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Lord has
dealt bitterly with me. God did this to me. When she
came back, everybody in her hometown looked at her and said, is that
Naomi? Look at her. No, don't call me Naomi, call
me Mara. God did this. But it was through that experience
of her unbelieving husband, Limelech, that Naomi and Ruth met Boaz
and... Oh, you know the rest of the
story. Right into the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh,
what a glorious picture of redemption. But Naomi had to go to... Naomi
had to go to... to Moab for that to happen. God used the sins of Joseph's
brothers, the evil that was in their hearts, to get Joseph down
into Egypt in order to save his people. And Joseph said to them,
he said, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good. God may
use the the evil devices and decisions of other men to put
us in a place where things are difficult. But the Lord said,
I'll never leave you nor forsake you. God used the evil Roman Empire
to persecute John, the apostle John, and exile him to Patmos. And there he received the revelation. One of the glorious books, the
capstone, if you will, to all of God's Word, the book of Revelation
given to us as a result of John's persecution. He puts his people where they
are, exactly where they are. I am exactly where I am by God's
appointment. I've got a brother in another
church that I talk to him two or three times a year. And he's
got some very difficult trials in his life. And every time I
get him on the phone or I see him, I ask him how he's doing. And his answer is always the
same. It's always the same. He said,
right on schedule. Everything's right on schedule,
Greg. It's right where it's supposed to be. I'm exactly where I'm
supposed to be and I'm good with that. We do what our hands find to do. We're not suggesting just... I'm talking to another brother
recently, he said, If it rains in the forecast, I'm gonna carry
an umbrella. That doesn't mean I'm an unbeliever. We do what
we do that we find to do, but at the same time, we wait on
the Lord. Isaiah chapter 40, verse 31 says, they that wait
upon the Lord shall renew their strength. And I love that word
renew because it means change. They that wait upon the Lord,
we don't just get a new strength, we change our strength for His
strength. For when I'm weak, then I'm strong.
His strength is made perfect in my weakness. I'm in the wilderness,
there's no man to help me. The wilderness can't help me.
I can't get satisfaction from my soul. I've got to exchange my strength
for His strength. And they that wait or trust in
the Lord, look to Christ, shall renew their strength. They shall
mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary.
They shall walk and not faint. Not faint. I can't let these people go.
They'll faint in the wilderness. Some of them come a long way.
I brought them out here. We gotta feed them. Sometimes my own sin and unbelief
puts me in the wilderness. David, we're gonna be looking
at 2 Samuel chapter 11, Sunday, Lord willing. And that's the
story of David and Bathsheba and Uriah, a very dark, sordid,
awful story. David found himself in the Wasteland
of doubt and fear and anger and unbelief as a result of his own
sin. Of his own sin. And then Nathan confronted him. And David said, oh, I've sinned
against God. And Nathan said, and God's forgiven
you. He's forgiven you. We wouldn't have Psalm 51. We're
not justifying what David did. David paid horribly the consequences
for that sin, but God brings good out of evil. Doesn't mean
that evil's good, but he brings the wrath of man shall praise
him, and the remainder he will restrain. Sometimes the Lord
uses our own sin and our own unbelief to put us in a place
where, Lord, I've got no place else to go. Jonah. I know Jonah's the type of Christ,
but Jonah as a prophet of God and as a man, the Lord told him
to go to Geneva, Nineveh, and the scripture says he went down
to Joppa, and then he went down to a ship, and then he went down
in the belly of the ship, and then he ended up in the belly
of a whale. That's the direction of disobedience, isn't it? Down,
down, down, down, and Jonah in the belly of the whale. He cried. Now he's in a place. Now he's in the wilderness. Now
there's no man to help him. Now he's shut up and he cries,
salvation is of the Lord. If I'm gonna be saved, God's
gonna have to save me. How are you gonna satisfy these
people out here in this wilderness? Think about Onesimus. Remember
Onesimus, that runaway slave? He was the slave of Philemon
and he stole from Philemon and he ran away from Philemon and
he thought, I'll go to the big city of Rome and I'll just get
lost in the big city of Rome and I'll be free and I can live
my life like I want. found himself in the same jail
cell with the apostle Paul. We don't know he was in a jail
cell but he met Paul in Rome, heard the gospel, God saved him.
The Lord sent him back to Philemon. Now, the Lord used the sin of
Philemon, of Onesimus. He went back and became a profitable
servant and a brother. One way or the other, the Lord's
gonna shut us up in a wilderness until we have no place else to
go but to Him. The Lord had compassion on those
who followed Him. You read that, you remember that
in what we read here? He said, I have compassion on
the multitude. As a father pitieth his children,
so the Lord pitieth them. How much love we have for our
children. We'd do anything for our children. we'd lay down our
lives for our children. And if you being evil know how
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more? Oh,
if we had, this is what growth and grace is. It's understanding
more of how much the Lord really loves us. If we believe like
we ought, but he loves us as he does, number one, we'd love
him a whole lot more. There'd never been any hesitancy
of fleeing to him. We would run to him with every
need. We would be content and satisfied
with all that he is. How much more peace in all of our circumstances.
Lord, you put me here, I know you love me, I know you've got
my best interest at heart. Lord, it's good, it's good. Where's the best place to see
how much the Lord loves us? Where's the best place to see
that? Is it not the cross? greater love hath no man than
this, he lay down his life for his friends." Hearing his love,
not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his son
to be the propitiation of our sins. Oh, fix your eyes on what
the Lord Jesus did at Calvary. He did that for you. And if any one of us was the
only one to be saved, that's what would have had to happen.
You see, the extent of his agony and suffering wasn't because
of the size of the multitude, it was because of the evil of
sin. It wasn't the amount of sin, it was the depth
of it. And any one of our sins or so
would have required what the Lord did. And there's where we
see how much he loved us. What greater demonstration of
God's love is there than for us to set our eyes on him? To look to that serpent on the
pole, Oh Lord, we're out here in the wilderness, we've been
bitten by serpents, we're gonna die. Look and live. Look and live. How are we gonna
satisfy all these people out here in the wild? How's a man
gonna satisfy? Well, a man can, but the God-man
can't. The God-man can't. He put us where we are, He has
compassion on us. He refused to let them faint.
He would provide for them and he would keep them. And he would do it through the
means of the disciples. Now, clearly in the Bible, fish
are a picture of God's people. There's a few. Little fishes
in this story. And God's gonna feed a multitude
with a few little fishes. You say, well, how do you get
that? Well, you remember when Peter and James, and by the way,
fishermen, four of the 12 apostles were fishermen. Peter, James,
John, the inner circle, and Andrew were all fishermen. And when
the Lord called them, he said, I'm gonna make you fishers of
men. You're gonna start catching men. And you're not gonna catch
them with a hook and a lure, you're gonna catch them with
a net. And then he proved that point when he told them to cast
the net on the other side. Lord, we've toiled all night,
but as you've commanded, so we'll do it. The Lord knows where his
fish are. He's not luring them, he's catching them in the net
of the gospel. And they drug that net to the beach and they
counted the fish, 156 of them. Why? Because the Lord knows exactly
how many sheep he's got. He knows exactly how many fish
he's got. And then when there was taxes
to be paid, the Lord told the disciples, go down to the sea,
cast in a hook, draw out a fish, and open its mouth, and there'll
be a coin. And they caught one fish, had a coin in its mouth,
they pay the taxes. What's that a picture of? God's
people providing through his people. He's providing through
his people. You know, I got thinking about
it. Robert and I were talking about this Sunday, how when Noah
got off the ark, it wasn't a living thing anywhere to be seen. Not
an animal, not a plant, not a bird, nothing. The only thing alive
was on the ark. And I thought, well, now wait
a minute. There was something alive. It was under the sea. All the fish lived. All the sea
creatures lived. And the very water that brought
judgment to the rest of the world, the fish were able to extract
oxygen out of that water and live in that water. And when the Lord brought, when
the Lord after the resurrection and he met the disciples on the
Sea of Galilee and Peter jumped in the water and swam to the
shore and the scripture says that the Lord had their fish
and he fed them with fish. And here he's feeding this multitude. There's only one time a great,
a big fish, there's always little fish. God's people are little. God doesn't need, there's only
one time a big fish is mentioned. And that was a whale. And that's
a picture of the whole multitude of God's people from every generation. Because Jonah in that part of
the story is a type of Christ. And the scripture says that the
fish vomited him out onto dry ground. And the Lord Jesus came out of
his church. to save his people. Bunch of
little fishes. God provides for his people through
his people. That's why it's so important,
brethren, that we pray for one another, that we encourage one
another, that we speak to one another about Christ, that we
be an example to one another in the midst of our trials, Listen,
what you see in me and what I see in you, that's the means by which
the Lord feeds us. And we become murmurs and complainers
and unbelievers. There's more at stake than just
us. God feeds His people by His people. Let's remain conscious of the
importance of the responsibility that we have to one another.
to one another. The Lord takes a few small fish.
And we know what the bread's about. There were seven loaves.
Seven, the number of perfection. Seven, the number of rest. Seven,
the number of God. Seven, the number of Christ.
And he's the bread of life. And so the Lord uses his fish
to feed his fish with the bread of life. And there's seven baskets left
over, plenty left over. There was 12 last time, and now
there's seven. The Lord's not slack in keeping
his promises. And he's not depleted in any
way by our need, whatever it is, whatever our need is. He's
taken us into wilderness and we cry out to him and whatever
he provides depletes from him nothing. You know, we see that in the
water cycle of this very physical world in which we live. It's
exactly the same amount of water on this earth right now as there's
ever been or ever will be. It's not going anywhere. It evaporates,
it goes up in the clouds, it condenses, it falls down as rain,
and it just keeps doing the same thing. And it's not, all the
water that we've drank, all the water that we've used, and we
haven't depleted the earth of one drop of water. And we're not gonna deplete God
of one drop of his grace. When we cry unto him, hey, Lord,
help me, Lord, save me. How can a man satisfy such a
group of people in such a need in this wilderness? Well, a man can't, and the wilderness
can't. But the God-man can, and he will. And this is the means by which
he does it. Tom? 225, let's stand together. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
Come unto me and rest. Lay down, thou weary one, Lay
down thy head upon my breast. I came to Jesus as I was weary
and bored and sad. I found in Him a resting place,
and He has made me glad. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
Behold, I freely give the living water, thirsty one, stoop down
and drink and live. I came to Jesus, and I drank
of that life-giving stream. My thirst was quenched, my soul
revived, and now I live in Him. I heard the voice of Jesus say,
I am this dark world's light. Look unto me, thy morn shall
rise, and all thy day be bright. I looked to Jesus and I found
in Him my star, my sun. And in that light of life I'll
walk till traveling days are done.