Well, good morning. If you would
open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 15, where our lesson
will be taken from this morning. Matthew chapter 15. Before we
begin, let's bow for our Lord in prayer. Our Father, how thankful we are
to have one more day, one more opportunity from your gracious
hand to be able to meet together, open and read and study your
word. And we trust to hear a message
from thee, a message of our Lord Jesus Christ, his glory, his
sufficiency. Father, I pray you would enable
us this morning to worship thee. Let the name of our savior be
exalted and magnified. Father, take your word and apply
it to the hearts of your people to save and give life and give
faith, to comfort and edify and instruct the hearts of your people. Father, we're so thankful for
your mercy and your grace. You've been so abundantly merciful
to this congregation. Father, we're awed at the abundance
of your mercy and compassion to us. And Father, we pray that
you'd not leave us alone, but you continue to be merciful,
continue to be gracious, continue to call out your people and comfort
your sheep through the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. What
we pray for ourselves, Father, the spirit of worship. We pray
for your people everywhere who are meeting together today to
worship thee. Father, bless. We pray a special
blessing on our brother Eric as he preaches in Danville this
morning, we pray you'd glorify your name there and give Peonabbey
and traveling mercies back home to us. Father, for those who
are sick and sorrowing and hurting in deep waters, Father, we pray
you'd comfort them, that you'd comfort your people with your
presence, that you'd heal and that you would deliver. All these
things we ask in that name which is above every name, the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ. All right, our lesson begins,
I've titled our lesson, More Loaves and Fishes. Our text begins
in verse 32, Matthew 15. Then Jesus called his disciples
unto him and said, I have compassion on the multitude because they
continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat. I'll
not send them away fasting lest they faint in the way. Now our
Lord's been healing this multitude that came to him for three straight
days. without stop for three days.
You think of that. Think of the power of that. He
healed people for three straight days. In three days, they didn't
bring to him one person he couldn't heal. And think of the compassion
of that. For three straight days. He didn't
turn one sick person away. He didn't turn one person in
need away. He healed people. Our Lord has the power and the
compassion to spiritually do for folks what he did physically
for these people. He has the power and the compassion to spiritually
heal every sinner that comes to him, who seeks mercy and forgiveness.
Now read on, here's his compassion for them, verse 33. And his disciples
saying to him, when should we have so much bread in the wilderness
as to fill so great a multitude? And Jesus saith unto them, how
many loaves have ye? And they say seven and a few
little fishes. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on
the ground And he took the seven loaves and fishes and gave thanks
and break them and gave to his disciples and the disciples to
the multitude. And they did all eat and were
filled. And they took up of the broken meat that was left seven
baskets full. And they that did eat were 4,000
men beside women and children. And he sent away the multitude
and took ship and came into the coast of Magdalia. Now here the
Lord performed his most public miracle again. That's why I entitled
this more loaves than fishes, more. The Lord is always giving
his people more, more mercy, more grace, more of his presence,
more comfort for their hearts, more of his leadership. He's
always giving his people more. You know, the first time the
Lord performed this miracle, there were 5,000 men, not counting
women and children. This time there's 4,000. This
is a very public miracle. The Lord took just a small bit
of food. He blessed it. And as he broke
it, he created food. As he broke it, he gave to the
disciples, and the disciples gave to the multitude. And everybody
there had as much to eat as they wanted. If you had a little appetite,
you had a little bit, enough to satisfy your appetite. If
you had a big appetite, you had a lot, enough to satisfy your
big appetite. And nobody asked the Lord to
do this. Nobody came to him and said, we're hungry. I love the
power. of our Lord and creating this
food and feeding the multitude. And I love his compassion in
doing it. He said, I have compassion. Soon
they're going to be just so hungry that they can't even go on. He
had compassion on them and fed them. And you might wonder the
same thing I wondered. Why would the Lord find it necessary
to do this same miracle again to another multitude? Wasn't
the first one enough? Everybody saw his power. Everybody
saw his compassion. Why would the Lord find it necessary
to perform this very same miracle a second time? I believe I see
four lessons that the Lord's teaching us here as he does this
again. More love, more fishes, more
mercy, more grace. The first lesson is this. Christ
is enough. He's all that we need. Now, the
Lord, he constantly loves his people. He's loved them with
an everlasting, eternal, unending love. And he always has compassion
on his people. That's why he feeds his people.
He comforts his people. But he does it the same way every
time. Every time the Lord saves his
people. one of his sheep, every time he feeds them, every time
he comforts them, every time he instructs them, every time
he gives them more, he does it the very same way every time.
It's through the preaching of Christ. Just like he fed this
multitude the same way, that's how he comforts and feeds his
people. It's always through the preaching of Christ. Now the
picture here is the same as the first time. The Lord just keeps
repeating it. He fed the multitude with just a few loaves and a
few fishes, The loaves and fish, they represent the gospel being
preached. They represent Christ, the bread
of life. He's all it takes to fill us.
He's all it takes to feed us and sustain us. The disciples
distributing the food that the Lord gave them, that represents
God's preachers. They preach Christ. They take
what the Lord's given them and preach it, that message to the
people. They just take what the Lord gives and gives it to his
people. And the power of the miracle,
the power of salvation, the blessing in the word preached, that's
of the Lord. The Lord just powerfully and
wonderfully, in a way we cannot understand, took those loaves
and took those fishes and broke them and created enough for everybody
and then have seven baskets full left over. They ended up with
more than they started with. This is the Lord's power. Well,
the Lord does the same thing for his people spiritually in
a way that we cannot completely understand how powerfully and
wonderfully he takes his word that's been preached and blesses
it to the hearts of his people, makes it just what every person
needs. The same word, the same message,
makes it fit the need of everybody who's there. The Lord feeds,
he instructs, he comforts, he heals his people's spiritual
deadness and diseases the same way every time. It's always by
the preaching of Christ. It's through the same message
preached over and over and over again, blessed by the same power
of God. And that message is always enough. It's enough for every needy sinner. Everybody there had as much as
they wanted. There was plenty, plenty for
everybody who was hungry, but none of it was wasted. And here's
the picture. You just come and sit at the
feet of Christ and he'll feed you. It feeds you himself. And what you'll find is this.
He's all you need. It's all you need. All right,
the first lesson is Christ is enough. The second lesson is
this. The compassion of the Savior. Let's read verse 32 again. Jesus
called his disciples unto him and said, I have compassion on
the multitude because they continue with me now three days and have
nothing to eat. I will not send them away fasting.
lest they faint in the way. Now isn't the Lord so compassionate
on these people? Many of them, if not most of
them, were not following him for the right reasons, but the
Lord had compassion on them anyway. He had compassion on their immediate
physical need, their physical suffering. He healed the sick
that they brought to them. And he had compassion on what
they were getting ready to go through too. Maybe they didn't
realize, you know, that they're all that hungry. And if they
start walking, They're not going to have the strength to get there.
They're going to faint in the way before they get to a place where
they can get some food. They're going to be suffering
that. And they probably don't even know it yet. And the Lord
had compassion on that suffering to prevent them from from suffering
that because of his compassion. Now, you just can't you can hardly
read the four gospels and go through them without just seeing
this as plain as day. We have a high priest who can
be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Almighty God
became flesh. He became a real human being,
flesh and bones, just like us. And he had human emotions. He
felt sorrow and joy and anger. He felt those human emotions
and he felt bodily needs. He felt thirst. He sat down in
the well one day and told that woman, give me a drink of water.
He felt thirst. He felt hunger. He felt just, boom, tiredness. Oh, he's so tired. He felt those
things because He's a real human being. So that in everything
His people go through, everything, the Savior can have compassion
on them. He has compassion on them because He knows what it's
like. He knows what it feels like.
And when you're suffering, you just remember this. Our Savior
knows what that feels like. He suffered first. He suffered
the very same thing and He has compassion. He has compassion
on his people. He has compassion on their immediate
need. The Lord has compassion on what
you're going through. He knows and he has compassion
on them. He has compassion on what his
people are getting ready to go through. If something comes around
the bend, we don't know. We don't see. We don't know what's
coming, but he knows. And he has compassion on what
we're getting ready to go through. And he gives grace and he gives
strength. He prepares us for the trial
we don't even know is coming because he has compassion. And
the Lord's compassion for sinners. Oh, that's such good news. It's such good news. It's compassion. This week, as I was studying
for this, I read this. And one of the commentaries said
of all the emotions our Lord Jesus felt, he felt joy, he felt
sorrow, he felt zeal, he felt anger and thankfulness. Of all
the emotions that the Savior felt, the four gospels use the
word compassion to describe his emotions more than any other.
Compassion. Now I don't know that that's
true and it took me too long to go through all four gospels
and verify that, but I assume it's true based upon the source
I was reading. But here's what I do know for sure. God's compassion
for sinners is good news. Jeremiah Lamentations 3 verse
22 says this, the weeping prophet, he has all these reasons to weep
and lament, but listen to what he says. It's of the Lord's mercies
that were not consumed because his compassion has failed not.
His compassion will never fail. Five times in the Psalms, David
used the word compassion to describe our Lord. And every single time,
all five of those times when David talks about the Lord's
compassion, you know what he said? The Lord's full of compassion. The infinite God is full of compassion
for sinners. And that just thrills my heart.
That just thrills me. He has compassion. The Lord has
compassion on his people, both body and soul. He has compassion
and he saved the souls of his people and he heals their bodies
in compassion for his people. How often have we just, the Lord's
comforted and healed and I know he doesn't do it every time,
but every time it happens, it happens in his compassion. It
was his compassion for his people that moved him to suffer being
made sin for them, to suffer the humiliation of being made
sin, just to suffer the agony of being separated from his father.
to suffer the physical agony that he suffered in his sacrifice
and to die for the sins of his people. You know why he would
not come down from the cross? You know why he would not avoid
going to Jerusalem? His compassion. It's the only
way his people could be saved. He had compassion on them. And
I like this. Our Lord, our Savior, knows exactly
what his people are going through. And he knows how long they've
been going through it. He kept track. It's been three
days and they haven't had anything to eat. And I have compassion
on them. I'm going to feed them. The Lord
has compassion on what his people are going through. He knows.
He knows how long it's been. We think it seems like it's going
on forever. He knows. He knows. The one who, the infinite
God who's full of compassion knows. Now that just comforts
my heart. And everything we go through,
he knows. And our Lord never allows his
people to suffer unnecessarily. Never. One of the reasons that
the Lord does allow his people to suffer, there's many reasons
unknown to us, but one of the reasons that the Lord allows
his people to suffer is to teach us to be like him. To teach us
to be compassionate. to teach us to be compassionate
when other people are suffering something, suffering the same
thing that we've suffered. Not just to feel sorry for them,
but to reach out to them and help them, to let them know.
Look at the book of 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter one. This is what the apostle tells
us here. Verse three, 2 Corinthians 1,
verse three. Blessed be God, even the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God
of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that
we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the
comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. Now, we
have suffered some trial. We've endured it. The Lord brought
us through it. He comforted us in it. And then we know someone
else who's going through the very same thing that we went
through before. When they're suffering, we can
go to them and we can tell them, I understand. I understand. And
we can tell them how the Lord comforted us. We can tell them
things that they were helpful to us. And once we've suffered
the same thing, somebody else is suffering now. I'll tell you
what, we can cry with them. like we couldn't have cried with
them unless we'd suffered it too, unless we really know what
they're going through. Once we've suffered this very
same thing, we see someone else suffering, now we can sympathize
with them like we couldn't have sympathized with them before.
Maybe if Job's friends had had a little taste of suffering,
they'd have been better friends, you reckon? Instead of coming
and being judge man like, they come and sympathize with him.
And I'll tell you the other thing. Once we've suffered something,
we see someone else suffer. The Lord's brought us through.
We see them suffering. I tell you what, we can pray for them.
We can pray for them like we would not have prayed for them.
And as we suffer, the Lord sends these things our way to teach
us to be like him, be more compassionate, be more tenderhearted with good
people. That's what our Savior is. All
right, here's the third thing. The Lord is compassionate. and
using the means of grace. Now there's some things that
I know. God the Father purposed the salvation of his people.
He purposed that in his grace for them, in his electing love
for them, not because they deserve it, but because God's gracious.
God the Son came in the flesh and he purchased the salvation
of his people with his own precious blood, in his grace, his compassion
for his people, not because they deserve it, because he's compassionate
on the undeserved. because he's gracious on the
undeserving. And God, the Holy Spirit comes
and he applies the salvation that the father purchased, that
the son purchased all of his people. He applies it to the
hearts of his people. Not because they're any better
than anybody else, not because they're smarter, not because they deserve it,
but because God's gracious. That's why. And the means of
grace, the means by which God applies the salvation of his
salvation of the hearts of his people, the way that God lets
his people know, this is what I've done for you. It's the preaching
of Christ. It's the preaching of the gospel.
Now we should remember this. Let's never get so full of ourselves.
We forget this. Almighty God doesn't need you
and me. He does not need us, not in any way, but he does see
fit to use his people to spread the gospel. He could make the
rock shouted, he could make creation shouted, but he doesn't. He's
been pleased to spread his gospel by his people doing it. The Lord
does see fit to allow his people to serve him in his kingdom. The Lord here in this particular
instance, he didn't need the disciples to distribute the food
to the multitude. He could have just given it to
him himself. I mean, he's miraculously creating it. He could just put
it all in their laps, but he didn't do that. He didn't choose
to do it that way. He chose to give it to his disciples and
the disciples to give it to the people. And that's the gospel. That's the preaching of the gospel.
The Lord could speak directly to his people. He could call
us and speak to us audibly from heaven like he did Abraham. He
could, couldn't he? But that's not what he's been
pleased to do. God's been pleased to use preachers, sinful men,
to tell other sinners about the Savior. God's been pleased to
do it that way. The Lord could send an angel.
He could. He could send Gabriel down here
and talk to us just like he did Mary. He could do that. But that's
not what he does. God sends a sinful man. He calls him. He saves him. He
calls him to be a preacher and he sends his preacher with a
message that fits the exact need of his people. And what an honor. Isn't it an honor? What an honor.
There's no higher honor in this world than to be able to tell
folks about Christ. There's just no higher honor.
There's no higher honor to serve the Lord in any way. Not just
the preacher, but all of us. There's no higher honor in this
world than serving the Savior by serving his people. I use
this example. I don't think Sean will mind.
I called Doug. If he does, he'll forgive me.
I called Sean one day and asked him if he'd become our song leader,
start leading the singing. And I thought he might be a little
nervous about it. I thought, you know, maybe I
have to talk him into a little bit. I asked, he said, sure,
sure. Be glad to do it. We all ought to have that attitude.
What an honor, what an honor to be able to serve the Lord.
What an honor to be able to give, to support the gospel. Now again,
the Lord does not need us. The Lord does not need you and
me. He doesn't need us to supply the need of his church on earth.
He doesn't need us. He doesn't need us to do that.
The cattle on a thousand hills belong to him. Everything belongs
to him. He could just choose to give to his people if he wanted
to, but that's not how he does it. He does it by us giving,
by his people giving, to supply the needs of the church, to spread
the gospel. The Lord's been pleased to do
it that way. The Savior gave us the ultimate example in giving,
didn't he? God gave the unspeakable gift. He gave himself to be sacrificed
to put away sin in his people. Now, what do I have I'm not going
to give? Huh? Not one thing. What an honor
to be able to worship the Lord by coming and giving an offering.
That's what happened here. Our Lord, he didn't need the
disciples to give him what little bit of loaves and fishes that
they had. He didn't need that. to feed this multitude, did he?
What they had to give wasn't enough anyway, was it? Wasn't
enough to feed anybody. Probably wasn't enough to feed
the 12 of them, the 13 of them, counting the Savior. That wasn't
enough to feed them. But they gave what they had willingly. They put it into the Savior's
hand. That wasn't enough to feed anybody.
But in the Savior's hand, it was enough. Isn't that something? You just give what the Lord enables
you to give. whether it's large or whether
it's small, you give it, and the Lord will bless it. It's
not enough. What we give in any way, if it's in an offering,
if it's in using our time and our talents to help out around
here, it's not enough. But in the Lord's hand, it'll
be enough to make it a blessing to his people. All right, here's
the fourth thing. The Lord is compassionate in
giving faith to his people. Look back here in our text, verse
33. And his disciples saying to him, when should we have so
much bread in the wilderness as to feel so great a multitude?
Now, when I first read this, I thought, boy, here's another
example, and I can identify with it, of showing such weak faith.
Had the disciples already forgotten the Lord's most public miracle
that just happened a few days ago? Had they forgotten that
already? And if they had, it's like this is what I first thought,
they'd forgotten it. And yet the Lord was so patient with
them. He was compassionate. He was compassionate on them.
He was compassionate on their weakness. He was patient with
them. And so one more time he showed them his glory so that
they would believe on him. And certainly that's the way
the Lord's going to have to deal with us. Unfortunately, in his
flesh, he shows such patience with us. He shows patience and
teaches us the same lesson over and over and over again. How
often have you thought I'm never going to forget that lesson.
I'm never going to forget that. I'm never going to not trust
the Lord again. He always provides. He's always gracious. He always
comforts. I'm never going to forget that
again. And the slightest thing happens and we forget and Lord
teaches us again. He does that because we're so
weak in faith and we forget and Lord has compassion on the weakness
of his people and teaches us over and over and over again.
But I tell you, the more I looked at this, The more I don't think
that's what's going on here. You know, there were most of
this crowd were unbelievers. They didn't believe the Lord.
They were just following him to get another free lunch. They're
following him to get more loaves and more fishes. That's what
the Lord told him. He said, I know why you later
on, he said, I know why you're following me. You're following me for the
loaves and fishes. You're following me for this miracle for free
food. Well, these unbelievers, they
didn't know the Lord. They didn't trust him. They didn't love him.
They didn't forget. I don't think the disciples forgot that either.
And here's another reason. I don't think they forgot this
miracle, this, this power to feed a multitude that kind of
shows you this man has the power to feed a nation there. They were still look, even after
the Lord's resurrection, they're still looking for the Lord set
up an early kingdom. People are looking for a man to set up an
earthly kingdom are not going to forget this miracle. I don't
think they forgot it. This is what I think they're saying.
They're expressing their faith in the Lord. How are we ever
going to have enough food, enough bread to feed this multitude?
It's impossible for us to come up with them. Lord, they're expressing
their inability. We can't do it. But Lord, you
can. See, this is faith. They're expressing
their inability and the Lord's ability. They're saying, Lord,
we can't feed these people. We don't know. How are we going
to feed them? We don't know. But you do. We can't do it, but
you can. I'm just pretty sure that's what
they're saying here. And it makes sense, doesn't it? But either
way, no matter what they meant by it, the Lord was gracious. He was compassionate. He was
compassionate to give them faith in him. He was compassionate
to make it grow, make that faith grow by showing them more and
more and more of his power again and again and again. And whatever
the disciples meant, that's not the real issue. This is the lesson
I hope that we can take from this. You and I cannot, we cannot
serve the Lord with our natural abilities. We can't do it. We
cannot serve the Lord in our fullness and our sufficiency. The only way you and I can ever
serve the Lord is in our inability, in our insufficiency. If we go
trying to serve the Lord in our power, the power of the flesh,
the intellect, the power of the intellect and the, you know,
in our sufficiency, we're going to be trusting ourselves. We're
going to be wanting some glory for it. You know, we can only
serve the Lord in our inability by relying completely on the
Lord. That's why I said, we can only serve the Lord in our insufficiency,
in our inability, because only in our inability, in our insufficiency,
will we rely completely on the Lord. Now, We're to serve the
Lord with all we got. I mean, with everything we've
got, we're to serve the Lord. And we're to do it all the while
knowing we can't do anything of ourselves. What I have to
give is just completely insufficient. But yet this is also true. I
can do all things through Christ for strength. So what is it that
the Lord's put to your hand to do today? And you think, I can't
do that. Do it. Whatever it is God's put
to your hand to do today, do it. Do it with all you got. He'll make you able. We can do
it through Christ who strengthened us. And in their inability, by
faith, confessing their inability, you know what they saw? The Lord's
power. And they saw again His compassion
on those who need Him. All right, I hope that'll be
a blessing to you.