Alright, the lesson this morning
is going to be taken from Luke chapter 9, verses 12 through
17. Luke chapter 9, verses 12 through
17. And when the day began to wear
away, then came the twelve and said unto him, Send the multitude
away that they may go into the towns and country round about
and lodge and get victuals. For we are here in a desert place. But he said unto them, give ye
them to eat. Or maybe I should read it like
this. Give ye them to eat. And they said, we don't have
anything. All we got is five loaves and
two fishes. Except we should go and buy meat
for all those people. They were about 5,000 men, and
in one of the other accounts it says, and the women and children. So who knows how many people
was actually in this multitude. And he said to his disciples,
make them all sit down by fifties in a company. And they did so. Made them all sit down. Then
he took the five loaves and the two fishes and looking up to
heaven, he blessed them and break and gave to the disciples to
sit before the multitude. And they did eat. and were all
filled. And there was taken up a fragment
that remained to them of 12 baskets. Now the account of the loaves
and fishes and the feeding of this great multitude is recorded
in all four Gospels. Very few of these miracles are
recorded in all four Gospels, but this one is. This one is. And the obvious lesson here,
for those of you who've been attending regular and you know
what we've been talking about, the obvious lesson here has to
do with gospel preaching. I don't know how many times I've
heard this preached on. I've never heard it even connected
to gospel preaching. But if you read and study and
read what comes before and what comes after, it's pretty obvious
what he's talking about. You see, feeding is the primary
purpose in preaching. I know that the scripture says
that he uses the gospel to call men out of darkness into his
marvelous light. I know that preaching is the
seed of regeneration. Paul said, I have begotten you
through the gospel. There'd be no doubt about that. But then what? What comes after? Then comes the whole rest of
your life when you're being fed. You're feeding, you're feeding,
you're feeding. He talks about regeneration and that seed over
in 1 Peter chapter 1. And he tells them there in verses
23 through 25, he talks about that regeneration and that seed
and so on. This is the The word which by
the gospels preached unto you, that seed, that's the seed of
regeneration. And then the very first thing
he tells you in chapter two is that he's gonna feed you. He's
gonna feed you. If so be you tasted that the
Lord is gracious. If he's given you an appetite
for this, now I'm gonna feed you and I'm gonna keep on feeding
you till you die. So feeding's the primary purpose
in preaching. The Lord had just called the
12 and sent them out to preach. That's what he did, he sent them
out. And they returned and they were excited, but they weren't
excited, they didn't even mention people having an appetite for
the gospel or any of these things. They come back excited because
the devils were subject to them. They come back excited about
these gifts that God had given them. And they were relishing
these gifts and glorying in these gifts. And He tells them. He took them aside. And He took
them out into a desert place with Him. And now He's going
to show them what this preaching is all about. There are endless lessons in
this, but let's just focus our attention on six things this
morning. And the first thing I want us to see illustrated
in this miracle is that what we see and what we know and what
we calculate has no bearing on the ability of God our Savior. Has no bearing. Too often we
look at something and dismiss it and walk away from it because
we can't see how it possibly could ever be. Paul reminds us in Romans 1.1
that he and we have been separated unto the gospel of God. It's
God's gospel. He's the one who created if you
will the gospel this is according to his purpose the gospel is
his son and paul reminds us that we've
been separated under the gospel of god all things are of god
he continues to say to the corinthians who had not only reconciled us
but given to us the ministry of the reconciliation it came
from god it wasn't my idea I didn't sit around and like so many churches
do, they get together and talk, well, what's your opinion, what's
your opinion, and so on, and then they arrive at this thing,
here's what we need to do, we need to start building hospitals.
We'll go build hospitals. That way we can treat the sick.
We can show our sympathy to the sick. We can do these things
to the sick. And then everybody will look
at us, and they'll come over and join the church. You know, we
sit down and figure out all this stuff. You see where I'm headed
with this. But we're not here, and they
weren't there to devise the ways and means, but they were to go
and do what the Lord commanded them to do. And that hasn't changed. Nothing has changed. It's still
that way. Jesus Christ had sent these men,
and on occasion, 70 more, and then on another occasion, 70
more besides them. And the sufficiency of their
ministry was not in their hands. He said, I'm going to give you
these gifts. Who is? They couldn't heal the
sick. They couldn't cleanse a leper.
They couldn't raise the dead. It was all beyond their ability.
He gave them those gifts, and he had a purpose in it. But the main purpose is for them
to go and preach the gospel. Go and preach the gospel. And the sufficiency of that ministry
is not in their hands, but in the hands of God our Savior.
There's nothing that he can't do. Is there? You remember the
disciples on one occasion, the disciples, they brought the rich
young ruler. And they were all excited. Man,
if ever there was a man that the Lord would do something for,
it was a rich young ruler. And they brought him, and I mean,
he just, nobody had anything ill to say about the rich young
ruler. And he brought him to Christ, and when Christ got done
with him, He sent him away sorrowful, had his tail tucked between his
legs, and he walked away with his head down. Had great riches,
wasn't willing to part with him. And they got together and they
said, well, who then can be saved? And you remember what the Lord
said? He said, with man, it is impossible. So what he does when he sends
out a preacher, he sends him out to do the impossible. I wish I could get that across
to men and women. Salvation with man is impossible. The revelation of Christ in your
heart and in your mind is an impossibility. It's impossible. It's not hard, it's impossible. If God doesn't attend that preaching,
nothing's gonna happen. Those words are just gonna go
out and fall on the ground. But there's nothing that he can't
do. He turned the water into wine. He walked on water. He ascended into heaven. How'd
he get there? He stepped onto a cloud. You
go try that. He just stepped on a cloud. He rode a wild asses colt that
had never been rode. You know something about bucking
broncs. He just walked up and sat down on that thing and he
just walked as tenderly and obedient as he could be right into Jerusalem. So when it comes to the purpose
of God, we are in the equation. I'm talking about the preacher.
I'm talking about these men who went out, the 70 who went out,
and those of us who are going out now. In the purpose of God,
we are in the equation only as means of weakness. And we're means of weakness to
display the glory of God. In 2 Corinthians 4, I want you
to listen to what Paul said. We have this treasure, this gospel. We have this treasure in earthen
vessels. Why? That the excellency of the
power might be of God and not of us. When men see something
happen, When they see that man who's got no interest in Christ,
his interest is in the world, in his home, in his reputation,
and this and that and the next thing, wherever, when they see
that man suddenly halt and focus his eyes on Christ, and then
he can't take them off. From then on, he's just looking
to Christ. He can't rejoice in anything except the gospel. The
gospel's what reaches his heart, it's what feeds his soul. When
men and women see that, they realize that wasn't of a man. Man can't do that. That's God. That's God that did that. See,
the reason they came out to follow Christ to start with was that
he could do what no other man could do. And they didn't bring
him somebody with a headache. They brought him dead people.
They brought him lepers. They brought him diseases and
things that nobody in this world could do. But he did it. And
they followed him. They followed him. Scripture said it pleased God
by the foolishness of preaching. How foolish. Most people in the
world, when you tell them that, the first thing they'll tell
you, that's foolish. That's foolish. Well, that's what he said. Pleased
God by the foolishness of preaching. to save them that believe. Why? Because God gets all the
glory. That's why. The disciples watched
as the rich young ruler went away, and the Lord told them,
with man it's impossible. All right, here's the second
thing. Consider this. Faith is the gift of God. You don't have the potential
of faith in you. You have no potential. If God
gives you faith, he gave you faith. It didn't come from you. What can we do to work the works
of God? This is the work of God, that you believe on him whom
he has sent. This is the work of God. But what is it? What's its nature,
and how does it work? Well, in Hebrews 11, this is
what some men call the faith chapter in the book of Hebrews.
And Paul's trying as simply as he can to put faith in its proper
light to those who were legalists and all their life raised in
ceremonialism and they were Jews. And in Hebrews 11, he said, faith
is the substance of things hopeful. Have you got a hope, a good hope
in Christ? What's the substance of that
hope? Faith. You've never seen it. You can't
see heaven. You can't describe heaven to
me apart from scriptures, because you've never seen it. You can't
tell me what Christ looks like. You've never seen him. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for, and it's the evidence of things not seen. What evidence
do you have that there is a God? Huh? And that there will be a
judgment, that there is a heaven and a hell. What evidence do
you have that you'll be spared this judgment while others won't?
I have faith. I have faith. Faith in the word of God, faith
in God, and faith in God's soul. It's the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Listen to this. Paul told the
Corinthians that our outward man is perishing every day. Boy,
I'm more and more aware of it too. This outward man is perishing,
but our inward man is renewed day by day. While we look not
at things which are seen. The inward man is not renewed
by things that it sees, but at the things which are not
seen. For the things which are seen are temporary. They're temporary.
They're here for a little bit and gone. But the things which
are not seen are eternal. And the only way you can see
them is by faith. Faith sees what no eye ever saw. You ever think about that? Listen to how he tells East Corinthians
this in 2 Corinthians 2. He said, I hath not seen nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things
that God hath prepared for them that love him, but God hath revealed
them unto us by spirit. Our Lord said to his disciples,
blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they
hear. So faith sees and knows and calculates by a divine standard. It goes by the word of God, not
on the natural. And unlike any unconverted soul,
we believe God. We believe God. And we act on
what he says, not on what we see. And then thirdly, I want
you to see the work of the ministry, which no doubt is set forth very
clearly in this feeding of the 5,000. These men had just been
called to the ministry and experienced their first interaction with
men. Back in verse 10 of Luke 9, it says that the apostles,
when they had returned, told him all that they had done. And
he took them with him. They said, you need to go to
the desert. That's what he told them. Now
you can get more details on what they talked about in Matthew's
account, Mark's account, and John's account. But mostly they
were glorying in those gifts. And he said, don't glory in this.
Glory that your name's written in the Lamb's Book of Life. You
glory in that. Now you're going to clearly illustrate
to them what the ministry's all about. It's a bunch of common
men blessed of God to feed chosen sinners. That's what it is. Here's
your job. Here's what the ministry is.
Take this bread and take these fishes, which you've already
said wasn't enough, and you're going to feed my people. Five loaves and three fishes? What some say Probably was 10,000
or more people. You going to feed them? Take
these fishes and these loaves, and I'm going to bless them.
Now you go feed them. You know what those five loaves
and three fishes are? Adequate for maybe one lunch.
One lunch. And he's going to feed the multitude.
It's just a bunch of common men blessed of God to feed chosen
sinners. And he's going to show them where
they're at. They're in the desert. He didn't have to tell them that.
They already knew. They said, might as well send everybody
home. It's getting late. You reckon the master didn't
know what time of day it was or where he was at? But here
they come, they're going to tell you. The day is wearing on, we're
in a desert. Better send everybody out to
the local towns and cities. Better get them started right
now. Ain't going to get there about 9, 10 o'clock tonight,
so you better get them on the way. They got a place to stay
and a place to eat. He said, no, you feed them. Those five loaves and three fishes
wasn't even theirs. Huh? It was given to them. It belonged to a little lad.
Read the other kids. They looked and looked and looked
and they finally, here's it. Well, there's a lot of times,
I'm going to tell you something, there's a lot of times I get
up here and give to you what Henry Mahan gave me. That's where
I got my loaves and fishes. I didn't come up with it. I got
it from him or Scott Richards. Or John Gill, or somebody else,
Charles Spurgeon. Wasn't my fishes. Wasn't my fishes,
but God made them mine. And God enabled me to use them
to feed his people. You see where this is? Oh, I
tell you, once you understand what this parable's about, it's
so clear in every detail what he's talking about. He's going to show them where
they are in a desert place. He's going to show them their
insufficiency. We have nothing. Just these five
loaves and two fishes. He's going to show them their
need. A great multitude of hungry sinners. He's going to show them
obedience. Tell them all to sit down in
companies of 50. 10,000, 15,000 people. I'm just guessing now that you
could put Stamps and Lewisville together and probably couldn't
come up with that many people. Here they are. They're out on
the mountainside. And they're all hungry and talking
about this and talking about that. You're going to go out here in
a few minutes and get them all in companies of 50s and have
them sit down. No, you can't. But God can. God
can. He's going to show them a pattern.
Companies of 50. You know this is the story of
his church for thousands and thousands of years. A little
company here, a little company there, a little company here.
And you keep in mind now what he's telling these men, illustrating
to these men what the ministry is. Small assemblies for each of
his servants. And then he's going to show them
the means. He took the fishes and loaves, which was absolute
foolishness to them to even think about feeding a whole crowd with
that. And he's going to feed that crowd. How's he going to do it? He's
going to break the bread. He's going to hand it to his
disciples. And his disciples is going to
give it to the people. That's God's way. It's always
been God's way. And every man's gonna eat till
he can't eat no more. This is the ministry. And this is why the world considers
it foolishness. And then fourthly, notice this.
They all ate the same thing. We're talking about the fishes
and the loaves. They all ate the same thing. Now, Jesus Christ
is God. Could he not have just simply
willed for them to have all of them eat something different?
He didn't need the fishes. He didn't need the loaves. He
could have just willed for the food to be set before them. And
he already knows what they like. They could have each one had
exactly what they thought they were hungry for. But he didn't. He fed them all the same thing.
Did them all the same thing. And they all ate it. Isn't that
a miracle of God? They all ate it. They all had bread and fish.
I thought it was interesting, and I'd never thought about this
before. I don't even know if there's a tie into it, but I
think there is. The disciples, after he was buried,
quit the ministry. And they just, They said, we
go fishing. They went out there fishing. He appeared to them over there
on the bank, called out to them. You're fishing on the wrong side
of the boat. Put your net down the other side. When they did,
they couldn't get the net up. It was so filled with fishes.
And then they remembered who he was. And Peter dove in. He was the first one there. They
got over there. And when they got to the bank,
the Lord said, come and dine. What did he feed them? bread
and fish. Or did he broke the bread and
hand it to them, served them the fish? You reckon they remember
this miracle? In and of itself, the gospel
seems inadequate to save sinners, and that's why religion always
seeks to incorporate other things with it. But even the disciples
at first glance said, let us send them away. Send them away. Oh, my soul, Christ said he ain't
gonna send you away. If he'd have come up to me, I
would have known why I was cast out. He's not gonna send you
away. Here's what he said in Matthew
14, 16. They need not depart. There's no need for that. And
then fifthly, let me show you a well-established fact. Jesus
Christ is all-sufficient. If he weren't all-sufficient,
we wouldn't rest in him. We wouldn't believe on him. All
of his claims require sufficiency. He said they need not depart.
They'd heard Christ and they'd followed Christ and their being
where they were was no accident. They followed him, he led them
into this desert place. And what often by sight and natural
logic seems hopeless is often the very place where God gonna
manifest his glory. Where Christ is present and no
reason to leave, is there? And yet people do from time to
time. And John, I'll tell you what
John said, they went out from us, they weren't of us. They
were of us, they no doubt would have continued with us. He told
his disciples when everybody left, he said, are you gonna
go too? They said, where are we gonna go? You have the words
of eternal life, where are we gonna go? What do you need that he can't
supply? You got a physical need? He's the Lord of creation. Is
there anything he can't do? Nothing in a body that he can't
cure. He's a great physician. Do you need work? He's the head
of all principalities and power. If you need spiritual, he's the
Lord of salvation. His name is the word of God. Pastor I know died a while back.
It's been quite a while. And his wife stayed for, I don't
know, a few weeks. And she packed up, went down
to the beach to live. And about six weeks after she
got there, maybe two months, I got a phone call. She said,
do you know of any Grace Church down here? I said, yeah, Sillicoga,
Alabama. She said, that's a long way.
I said, yeah, I know. But that ain't what you asked
me. You asked me was there any Grace Church. Looks to me like
if you're gonna move, your first consideration better be the gospel. It better be the gospel. There
was nowhere else where this multitude could have ate at the hand of
God except right there in the desert where Christ led them.
And then sixthly, I want us to see the gospel as it's set forth
in this event. Christ is the gospel and a hungry
multitude in a desert place is a good representation of chosen
sinners in this present evil world. There's nothing in this
world to eat. Nothing. You're in a desert.
You're in a desert. And every family in this crowd
came here because they had a need. They were needy sinners. A need this world couldn't deal
with. And all their infirmities together
picture our ruin in Christ, it pictures our nature, it pictures
our need. Man's decaying from the inside
out, he's demon-possessed through false religion, he's blind spiritually,
deaf spiritually, dead spiritually, helpless, can't do anything for
himself. It says in Luke 9 verse 11, he
healed them that had need of healing. And those who follow Christ will
discover themselves being led into a desert place. And this
desert place is a representation of this world. John said the
world knoweth us not because it knew him not. He came into
this world and the world was made by him and the world knew
him not. And then secondly, the multitude
as it represents the true church is divided into these little
groups, a lot of little churches sitting around on the mountainside. Every now and then he'll raise
up a large assembly But for the most part, it's always
been this way. You know they met in the catacombs
and worshiped God, down in the graves, graveyard, worshiped
God. The fourth thing I see represented
in the gospel is that every hunger sinner was fed to the full. Everybody there probably, well,
no doubt, they had different capacities, but they were all
filled. They did eat and were all filled,
that's what it says. And then notice this, there was
12 baskets left over. Each apostle had a basket remaining,
and their baskets were full when they started, they were full
as they passed out the fish and loaves, and they were full when
they got done. Someone asked me, where did the
baskets come from? God provided them. He provided
them. How you gonna get along down
there? God'll provide. He'll provide. Each minister's basket is filled
to distribute to chosen sinners, and though he preached like Noah
for 120 years, when he gets done, his basket's still full. Isn't
it? It's still full. Ready to fill the next hungry
sinner. that God sends to him. And I'll quit with this, every
chosen sinner that follows the Lord into a desert place will
sit at his feet and eat what he's pleased to serve him. He'll
eat it. Oh, I just don't, you know, that
guy's personality, I just don't like his personality. You will
if you're hungry, you'll overlook the personality. You'll eat the
fish that he's given to you. You'll eat what God's already
blessed. You'll eat that, eat that, and overlook his personality. And you might as well, because
he's overlooking yours. If he didn't, that'd be big trouble,
wouldn't it? All right, thank you. I'm sorry
I went over.