This morning's lesson is found
in the first 13 verses of John 6. There are actually two miracles recorded
in John 6. One where He feeds the multitude
that we will be looking at this morning, and another where He
comes to His disciples in the midst of a storm walking on the
water. So let's look at this. first
miracle that he performs in the feeding of the multitude. And
we're going to find that in the first 13 verses of this chapter. After these things, Jesus went
over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a
great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles
which he did on them that were diseased. And Jesus went up into
the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. And the Passover,
a feast of the Jews, was nigh. Now this is the setting. This
tells us what the setting is, having healed many of their sick. We read in the Scriptures These
are just examples of what he did. These are not all the miracles
and all the work. John said if he was to record
everything he did, the world couldn't contain the books. And
even so, in his worldly ministry, which perhaps could have been
recorded in a book, he selected certain miracles to tell us of. He didn't record every last miracle. He did thousands of miracles. He did things in such a way as
that His person and His ministry and His origination could not
be denied. He was sent of the Father and
the Father declared Him in such a fashion that no man could deny
it. And this is what He is talking
about here. They followed Him because they
saw the miracles plural, which he did on them that were diseased.
And up until this time, it only records in the book of John one
or two miracles that he did. You see that? There's multitudes
of miracles that he did, and multitudes of people, and his
fame went out, and they came there hoping to be healed, hoping
to hear from and see this thing. And there was all sorts of people
gathered. And on top of that, This sacred
feast of the Jews was at hand, the Passover. And these people
were commanded to keep these feasts, and they come from all
over to Jerusalem to keep this feast. And it was nice. So what he is saying here is
that there were people journeying who normally wouldn't have been
there. But they were journeying to Jerusalem to keep this feast. And so they were at hand, they
heard the rumors, They sought him out, they came out to hear
him. So there was a multitude gathered. And verse 5, when Jesus
then lifted up his eyes and saw a great company come unto him,
he saith unto Philip, When shall we buy bread that these may eat? And this he said to prove him,
for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, 200
penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them
may take a little. One of his disciples, Andrew,
Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him, There is a lad here,
which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes, but what
are they among so many? And Jesus said, Make the men
sit down. Now there was much grass in the
place, so the men sat down in number about five thousand. And
Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed
to the disciples, and the disciples to them that would sit down,
likewise of the fishes as much as they would. And when they
were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments
that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered
them together and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of
the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto
them that had eaten." Now the first thing I want to point out
to you this morning concerns this multitude that was gathered
and that followed the Lord here to this mountainside. And what
I want to call your attention to is the fact that it was a
mixed multitude. a mixed multitude. There was
all kinds of people here. And there's two things that we
are to learn from this mixed multitude. We learn two things. First of all, that the kingdom
of God is made up of a mixed multitude. That's who he came
to minister to. He didn't just isolate himself
to the Jews. and come and talk to them only
and talk to nobody else. He didn't just come to a certain
sect of the Jews, to the Pharisees, or to the Sadducees, or to the
scribes, or just to the priests, but he came to minister to a
mixed multitude. Because the promise was that
all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. The promise
was that he was going to take a people out of every tribe,
Nation, tongue, and people under heaven. That's what he said.
A mixed multitude. And here they were up on this
mountain. Now, I don't know. I think sometimes
we get visions and our visions is a little off center. But God
will gather in that day out of every kindred and tribe and nation
a people. A people for His glory and for
the glory of His name. And I know this. Almost all, except
for a chosen few, will be made up of foolish, foolish, weak,
and base men and women of this world. I know that because Paul,
under the influence of the Holy Spirit of God, said under those
Corinthians, he said, look at your own calling. Not many wise
men out there, is there? Where is the philosophers, the
teachers, the professors? Where are the wise men of the
world? Well, he has confounded the wisdom
of the wise. That's where they're at. They're
out there in their own wisdom floundering about. And then secondly,
let me learn this. that God works His way in the
midst of men of all kinds and overrides their intentions and
motives to accomplish His end. God always deals with a mixed
multitude. We've got a group of people in
here this morning, and among you is a mixed multitude. I never
assume that everybody that comes through that door is a believer.
I'm not to assume that. But I'm to declare the same message
to all men. All men. It doesn't matter if
you're a believer or an unbeliever. I'm still going to tell you that
sin is sin, that Christ is Christ, and God is God. I'm not going
to change my message. If this place is filled up full
of winos, I'm not going to change my message. If it's filled up
full of Pharisees, I'm not going to change my message. There is
but one message, and that's Christ. had to cry. And so our Lord stood
up that day and taught and preached to that multitude of mixed people. They were from different countries.
They were from different areas, different backgrounds, different
stations of life. More than likely, differences
in color. And they all gathered there and He spoke to them. And
He spoke to them the same. And at the end of the day, He
broke the bread and passed out the fishes and fed the whole
multitude. The same. The same. He always deals. There are certain groups and
denominations and ideas that try the best they can to put
a spiritual mark on the foreheads of what they believe to be the
children of God and try to separate this one for that one. But there
is a parable in Matthew 13 that we need to look at and we need
to learn from concerning this mixture of the true and untrue
as far as it goes with the children of God. Our Lord gave this parable,
and in this parable we are told that the enemy come in and sow
tares among the wheat. The enemy does that. He does
that. He sows tares. He sows the wheat. And when asked of the master
if they ought to separate the two, they're clearly told by
the master, no, not to do it. What's he tell them to do? Leave
them alone. And do you know what he says?
Leave them alone. Number one, it's not your garden.
And it's not your wheat. It's his. It's his wheat and
his garden. And he don't want you in there
pulling weeds because you'll just grab handfuls and you'll
jerk up the wheat with the tares. That's what he tells them. He
said, you just leave them alone. You let them grow together. And
in the time, in my specified time, in my decreed time, he
said, I'll send forth the reapers. Those who are qualified, I'll
send them forth, and they'll separate my wheat, and they'll
separate the tares, and they'll put those tares into bundles
and cast them into fire, and they'll gather my wheat into
my barn. It's His garden, His reapers, and He tells me to leave
them alone. God has no problem distinguishing
one from the other. He has no problem distinguishing
wheat from tares, sheep from goats, children from bastards,
shepherds from hirelings. He knows the difference. And He tells us the difference. In a few more days, we're going
to observe the Lord's table. And I don't believe in what the
old timers called fencing the table. What they would do is
they would stand up And they would fence the table. They'd
set guards and fences up all around it. And you can't do this,
and you can't do that, and you're not worthy to do this, and you're
not worthy to do that. When in fact in the Scripture,
when our Lord instituted the ordinance, the only man who could
actually discern and tell who believed and who didn't, He instituted
this ordinance, and among those twelve, he said, if not I've
chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil. And then he broke
the bread, and he passed it out, and he gave it to the devil the
same as he gave it to Peter. You see what I'm saying? He knows
the difference, and judgment will declare the difference.
And men will be judged for their hypocrisy in that judgment. It will be exposed. He has a
day. I don't need to do it. And the only fence that I can
see that He built around the table was this, that you'd be
able to discern what it's for. If you have an understanding
of what this thing is for, an experiential knowledge of His
grace, then you're free to take it. You're commanded to take
it. You're encouraged to take it.
And you ought to rejoice to take it. Brethren, if you're looking
for some sort of righteousness in yourself to make you worthy
of the table, it ain't there. It ain't there. Our righteousness
is in Him. Our worthiness is in Him. That's
all we need to be able to discern. If we can discern that, we're
to take the table and we're encouraged to rejoice in it. And the same
thing when it comes to worship and it comes to things of the
church. I'm not going to sit here and pick you out and say,
I think this guy here, I'm going to have to put a little question
mark on him. No, I'm not. I'm going to preach to you the
same. When we have a fellowship back here, I'm going to bite
you back. Come on back. Come on back. And I tell you this, be careful
about trying to root out terrorists. And our God He's not purposed. Now listen to me. He's not purposed
to accomplish His purpose by worldly sanctification or legal
purifying. He's not purposed it that way.
He simply puts the mixture in the fire. In the fire of providential
trial and in the fires of everyday situations. In the trial of preaching. In the trial when His Spirit
comes. and presses those truths home
to you in that fire. He takes these things and He
preaches them to the whole congregation. He preaches them to the mixed
multitude. Go ye into all the world, He
said, and preach the gospel. And two things are going to happen.
Some of them are going to believe and some of them are going to
be damned. Who is going to manifest that? He is. He is. And He does in that mixed multitude. He manifests it right before
their eyes, right in their midst. Sometimes He'll take a wife and
leave a husband. He'll take a husband and leave
a wife in unbelief. He'll take a brother and leave
another one in unbelief. It's manifested right in your
families, right in the crowd, right in the mixed multitude.
He works the glory of His grace. And I'll tell you this, when
we try it, we make a mess out of it. That's what we do. We
make a giant mess. He simply just puts the mixture
in the fire and all the dross is melted away and only the gold
survives. Listen to this in Malachi chapter
3 and verse 2. This is foretelling the coming
of Christ. Listen to this. Who may abide
the day of His coming? And who shall stand when He appears?
For he is like a refiner's fire and like a fuller's soap." The
sanctification of God's children is a spiritual circumcision of
the heart. It's a heart work. And I'm telling
you, we don't see right. Not even prophets, not preachers,
not anybody. We don't have those eyes to see.
That prophet stood before the household of David, and he looked
at all of his children, and the three brothers that he thought
without a doubt were going to be the anointed of God were not.
None of them considered. Jesse didn't consider him. The
prophet didn't consider him. None of his brothers considered
him. That was the one God anointed, to be clear. And you know what
he told them when it was all over? God doesn't see like a
man sees. Man looks on the outward countenance.
He looks on all these things that we do, and we listen to
their voice and what they say, and we watch how they walk, and
we look at all these things. You look on the outward countenance.
God looks on the heart. He called David a man after his
own heart. But when I see him up there looking
down on the roof at Bathsheba, when I see him doing some of
these things that he did, I get a little leery about David, don't
you? From time to time. But God didn't look on those
things. He looked on the heart. He looks on the heart. He sees
the heart. He sees that inward work of grace. He sees that imputed righteousness. And we don't. The sanctification
of God's children is a spiritual circumcision of the heart. And
it's His very person and that union with them by faith that
sets them apart. Here's the question. What think
ye of Christ? What think ye of Christ? Now
this world and all their preachers have a thousand questions, but
they never ask this one. What think ye of Christ? And what's going on this day,
not just an act of benevolence and kindness and sympathy, but
a sanctifying of God's elect. Here he was before this multitude,
and I'm sure his disciples were impressed at the multitude. Just the way we would be. You
know, we show up here one morning and all of a sudden a crowd comes
in. We've got to put seats out in the front parking lot and
try to figure out how they're going to hear and all these things. And we're just really encouraged
and we see all these things and we're excited about these things.
And then the Lord turns to prove Philip. He said, how do you reckon
we're going to feed these folks? Philip didn't look at omnipotence. Philip looked at pennies. He
said, 200 penny worth ain't going to feed these. Standing beside
him was omnipotence. He could have fed a world and
does. He causes his reign to fall on the just and the unjust.
He got no problem. He said, if I was hungry, I wouldn't
tell you. The whole outfit's mine. You see what I'm saying? But
we don't look that way. See, we look on the outward countenance.
Right among all this stuff that was going on this day and among
all this confusion of the day, the Lord worked His work of grace. And what He was doing was trying
to get His disciples to see it. And you say, how are we going
to feed them? I don't know if that's all the
money he had or what, but Phillip said 200 penny worth wasn't enough,
and then Andrew chimed in and he said, there's a young lad
here that packed the lunch. He's the only one that had any
cents, brought his lunch with him. But all he's got is two
small fishes and five barley loaves, and what's that going
to do to a multitude this size? Well, it won't do much, unless
God blesses it. And that's what I want you to
see. God uses means, and these miracles that He performed, they
were not only to certify who He was or ratify who He was in
His person, but they demonstrate how God saves sinners. And it
pleases Him oftentimes to use means. The blind man, he picked
up some clay and spit in it, rubbed it together and put it
on his eyes. What's that got to do with blindness? Now, nothing
to do with it, does it? But he was pleased to use it. What in the world touching his
garment have to do with virtue coming out of Christ? Nothing. Not a thing. But he was pleased
to use it, wasn't he? Fill those water pots full of
water. Would it have been easier for him to make wine from an
empty pot? This is God. He spoke and it
was done. He created the world out of nothing.
Did He need water in a pot to make wine? No. He is declaring
to us that He is pleased to use means. But when He sets these
means before us, they are set before us in such a way that
we understand how pitiful these means are and how impossible
it would be to attribute any glory on our part to the means. So he uses these pitiful things,
like water in a pot, clay on the eyes, two small fishes, high barbados. You see, here's what he's illustrating
to us. He's illustrating to us that
in these means of preaching the gospel, in the means of the ministry. This is what was taking place
that day. He was on the mountain to preach. He wasn't up there
to feed a bunch of rebels that gathered out there for the benefits.
That wasn't what he was there for. He was there to minister
the gospel. And some of them heard him. Some
of them heard him. But what he wants to illustrate
to these poor apostles who one day are going to stand up and
preach this gospel before men is that their little pitiful
efforts are nothing before the need. I'm going to talk here in a little
while about total depravity, and I hope when I'm done talking
about it that you'll come to understand how pitiful I am and
what I know is before your condition. It's impossible for me to communicate
to you spiritual things. It requires a new birth. It requires His blessing. It
requires His hand, His magic. And without it, they're just
words. And without it, this launch was
just a launch. But boy, when He blessed it,
5,000 men, plus women and children, And he fed them all from this
one little lunch sack. And when he was done, they picked
up twelve basketfuls of leftovers. That's the hand of God. That's
the hand of God. And that's what we face in the
ministry. He took Ezekiel out in the middle of nowhere, and
he said, what do you see, son of man? And he said, I see bones. And there's very many and they're
very dry. They've been here for a while.
They've been dead for a while. He said, can they live? Whoa. Huh? Can they live? I don't have the answer to that. I don't have the answer to that. Oh, Lord God, he said, thou knowest.
He said, preach to them. You see what I'm saying? This
is what's being illustrated here. The clay on the eyes, the touch
of the garment, all these things. It's illustrating the impossibility
of anything that we can do, and yet, the purpose of God who has
incorporated and blessed these pitiful means that we have to
feed His people. That's what He's doing. That's
what this picture was all about. And boy, they ate of the fishes
and the loaves, and they said, this is the Messiah. This is
the King. This is the Son of God. This
is what we've been waiting for. We're going to take Him right
now. We're going to put Him up on our shoulders. We're going
to march into Jerusalem before this Passover feast comes, and
we're going to have Him to be King, and He's going to defeat
the Romans, and everything's going to be pie in the sky. But
that wasn't what was going on that day, was it? No, the kingdom of God is a spiritual
kingdom and that work is spiritual. And the multitude didn't see
it, just some, just some. All of them ate the fishes, all
of them ate the loaves, but only a few of them ate Christ. Just a few. Just a few of them
drank His blood. I don't fear mixed multitudes
because I see it as God's way on the earth. I see it from Cain
and Abel. They were both instructed. They
both had the same father. They both had the same instructions.
They come before God to worship. Cain didn't say anything to Abel.
He wants to bring vegetables, bring them. You want to bring
carrots, bring them. Bring whatever you want to bring. But I believe the Lamb, according
to how I was instructed, is what to bring. And so He did. And
He let God determine the difference. And God did determine the difference.
been upset about it ever since, these mixed multitudes. I don't
fear them. It's God's way. I see it in Cain and Abel. I
see it on the ark. I see it in the children of Jacob,
the children of Israel in the wilderness. But I see it most
of all in my own experience of graves, hiding in the multitude,
blending in like a chameleon. Oh, he told Timothy, he said,
avoid profane and ungodly men. Avoid the foolish arguments and
questions they gender that cause strife and vain babblings. Avoid
these ones who have caused the faith of some to be overthrown. Nevertheless, he said, 2 Timothy
2, verse 19, nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure,
having this seal, that the Lord knoweth them that are his. Who
knows? He does. He does. He does. Boy, I wish I could
get that in my heart. He does. He does. And let every one that nameth
the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Our Lord told them, in the great
house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also
of wood and earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If
a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel
unto honor, sanctified, meet for the master's use, fixed unto every good work, prepared,
a mixed multitude. He gives us trying questions. How are we going to feed them?
How are we going to feed them? And then thirdly, the Lord uses
these means, these pitiful means that we have, blesses them, feeds
His children. And I learned this, despise not
the day of small things. He said, Israel, I didn't choose
you because you were the greatest, the prettiest, the finest among
the nations, but because you were the least. Don't despise
the day of small things. Because from these small things
come great things unto the Lord. Great things. I believe this
is part of the lesson of what is taking place there. These
small things, these few fishes, these few loaves, these few pitiful
means that they have. But if God blesses those means,
Take the biggest grace work going on in this country today. I'm
not going to name the name, but take the largest work, the one
that it appears that most things are going on. He requires the
same assistance that we do. He can't make one person believe. He can't cause one person to
be regenerated. He can't cause one man to turn
from his sins to Christ. He is as dependent on the Spirit
of God as we are in this place. And I'm saying these things to
encourage you. To encourage you. God will bless
those things that concern His purpose and His way of grace.
He will bless them. He will bless His gospel. You
honor His gospel, He will honor you. You cause this place here
to be a place where men and women can come and hear the gospel,
He'll bless it, no doubt in my mind. I have no reservations
about it. And these people were gathered
here for the ministry. They were gathered because of
His reputation. They come to see Him and to hear
Him and to receive of His benefit, and they received Him when they
come. When they come. God help us to see that here
and to rejoice in it.