Last week we broke from the Sermon on the Mount to talk of our national heritage. We talked specifically about those who have served our country as patriots. George Washington in his farewell address said,
“Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”
One must ask the question then, “Where has the connection to religion and morality gone?” We made the point last week that it was exactly these things that veterans fought for, fight for now, and should fight for in the future – freedom of religion throughout our government, not the exemption of religion in our government. If George Washington counted religion and morality as “great pillars of human happiness,” and the “firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens” should not we too be teaching these very things to our children, to our society, to our nation as a whole? Our nation is nowhere made great with rebellion, but only in submission to the power of God. No one, therefore, is a true patriot, according to George Washington, that is not acting in a fashion that reflects a cherished support and personal respect born from a religious morality. This heritage is what we fought for – our national slogan is not “in humans we trust” but “In God We Trust.”
We looked at four things that would bring our nation back from the edge of failure, where we are now. First, we must humble ourselves and teach the humility of Christ to others. Jesus Himself came not to judge, but to serve. Jesus came and washed His disciples’ feet. He did not expect His to be cared for – He expected rejection. Christ’s humility is perfect and is ultimately shown in Philippians 2 where, even though He was God, He made Himself lower than even the angels to save us. He left His heavenly home and became flesh to save us.
Second – pray. Prayer acknowledges God as God. It indicates subservience to a greater power and being. Placing ourselves as subservient to God is an act of humility. Pray. Pray for your people, your families, and your country. Pray every day and place yourself in humble service to God.
Third – seek His face. The message on Sunday was for veterans. I made the point that as a military man, you do not go before the Commanding Officer on your own terms. You approach him or her respectfully, with solemnity, and on their terms. You request permission to go before them and when you are there, you do not waste their time. Seeking God’s face must be done on His terms. We are required to be pure, to be clean, to be perfect in order to approach God. The only way to approach God then is through His Son such that you can be made pure, clean, and perfect. Many people want to say they “believe in God” but 1 John 2, verses 22 and 24 (sermon on this text here and here) make it clear that this claim is empty alone. You either accept both the Son and the Father or you have nothing. You approach the Father only through the Son. Those are His terms.
Fourth – Turn from your wicked ways. We must turn from sin and this world and turn to God. We must give up our own desires, our own lusts, our own personal squabbles, and attitudes and turn to God for all things in life. My challenge was to veterans to get pure, turn from drinking, turn from the hateful attitude toward a nation that has forsaken them, turn from the womanizing and thinking they deserve anything. Turn from the prideful heart and turn to God in humility, seeking His Son, and seeking His face.
Then, when His people do this He will hear their pleas. God will forgive their sins. God will heal the land. Only with humility, prayer, seeking God’s face, and turning from wickedness is this promise fulfilled.
Part of our humility, prayer, seeking God, and turning from wickedness is giving up ourselves and giving all the praise, faith, ability, and miracle work to God for His miraculous provision. We, when operating in what we call reality, tend to look at what is before us and see the limitations in those things. We tend to see only that which is in the physical world. We often lack any vision of the great things God can do. We want desperately for the liberal to be denied the ability to remove miraculous things from theology. Yet, we look at the material things in the world, limit our thoughts to them alone, and deny those very miracles that we fight strenuously to maintain. We want nothing of man trying to explain scientifically how the 10 plagues may have occurred, yet we are not willing to exercise faith and watch the mountain be moved ourselves. We cannot have it both ways and today we will look at our dualistic and denying hearts in the scriptures from the perspective of the disciples themselves.
We find this contrast in the passage around our target verse today when we read John 6:5-14. We will concentrate on John 6:11. As you turn there, please understand I am not advocating some wanton run amok way of dealing with giving. I am advocating applying an operative faith in how we administer our resources. We will look at this not only from the perspective of what we are given by God, but what we should do with it based upon God’s miraculous multiplication. We should note that in this passage, the miraculous multiplication is not unseen, but right before their very eyes.
I was reading, listening to a sermon or two, and praying about what it is that the Lord would have me present to you today for a mission’s focused sermon. As I was reading a book by Warren Wiersbe, it struck me. He is talking about people that think they are manufacturers of the things of God, of His great miracles, of the blessings of God. These people are distributors not manufacturers. This is what I read:
“The miracle of Christ’s feeding the five thousand comes to mind, the only miracle of Christ that is recorded in all four gospels (Matt 14:15-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:1-14). When the disciples saw more than five thousand hungry people before them, they didn’t know what to do; but they made their suggestions just the same. As yet, they didn’t really know how poor they were!
First they advised Jesus to avoid the problem by sending the crowd home…(not addressing the problem but purporting a uninvolved solution) He (Jesus) rejected that plan…
Philip admitted that there wasn’t enough money on hand to buy food to feed such a big crowd, so a bigger budget wasn’t the answer. (Most people think that having more money to spend is the solution to every problem.) Then Andrew found a boy with a small lunch of five barley loaves and two fish, a food supply totally inadequate to meet the need. “but what are they among so many?” Andrew asked (John 6:9), and the answer is, “Of themselves, they are nothing.””[1]
The point, as Dr. Wiersbe states specifically, is that “the disciples were trying to be manufacturers.” For whatever reason, they considered it their personal responsibility to feed all these people, to get the bread and fish for them, and to dispense it personally to them. They saw this as a momentous task that was far beyond their ability. They are right and in-effect they said, ”How could we possibly do this?” They were thinking, “How can we,” instead of “God will.”
Dr. Wiersbe’s analysis is exactly what we need to apply today. We look at our finances and ask, “How can we?” The problem is that we are not supposed to bring things out of what we have, but what we can receive. We are to look at the specific promises of God and go forward in faith. We are not supposed to think we can create, develop, determine or in any way manufacture God’s blessings. We are instead supposed to be focused upon the truth that, “God’s servants are distributors of His blessings, not manufactures thereof.” We are this way, we operate in this way, because we only see the fallen world and we have to live in it. It is no wonder that we fall into sin because “We struggle to get outside of our own strengths and exercise faith in God.”
Let us look then at the sin of presumption. We presume that we accepted Jesus and were saved; instead of thinking that Jesus acts to save us. We presume that we accepted Him for salvation, instead of the fact that His grace introduced Him to our hearts. We presume that we do His work, when it is He who works through us. We presume many things and it is now time to stop presuming. God is infinite.
I. Jesus
The first thing we consider then is the first thing in the Gospel: Jesus. The good news of the Bible can be encapsulated in John’s first words in his gospel which read:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
This is the Gospel of God. The light of the world sent to save man from the darkness of sin. Our mission here, and the mission of those on the mission field, is to give the Gospel to all and present Jesus to every soul placed before us. We do this not because we have engineered this gospel promise; but because God manufactured it for us in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. We are only the distributors of this great good news.
The Gospel is not provision, it is not money, it is not people, and it is not bread or fish. The Gospel – good news – is Jesus Christ and not what we are or do, but what He is and did. The gospel is what He continues to do – stand between the believer and God as our advocate. The gospel is not for us to decide or determine to parse out based upon a proposed budget or pre-conceived availability of funds, but it is to be free to all. Jesus gave Himself and made more of the materials of the world (fish and loaves of bread) so that all those present could be saved, provided for, and fed both spiritually and physically. It is not up to us to manage His provision, only to accept the gift of faith and have faith that there is enough for all who are present and in need.
What of the provision itself though? What was specifically provided?
II. Material
Granted, this is an individual giving, not a church body. However, we are all a part of one body which is Christ. In this one body, just as the boy was that day, we too can give to contribute to Christ’s ministry. The scripture says that “he took the loaves…and likewise of the fishes.” This was the material that was needed – food. Man had very little for a great many people. God has an over abundance, for all His people. God knew the situation before it even presented itself, and Jesus Himself knew what He would do (John 6:6) before the disciples even asked. At issue is material provision. More specifically, sustenance for the bodies of those present. The reasons for this need are that it was time to eat, there were many present, and the distance to travel to get anything was too great. Simply put, you either send many away with women and children in tow, hungry and possibly in danger; or you care for them so they can hear the gospel where they are presently. God chose to care for them where they were and He provided for that need.
What happened after the boy gave all he had? He ate and was satisfied just like the over 5000 others there. Not only that, the Lord provided even more in return when the fragments were collected - enough to fill 12 baskets. Granted, there is no evidence that the boy received these 12 baskets, but to know that God provided this in abundance for all those present is a blessing for the boy who, from the beginning, only wanted to help. That miracle provided far more than the boy had to begin with, and a surplus for the need. When we give of our material possessions, it does not just count materially for others, it is not just multiplied materially for others, but it is also for our provision and ourselves, and God’s great love provides above the need. Our giving results in our receiving what we need, and the miracle of God is that it provides for so much more in return.
Did the boy count his fish and barley loaves and hold any back? Did the boy count what he might lose if he did not keep some for a little treasure store for later? It was a long trip home, obviously. Is there any indication in all the scriptures here or in the other passages that the boy only gave that which he thought would not hurt him, or in some way deplete his emergency stash? No – what we do see here is a boy who operated completely on faith; faith in what he gave was needed and would help the Lord, the gospel, and His ministry. What we see, then, is the Lord honoring that faith by multiplying the gift to provide for the material needs of all those present such that Jesus could provide for the spiritual needs. It also provided for the boy who gave initially both physically and spiritually.
What are we faced with in missions? Do we take people from their homes in distant lands and make them come to hear the gospel? Do we ask them to make a trip to come when they may not have the means to make the trip? Just as Jesus did that day, we made a decision to minister to people right where they are by sending people to provide for them where they are, in their present location. What we fail to see in our example here though is that someone brought a little fish and a little bread. When we send a little to help a missionary, we give all we can. The boy that gave the fishes and loaves gave all he had. He had no savings. He had no extra stash that he was holding back. He had nothing to fall back on if those disciples took his fish and loaves and ate it themselves. The young man faithfully gave all he had and offered it for service.
We, too, must believe, and operate in faith. We should give everything we have and trust the Lord to multiply it for others. Equally, we should trust that our providing would result in our provision. We too must trust the Lord to bless us and those whom He desires to minister to.
Looking to Jesus, having and exercising faith in the miracles of Christ also involves His ministry. We should consider His ministry for us.
III. His Ministry
Jesus gave thanks and then distributed the loaves. Jesus is interceding for all those present. Jesus is not just praying to give thanks for Himself, not for the disciples who got the bread and fish from the boy, not just for the boy who exercised faith and gave all He had for the Lord’s ministry. Jesus prayed and gave thanks for all those present – more than 5,000. This should change our perspective on prayer when we pray concerning our missions giving. When we pray, we should not just pray from the aspect that we need enough to give to missions; we should pray that what we give is given great grace by the Lord to provide for His ministry both abroad and locally. We need to depend upon the Lord to give us a blessing too, and offer thanks to the Father when He receives our gift. We do not give just so that we can bless others though our gift. That is being a manufacturer of a blessing. The blessing is not what you do, but what God does with your giving. Therefore, we pray that the gift given to God for the purpose of blessing others is prayed over, properly received with thanksgiving by the Savior as He did here in our passage today, and that the Lord’s blessing results in our receiving a blessing.
Did the boy know what was going to happen when he gave? Truthfully, no. Did he know it was for Jesus to minister to all the people? Quite probably, yes. He knew the Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, would give thanks before He distributed the food. The boy did not know what would happen with the food. We are in the same position. The boy did not plan at all to be a manufacturer of this provision and blessing, he simply turned what he had over to the Lord and let Him manufacture the miracle.
We should pray that our small gift can help, and that it will help others. We should pray that our small gift could be prayed over and multiplied just as Jesus multiplied the gift of the young lad. We should pray that we are provided for just as the young man received provision. Finally, we should pray that the Lord wants to expand His ministry here in Lander through us and that our provision will expand for that purpose. That is all part of what we need to include in our prayers concerning any gift we give. As a church, we will give, provide for, feed, and work to minister to anyone who will hear. That has to be our goal. That has to be our vision. If we have anything less for a vision, we miss the entire focus of our Savior’s sacrifice for the whole world.
Not only do we have to rest in the ministry of the Lord and His work for that ministry, we also have to face our position in the ministry. We are not supposed to manufacture blessings, then call them the Lord’s blessings. We receive blessings from Him and we are to take them, give Him praises in them, and use them for His glory.
IV. Our ministry
Just as the boy did not try to figure out what the Lord would do, but simply acted upon what he knew needed to be done; we too need to let God do what He will do with our small contributions. We are most specifically just distributors of the gifts that were given. The disciples did not even know what to do with the loaves and fishes; they had to ask Jesus what it was they were supposed to do. We, too, must be this trusting.
We have reasons and purposes for documenting our giving to other organizations. We even look at our missionaries once and a while to ensure they are carrying on the work of the Lord because, after all, man can sin and fall into sin. We could not support a missionary if they did such a thing. Nevertheless, what is our ministry then? What did the disciples do to minister to others after the Lord blessed the food?
Well, there is a little preparatory work here. The disciples first told everyone to sit, to prepare to receive a blessing. Then they found this young lad with five loaves and two fishes. They looked for a way to help; they actually sought assistance from others. Think about it. While Philip in verse six was adding up the reasons why it could not be done, Andrew in verse eight was trying to find a way to make it work. All these guys were still trying to manufacture a blessing, and were stymied because they saw no physical, material or worldly way to meet the need. The men of the entire group were concerned and obviously moving about trying to find a way to fill the need. Jesus just tells them in verse 10 to make the men sit down. They were in a place comfortable for 5,000 men to sit with all those who accompanied them. We know there were children there because it is a young lad who produces the meager portions that are brought to our Lord. Nevertheless, Andrew brought this tiny offering to the Lord in hopes to convince Him that the people needed to be sent away suggesting, “what are they among so many” (John 6:9). The disciples just needed to prove to Jesus that it was the only commonsense thing to do. It was the prudent thing to do. We cannot possibly feed this group of people. This surely was what the Lord meant when He asked, “whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” We can only surmise that Andrew must be thinking that the Lord could not have indicated that with whatever is present, He would make do.
It is not our place to ask how; it is only our place to deliver. Andrew came with the loaves and fishes, and walked away with the same. However, after the Lord’s thanks to the Father there never stopped being enough and more for all those present. We are just there as deliverers or distributors of the blessings of God. We are in no way meant to predetermine what those blessings will be, only that it will come; and when it does we are to distribute it to those in need. That is our job, that is our function, and that is our calling – to deliver the blessings of God either materially, or spiritually.
When we look then at our passage today and especially at John 6:11 we find a tremendous lesson for missions. This lesson is not that we have to go and be a missionary. This lesson is not that we need to be open to the burden for missions in a foreign land. The lesson today is that we need to be ready to give unto God all we have for whatever purpose He proposes, and let Him manufacture the miracle. In so many ways we need to get out of God’s way and let Him work instead of tightly holding onto what we think is ours. We do not have possession of anything; we are only stewards of the assets we have on earth. We can take none with us to Heaven, and should not plan to. We can only deal with what God gives us now in a fashion that will honor Him, and the only honor He wants from us is faith and obedience.
Being responsible with the things that God has entrusted us with is one thing, but being niggardly concerning His great provision is another thing all together. We must be open to operating faith even when everything around us says not too.
Like the boy with the loaves, we should just deliver what we have to give. Like the disciples with the blessed loaves and fish, we should just deliver that which is blessed by the Lord to those in need. We are distributors; we take things in a bunch and dispense them as needed. We should note that our scripture says, “as much as they would.” Every person received what he or she wanted, not a set amount decided upon by the disciples. They were given what they needed. There is indication in this word that they were provided for to the level of their personal desires. This is the word “will” in Greek. My Greek lexicon defines this word as “to desire, to want, to wish.”[2] Their very desires for food were fulfilled that day. Do we look at Jesus to provide us our desires so we can hear His gospel? Do we look at the materials He can give us in order to further His gospel? Do we consider His ministry to us in these provisions and materials? Do we then consider what our responsibility is to distribute these provisions and materials in ministry to others? That is what you have to assess, Christian. What is it that you must do with what the Lord has provided? Are you to hold it and not give in faith, or are you to give and let the Lord manufacture the miracle? We must be content with being a distributor, not a manufacturer. That is our ministry.
[1] Warren W. Wiersbe, On Being a Servant of God. Baker Books: Grand Rapids, 1993. Pages 5-7.
[2] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains 2nd ed. United Bible Societies: New York, 1988, 1989. OakTree Software, Inc.Version 3.6, search on “qelw” (thelō).
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