Christ is Life Podcast

Well, as we begin this morning, first of all, I just want to say what a joy and a privilege it is to be here with you at Colonial Hills. Colonial Hills has a special place in my heart, and so it's just a just a privilege for me to be with you guys. As we begin today, I want to open up with a couple of questions, and I want us to do some honest reflection. I know oftentimes in church we can get the Sunday school answers, and we know the answer is always Jesus, right? In case you didn't know, the answer is always Jesus in Sunday school. But the questions I have for us today is: I want to ask you this first: How many of us would like to see God do miraculous or incredible things in our lives. I think most of us would agree. Yeah, I would love to see God do that. Now, pressing in a little deeper to that question, how many of us actually believe God's going to do amazing, miraculous, wonderful things in our life, some of us are pretty confident that some others of us are shaky. You know what? That's okay. I wonder those kind of things too, because I want to see God do incredible things. But sometimes I wonder, like, do I have what it takes? Do I? Because really, what I'm asking about is is what does God actually need from us to do amazing things? What does He actually need from us? Back in 2009, there was a national college championship football game that was played. Some of my sports buffs already know what game I'm talking about. 2009, the national championship. It was played between the the Florida Gators and the Oklahoma Sooners, massive game, and they estimated that about 26 point 8 million people tuned in to watch this football game. I mean, you've got the two best teams in the nation going toe to toe to find out who is the greatest football team in all the nation that year, and there was one of the players, one of the the quarterback for the Florida Gators, did something incredible. You see, the quarterback for the Gators was a young man by the name of Tim Tebow, and Tim often wore eye black on his eyes for games, and he would put Bible verses on him. That was a common thing, but for this game, Tim decided to write John 316 on his eye black. So you can see in the picture there of Tim that he wrote John 316 on his eyes before going into the football game, and you want to know the result of what happened because he wrote John 316. They estimate that 94 million internet searches about that verse followed that football game. 94 million internet searches about John 316, because a young man wanted to put his faith on display when he played in the national championship football game. You think about the simplicity of what God used to reach millions of people. Now we don't know how many people became believers in Christ or followed Him or put their faith and trust in Him, but we do know that about 94 million people at least looked up what that verse said. The simplicity of what God used was a young man and some eye black and a white paint pen. Something so simple and was yet used so mightily by God. And the thing that I want us to see today, as we dive into the Bible, is I want us to recognize and realize that God does miraculous things through ordinary means. God does miraculous things through ordinary means, and that's great news for people like me and you, right? We we may not have an overabundance of resources, we may not have perfect circumstances, we may not have everything we think we need, but we've got some ordinary means, and God does miraculous things through ordinary means. And we're going to look at a story in the gospel, an event that happened that's recorded in all four of the gospels, which is very interesting because very few miracles actually appear in all four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. What's great about that is when we read the Gospels and they report these events, every one of them wrote in their own style.
They highlighted different moments or quotes about what happened, and when we read them all together, all four of them, we get one incredible picture of an event that took place. And so today we're going to be in the Gospels of Mark and John. I kept it simple. I didn't want to get all four going. We'd be flipping our Bibles back and forth. So I tried to keep it as simple as possible. So if you have your Bible, you want to follow along. I'm going to have the verses on the screen. We're going to be in Mark chapter six, and then in John chapter six. I'm going to begin reading in Mark chapter six, and I'm reading from the ESV, the English Standard Version. So, Mark six, beginning in verse 32, it says, "And they, meaning Jesus and the disciples, went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now, many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them, ahead of Jesus and the disciples. And when Jesus, when he went ashore, he saw this great crowd, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them the people away to go into the surrounding countryside and the villages, and buy themselves something to eat. But he, Jesus, answered them, "You give them something to eat. And they said to him, "Shall we go and buy 200 dinari worth of bread and give it to them to eat, and he said to them, "How many loaves do you have? Go and see. And now I'm going to move over to John chapter six to continue. John chapter six, beginning in verse eight, one of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many? Jesus said, "Have the people sit down. Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about 5000 in number. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told the disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost. So they gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with fragments from the barley loaves left by those who had eaten. I mean, what an incredible miracle! What an incredible miracle where God uses some. Jesus uses something so small to feed 1000s of people. Now, as we dive into this text, there's several things I want to point out, and a couple of different people I want to focus in on. And first of all, I want us to focus in on Jesus, and I want us to look at a little bit deeper than the surface level of what he says or what he does. I want us to see some deeper truths. When we read this passage, we see the divine nature of Jesus. We see some of the Old Testament echoes of things that God did in Israel's past, and we really see the truth about who Jesus actually is. So, three things I want to point out and highlight. There's several more, but I think these three are pretty incredible. First of all, whenever Jesus feeds this group of hungry people, it reminds us of what God did for the nation of Israel back after Moses led them out of slavery. If you remember that when Moses delivered the people out of Egypt, out of Pharaoh's slavery, they left, and when they went across the Red Sea, they got into the wilderness. They started wondering what they were going to eat, and God sent them manna or bread from heaven every single day. God provided for their physical need of hunger, and just like this, Jesus is providing this physical bread for their hunger. And when you think back about Moses, Moses wrote in the law about this prophet that was going to come one day, and that they should do everything that he says.
And when Jesus does this, he's showing them, I'm the prophet that Moses wrote about, and any Jew during this time would remember this and would begin to recognize this and go, "Is this the prophet that Moses told us about? Secondly, what John does is he shows us that Jesus is greater than the. Prophet Elisha, back in the book of Second Kings, Elisha was this great prophet in the Old Testament, and there was this one time where Elisha fed 100 men using 20 loaves of bread, which that's a pretty great miracle in itself-feeding 100 men with 20 loaves of bread. But think about the numbers: 100 men, 20 loaves, and yet Jesus fed 5000 men plus women and children with only five loaves. So what John is doing is he's showing us that Jesus is greater than the prophet Elisha, and we see this all throughout the book of John. In fact, John makes it clear that Jesus is greater than every Old Testament prophet and major figure, he's showing us the supremacy of who Jesus is. But finally, and most importantly, this miracle points us to Jesus' identity as the true bread of life. Now, this isn't physical bread I'm talking about, but the spiritual bread that we need. Later on in this chapter, I encourage you to go home and read the rest of John six today. Jesus continues and says to them in verse chapter six, verse 35. He said, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. What Jesus was proclaiming to them is He was saying to them that when you come to Me and you believe in Me, I will satisfy you. I will give you life. He knew that He was going to go to that cross, pay for their sins, die, be buried, and resurrected in that. Whoever believed in Him would not perish but have eternal life. He continues many other times in John chapter six, verse 41. He says, "I am the bread that has come down from heaven. Verse 48. He says, "I'm the bread of life, and in verse 51, he says, "I am the living bread that has come down from heaven. As we read about this miracle today, you know, first thing we recognize is that this is all about Jesus. This tells us about His divinity, His power, His works, His provision, the salvation, His life, and what He offers to us freely for everyone who hungers for righteousness, and secondly, I want us to look at the disciples and everybody who's there, and then consider ourselves as well. I love this after Jesus had told them, "You give them Something to eat. Jesus had been teaching that day. This crowd, 1000s of men have showed up, and women and children. Scholars estimate this could have been over 10,000 people. Who actually knows? But 1000s upon 1000s of people have showed up. Jesus is teaching late into the day, and the disciples are very practical. They say, "Lord, it's getting late, and these people need to go eat. You know, why don't we send them away? They can go into the nearby town and buy themselves some bread. And I love his response. It's almost surprising. I can tell you, there's no way the disciples thought that. That's what he would say: "Is you give them something to eat. It's funny to think about because we know that Jesus, as the Son of God, could have instantly put bread in every man's hand. Right? Jesus could have snapped his fingers, and everybody could have had a handful of bread and fish. He could have just spoken a word, and suddenly plates and tables and bread could appear in front of everybody. He could have just thought a thought, and their stomachs would have been filled, right? But for some reason, Jesus wanted to work through the people. Jesus says, "I want to do this through you. You give them something to eat. We know that's impossible, right? It's impossible for the disciples to have enough to feed these 1000s of people. What Jesus was asking them to do. Whenever you look at this, the way He said it, He said, "You give them something to eat. Notice, this is not a suggestion. It's not a question. He didn't give them a plan. He gave them a command.
You give them something to eat. It's impossible for them to feed this crowd, but yet that's exactly what they end up doing. They end up doing exactly what Jesus said they would. Impossible as it may be in our human ability. They ended up doing exactly what Jesus told them to. You give them something to eat, and then the disciples they respond with talking about money. They said, "Lord, 200 denarii wouldn't even be enough. And for those of us who who don't know what a denarii is, it's about a day's wages back in this time, and 200 dinari would be about six to eight months worth of wages. In modern terms, let's consider that 10s of 1000s of dollars, and the disciples were basically saying to Jesus, "Lord, even if we had this much money, we we don't have enough to even begin to feed these people. What you're asking is impossible. The way I would say that is the math ain't mathing, Jesus. You told me something to do, and the numbers don't add up. And Jesus' response is, "I love it. He doesn't rebuke them. He doesn't discourage them. He doesn't tell them how faithless and foolish or worthless they are. He says, "You know what? Instead of telling me what you don't have, why don't you go tell me what you do have? He asks. He says, "How many loaves do you have? Go and see. How many loaves do you have? So often there's times that I go through life and I'm faced with situations, and all I can focus on and think about is all the things that I lack, the things that I don't have, the things that I wish I had or want to have. Jesus responded to the disciples, "How many loves do you have? Go see. And then we look and we see in John chapter six verse nine, we we get Andrew who who comes and brings a response. Andrew is an interesting character in the Bible. When you read about him in the Scriptures, Andrew seems to have a habit of bringing people to Jesus. Andrew is Simon Peter's brother, and he's the one. Whenever he first meets Jesus, the first thing he does is turn around and go get his brother. Come on, we found the Messiah. Andrew brings this young boy to come see Jesus. Andrew brings some Greeks to come see Jesus. It's almost as if Andrew's habit in life is let's take this to Jesus. I don't have the answer. I don't know what to do. I can't fix this. But come, come with me. Let's go see Jesus. I think that's a pretty good way to to go through life, like Andrew did. Now, something funny I want to note is that Andrew says there's a boy here with five loaves and two fish, and out of the entire crowd, 1000s of people, only one kid has a lunch. That's what makes me question if there were actually any women here, because women would have been smart enough to at least pack some food and some lunches and not go without. I'm kidding, that's a joke. But only one person, and it's a small meal. You know, we we think about five loaves, but these would have been really small, little, almost like cakes. Five of them. I mean, it'd be a decent little meal, and and the fish really would have just been something so that you're not just eating bread. These wouldn't have been massive fish. This would have been just some little preserved fish. This is a small, ordinary, meager lunch. They were barley loaves, which wasn't even the expensive stuff. This was just a little boy's lunch, five loaves and two fish. I think about that little boy when the disciples are going around. Right? Jesus said, "Go see how many loaves you do have, and I can see Peter and and John and James. They're all going out, and and Andrew goes, and he comes up to this this group or a family, I don't know, and the little boy is there, and he asks him, he says, "Hey, Jesus told us that we need to go see how much bread we have here with us today. Do you have any food that we can take to Jesus?
And I just imagine this little boy in childlike innocence, just realizing, oh, I have my lunch, and Jesus can have that if He needs it. I think about one of my children, Luna. She's a sweetheart little girl, and you know, whenever I don't know if y'all do this, but whenever I give her like a package of fruit snacks, I tear it open. I always take one out and I call it a dad tax in my house. But I always say to her, "Hey, Luna, can I have this? And she's like, "Yeah, of course, Daddy. She's so sweet, right? Just a child. I imagine this little boy just kind of being the same way about. Oh, well, yeah, Jesus can. He can have my lunch if he needs it." Just handing it over, and then Jesus performs this miracle. He prayed over the food. He breaks the bread, and then he he passes it out to the people. And in Mark's gospel, in Mark six verse 41, it says, "Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set out for the people. Remember earlier, I said Jesus owed you give them something to eat, and they ended up doing just that. They ended up handing out all the bread to everybody. Jesus took something so small, so insignificant, and used it to feed 1000s of people to their fill, all they could want, and then to have leftovers. And I wonder if Jesus can do that through a little boy in his lunch. What can he do through you? If he can do that through a little boy and his lunch, what can he do through you? Going back to what Jesus told the disciples, you give them something to eat. Jesus tells us the same message today. He tells us, "You give them something to eat, y'all. This is the the same words of the Great Commission found at the end of of Matthew. Whenever he says, "Go into all the world and baptize them, make disciples, teaching them to obey all that I have command. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age, he says, "Go and make disciples. What he's saying is, you go give them something to eat, and what they need is that true food, that living food, that bread of life that is Jesus Christ. That's what he's telling us. He says, "You go give them something to eat, guys. You are the messengers. We are the messengers. And you might sit here today and think, "But I'm not a preacher. I'm not a pastor. I'm not trained. I'm not educated. I'm not famous or rich or talented. I don't have this. I don't have that. I lack this. I just don't have it. Remember, that's the same way the disciples thought. We don't have enough to do what you're asking, Jesus. Remember what He said. So, what do you have? Go and see. How many loaves do you have? Go and see, and that's the same thing Jesus would tell us to do today. How many loaves do you have? Go and see. So I want us to take some inventory this morning, reflect on our own lives to see what what do we have? How many loaves do I have? And I want to think about this in two different categories. There's the spiritual things that we have, and then there's the physical or the material things. And so, spiritually, first of all, if you're a Christian, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, if you've put your faith and your trust in Him, then you've got Jesus. You've got His righteousness. You've been washed clean. You've been filled by the Holy Spirit. You've been given His power. You've been brought into this union with God. You have your testimony. You have the gospel. You have so much, and the fact that you have Jesus is enough. Period. Full stop. You need nothing more. Spiritually, you have been given everything you need. The Bible proclaims that you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Done. So spiritually, check you're good. You've got everything you need. You may not realize that. You may not understand that. But that's what the Bible says, and that's what's true spiritually in Christ.
You have everything you will ever need. You just need to make sure you're walking in all of that. So spiritually, you got it. Check. Now physically, materially in this world, because that's where we tend to focus on. We shouldn't, but that is where we tend to focus a lot of times. But I promise, if you were to sit down and reflect on all the things that you have in your life, I promise you've got a whole lot more than five little loaves and two fish. If you were to ask yourself to sit down and reflect, do you have the ability to pray. Do you have a family? Do you have a marriage, children? Do you have friends? Do you have a job or a community? Do you have any resources? Do you got clothes or money or hobbies or time? Think about all the things in your life. I promise you got a whole lot more than five little loaves and two fish. After the disciples went and took inventory, just like us, here's what we got: five loaves, two fish. But what are they for so many? What is this for so many people? There is a lost and a dying world that is hungry for the truth. They need Jesus, and the only way to satisfy them, the only way to fill them, is with His truth. What is this among so many? This isn't much. It won't go far. A lot of times, that's how we think. I've only got this much, or I can only do a little bit. This is just enough for me. This couldn't possibly use for anybody else. It's more than enough. Whatever you have in your life is more than enough. What you need to do is be just like Andrew and take that to Jesus and offer that to Him. Imagine what would happen if you took everything in your life. And you use that to point people to Jesus. Now I'm not telling you to go sell everything you have or do. I'm not, but I'm saying everything you've got right now. If you offered it unto God, God, how can you use this to point people to Jesus? How can you use this to spread your gospel? How can you use this to enlarge your kingdom? How can you work through these things? Imagine what would happen if you used everything in your life like that. Because I want to remind you. that God does miraculous things through ordinary means. God does miraculous things through ordinary means, through people just like me and you, and He's calling us to go out in the world and give them something to eat. Our world is starving for truth. Our world is starving for the true eternal life that is found only in Jesus Christ, and they cannot be satisfied by anything this world has to offer, anything else they try to fill themselves with will lead them to death and destruction. Jesus is the only one that will truly satisfy their hunger, and as a Christian, you've got Jesus. You've got the bread they need. So the calling that Christ has for you is you give them something to eat. Point them to me. Point them to God. Share your testimony. Share the one thing that can truly satisfy their deepest need, and so here's my encouragement today. If you are a believer, if you're a Christian, if you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, I want you today to take serious inventory of everything you have in your life. Sit down and think about all the things you have spiritually, go into the scriptures and remind yourselves of all the things that God has given you in Christ Jesus, and then think on all the things you have in your life in this world, and ask God, how can you use this, Lord? How can this be used for your kingdom? Because it doesn't matter how big or how small it is. If Jesus can feed 1000s with a little boy's lunch, what can He do through you? But for those of you who are here today and you're not yet a believer, if you've not put your faith in Jesus Christ, and you hear about this this true food that Jesus is offering. If you're here today saying, "I'm starving for truth. I need life. Something is missing. Something is wrong.
I've tried everything the world has to offer, and my soul is still starving, then you can be filled today. The bread of life that Jesus offers you is free to every single person that hungers. All you have to do is trust and believe in Him, and He will give you every spiritual blessing. He will fill. You and give you true food that will sustain you for eternal life. That is my encouragement to you today. Let us pray, Heavenly Father. We thank you, Lord, for this day. We thank you for the opportunity to worship, to gather together, to proclaim the greatness of your name, to sing your praises, God, to read your word, and proclaim the truth of who you are and what you've done and what you are doing right now, Father. You are a miracle-working God who can do great things through the simplest of means, you can take anything we have and use it for your miracles to change lives and to change this world. God, I pray for every believer in here. Lord, reveal to them the things that you have given them. Lord, assure them of what they have in you spiritually, but turn them toward all the things they have in their life. How can it be used by you, no matter how big or how small? And Lord, I pray for anyone here today who has not yet trusted in you as their Lord and Savior. God, I pray the power of Your Holy Spirit would convict them of their sin, would draw them to Christ for forgiveness and righteousness and holiness and satisfaction that's found only in You. Lord, thank You again for the the time we've had together this morning. I pray that as we leave this place, we will leave changed and never the same because of who you are and what you have done and what you are doing right now in our lives. We love you. We thank you. We pray this in your mighty and matchless name, King Jesus. Amen.