4th Sign: Nothing Is Impossible, Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. We have no bread. Here's Jesus. I'm right here. We have no bread. I'm right here.

I don't get the connection. I fed 5,000. 20,000. I fed 4,000.

You distributed it. You got the leftovers. I'm right here.

I don't have any bread. We kind of do the same thing. We get so preoccupied with things.

It becomes so important to us. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. Notice that he says here, he says he has five barley loaves.

Okay, first of all, remember something. This is terrible bread. To the Jews, wheat is what they make bread out of most of the time. Poor people sometimes would make bread out of barley. Now, he has five loaves of barley, but again, you're going to be wrong when you think about this. I know what you guys are thinking of, French bread. He's got like five loaves. That's what he has there.

Forget that. A barley loaf at this time is the same size as a CD and almost as thin. It's a cracker. It's not leaven.

There's no rising. It's a cracker and it's made of barley. It's not very tasteful.

It's just not. He has five of those and it says, but two fish and you're thinking redfish. He's got two big redfish. Now, the word here for fish is a pickled fish that you season and the English equivalent would be a sardine.

Okay, it's about this big, like a minnow. So, he has five CDs and two sardines. That's all that he has. He doesn't have anything more than that. That's what he has.

Why? He's a little boy. That's all he needs for a meal. You see, that's it. So far what we have is you have this whole idea of a self-absorbed crowd that are only interested in what Jesus can do for them. That's their only interest. And you have faithless disciples and I'm saying that's most of us.

That's almost the way we all act. As American Christians, so many of us are so self-absorbed that we think Jesus is in our life for us so that he will give us what we want or desire. Now, he's healing people and lame people are walking and blind people are seeing, but even today, some of the largest churches in America, what do they offer you? Health, wealth, success. Who doesn't want that? And how do we show up?

In enormous crowds, just enormous crowds of people crowd into a church like that because that's what I want. But if you take any, and Jesus did it himself, if you take the words of Jesus, you need to be repentant of your sin. You need to grieve over your sin. You need to trust Christ totally. You need to follow him completely. You need to bear your cross for him. You need to be persecuted for him. You would be even willing to die for him. When you preach that, guess what? There's not a lot of people showing up. That's not what I'm for.

I'm for what he's going to give me. It hasn't changed any in all these thousands of years. The disciples, on the other hand, decided to solve this problem, as I said, just kind of the way we do.

I've got to figure this out, but no math is going to help anyone in this case. So you have faithless disciples, self-absorbed people. And now we're introduced to the son of God, the king of kings, the Lord of lords, the Messiah of Israel, the savior of the world.

And the first thing he says is a little bit surprising. Verse 10. Jesus said, have the people sit down.

He says, now there was much grass in that place, so men sat down. Number about 5000 men. That's why you get between 15 and 25000 people. Their wives and families are with them.

OK, so you have this enormous number. Jesus said, OK, let's sit down. Now, in the other gospels that talk about this, he organized them in blocks, 500 to a block. He organized them in blocks. He said, get them all set down and get them organized. Now, if you're a disciple, what are you thinking? What?

Why? I mean, if Jesus was going to do a miracle, wouldn't he do just a miracle? I mean, do they have to sit down? Do the disciples have to get him in groups? Does Jesus have to do anything like that?

For example. For nearly 40 years in the wilderness, God provided manna every morning for Israel. Every morning, supernaturally. Couldn't Jesus just call it down from heaven and feed him?

Of course he could, but he doesn't. So I can just see two of the disciples walking together like, do you know how long it's going to take us to organize all these people into groups? And then, you know, people are some in this group don't want to be in this group.

They're going to want to be in this group. And he's just telling us, get them in. And all that kid has.

He has five CDs and two sardines. What are we doing here? Well, he said, then have the people sit down. And then in 11, it says, Jesus then took the loaves and having given thanks. Why? Why would you give thanks? 20,000 people need to eat and I have. Five cracker CDs and two sardines, and he's thanking God for that. Very important principle.

Why? What God provides is always enough to accomplish his will. Whatever God provides is always enough to accomplish his will. Jesus knows that. That's why he prayed that way.

So. He does that and he gives thanks and he distributed to those who were seated. Likewise, also of the fish, as much as they wanted. As much as they wanted.

And when they were filled. This isn't a meal. This is a banquet. As much as they could possibly eat. That's how much he provided.

Basket after basket. 20,000 people hungry bellies became happy bellies. In fact, a lot of people probably leaned back and said, can't eat another bite. I just can't eat another bite. And it just kept coming. Now, something I've thought about most other people who you would call a scholar have not thought about it.

So you know what not to call me. But one of the things I thought about is. Why did they love to eat this so much? It's barley bread and some fish. The barley bread that Jesus provided there didn't come from a cursed earth. These weren't little seedlings that grew up and were harvested as barley. These were created by Jesus. And those sardines never swam anywhere. These were created by Jesus. The bread and the fish had nothing to do. He just created it all. It must have been the tastiest bread they've ever had.

The best fish they ever ate. Notice he's providing all of this. And 20,000 people are all part of the same miracle. The number is staggering. Then after that, he says to his disciples, gather up the leftover fragments so that nothing will be lost.

I'm not going to waste anything here. So for them, they're thinking, oh, here we go again. Let's go through all these people and pick this all up.

And they do. And it says so they gather them up and fill 12 baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, which were left over by those who had eaten. 12 baskets full of leftovers. How many disciples are there? There's 12. You know, this is an overwhelming situation.

The point being that. They were filled, they couldn't eat another bite. Jesus Christ does hear what no one can do. This is the most overwhelming disciple that the disciples ever ran into. No, no question about it.

It's a great picture, by the way. If you say, why does Jesus do all this for this crowd on this particular day? Like always, because of what he wants to talk about.

Not because he wants to feed 5000 or 20000. He wants to talk to them. Guess what he's going to say? Next chapter, the end of this one. I am the bread of life.

You eat me, you'll never have a problem. You see, I'm the bread of life. This is all a physical illustration of a spiritual truth, because from his point of view, the spiritual reality is way more important than whether they had a good meal together. That's what he does. Now, to show you how hard headed we are.

Let me illustrate it. I want you to go with me to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16. Now, this is an important thing to realize from Matthew 16. You got to remember this if you remember anything. Matthew 16 comes after Matthew 14. You need to know that.

Why? What happens in Matthew 14? He feeds the 5000. That's the miracle. The disciples were part of it. They set the people down, they picked up the stuff. They had it themselves.

They were right there. This is a very short period of time later. Matthew 16 comes a little bit later than Matthew 14. So, we get down to verse 5 of Matthew 16. And the disciples came to the other side of the sea. Now watch. But they had forgotten to bring any bread.

Uh-oh. Here they are now on the other side of the sea of Galilee and they had forgotten to bring any other bread. And Jesus said to them, now watch. This is going to be spiritual. Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Okay. What's the leaven of the Pharisee and the Sadducees? Religiosity. He said, remember a little leaven leavens the whole lump? And he said, you better watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. He also says in other spots, they have stolen the kingdom of God.

They have used their religion as a substitute for the kingdom of God and for God's grace. He said, you need to beware of the leaven of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. And they began to discuss among themselves saying, he said that because we didn't bring any bread.

Really? That's what they got. These are the disciples. I told you to bring the bread. We have to have bread. Now he's mad.

Wow. Jesus aware of this said, you men of little faith, why do you discuss among yourselves that you have no bread? Do you not yet understand and remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets filled you picked up? Or the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets full you picked up? How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning the leaven of the, he said, concerning bread. I spoke to you concerning the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He says, then they understood that he did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the leaven of the teachings.

This is really sad. We have no bread. OK, we have no bread. Here's Jesus. I'm right here. And we have no bread. I'm right here.

I don't get the connection. I fed five thousand. Twenty thousand. I fed four thousand.

You distributed it. You got the leftovers. I'm right here.

I don't have any bread. We kind of do the same thing. We get so preoccupied with things. It becomes so important to us. See, in the beginning of this whole miracle, we knew that the problem was, what are we going to do with all of these? It's impossible.

Well, I want you to think about it from another point of view. What all of these do you use? Now, you don't have a problem with bread, but what all of these do you use? For example, what am I going to do with all these bills? What am I going to do with all these bills? I've got to figure it out.

Maybe. Why not trust the Lord? What am I going to do with all these treatments? What am I going to do? I don't know. Why don't you trust the Lord? You see, what am I going to do with all these?

I've been in a lot of marriage counseling situations, and people will say, what are we going to do with all these problems that we have? What do you mean? It's impossible. We can't ever make it work. Okay, what about trusting Him?

Never thought of that. I've tried to think it through on my own. We all have our all of these. This is an all of these.

That's an all of these. And we say it's an impossible situation. But for Him, there's nothing that's impossible. That's the point. That's what He's doing here. That's why this miracle has such magnitude.

There's nothing impossible with me. And right after the miracle, the disciples go back into the same thing they were into before, just like we do. That's what this proves to us. You see, that's what God is trying to tell us there. There's several points here. The first one is all of our needs, our greatest needs are always spiritual.

Please understand it. Our greatest needs are always spiritual. Remember the nobleman's son? And he was healed from a distance. And all he wanted, he had foxhole faith, all he wanted was Jesus to heal his son.

That sounds great, but it's only temporal. What if he healed his son and his son lived 70 more years? And then his son died without Christ. Where does his son spend eternity?

Now, that's a problem. You see, separated from God forever. That's why that miracle was so important because not only did the nobleman believe, but he said his whole household believed. Jesus always, always has a spiritual goal in mind for every time he intervenes in our life, even in a miraculous way. That's what's important, not the temporal.

But we're just like they were. Hey, look, I know I was hungry. He fed me.

I know I had, I know they said that it clearly looked to them like it was cancerous, but the test showed it was benign. I'm good. Why do you think these things happen in your life? Christ is calling you. You're in a crisis. Christ is calling you. There has to be a spiritual aspect to your life that you don't have. You either have to come to Christ in saving faith or you have to grow closer to Christ. That's why he intervenes in our lives in these temporal matters. Secondly, we are inadequate to meet people's greatest need without the Lord.

All of us are just like Philip. If the Lord doesn't do it, it's not getting done. You see, I felt terrible in my 20s because I felt inadequate. Now I realize that Jesus would be saying to me, listen carefully, Bill. You are inadequate. You see, that's the point of ministry. Inadequate people doing things through God's power, giving God the glory.

That's ministry. Thirdly, Christ has the capacity to meet all the needs of our life, both temporal and spiritual. He's in control of every situation. He has no limit of resources. And a lot of times he meets our needs with abundance. He doesn't meet us just with enough. He meets us with a sense of abundance. If we give to the Lord what we can give to the Lord, there's an abundance for us. Christians don't even understand it when it comes even to basic giving, just giving. Oh, no, no.

I don't know. Now I get it. There's a lot of charlatans out there trying to do that. But it's not always a good thing to hear from someone who's visiting our church that the thing they like most about it.

The thing I like most about fellowship is you never talk about money. And you know what you're telling me? Because I want more. And I don't want to give you any. I mean, that's what you're saying. Now, I know people do it in a bad way. But hey, I don't talk about it. That's between you and the Lord. I get that.

But think of this. Look what he says in 2 Corinthians 9. He says, given will be given to you.

Well, actually, go with me. First go with me to 2 Corinthians 9. I want you to read it with me. 2 Corinthians 9, 6, then I'll say what I was going to say about that. 2 Corinthians 9, 6, Paul writes, and he says this. Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. He who sows bountifully will reap bountifully. There's the principle. What he says is if you don't give much, you won't get much. It's just that simple. That's what the Word of God says. Now watch. Each one must do just as he purposed in his heart.

It's completely up to you. You can't make people do this. If you try to make anybody, if you try to extract money from anybody for the cause of Jesus Christ, they give no value in it. There's no value. God doesn't need money. You see, it's a resource he might use, but he doesn't need it. He said, how do you want to give in your heart? Each one must do just as he purposed in his heart, not grudgingly nor under compulsion. God loves a cheerful, hilarious giver, and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance in everything you do.

What do you mean? Look, you give to me, I give more to you. That's a principle. You don't want to give, don't.

But if you do, you'll get more from me. Jesus said this in Luke 6. Give and it will be given to you, pressed down, shaken together, and he said, running over, for by the standard of measure that you give, it will be given to you in return. That's Jesus' words. You see, it's like you can't lose situation. God says, I got this, but for us, no. I like the idea that I can have more. Well, not really, because you could have more because God just told you how to get more, but you don't want to do that because you want to keep what you have.

You see, that's how we end up falling into those kind of things. God says, I'll meet your needs with abundance. That's what grace is. And if you are inadequate, you're in a really good spot, God can use you. If you're inadequate, you're in a perfect spot, God can use you. And frankly, I find it tiring to hear Christians always tell me that they'd like to do more for the Lord, but they're inadequate.

I'd love to, but I really can't. If you're a child of God, you have the adequacy. You give him your inadequacy, and he'll give you ministry.

It's just the way this thing works, and it's hard for us. A.W. Pink said, God uses inadequate people who give what they have to him, and then he does great things for his glory. Those words are backed up by that miracle.

They changed my life, and they should change yours. Let's pray. Father, sometimes I think that we use our inadequacy just as an escape to serve ourselves rather than to serve you. It's a shame, Father, because then we miss out on the blessing. I pray that we're all challenged. Every one of us in this room have, metaphorically, five barley loaves and two fish.

Every one of us. When God took those and you took them and fed 20,000-plus people, you could take ours and have us make a difference in the world in which we live. But, Father, we have to give it to you, just like the little boy did. That's my prayer for us, Father. Examine our own hearts, and willingly and happily give our inadequacy to you as we step back and allow you to do great things through us.

In Jesus' name, amen. You can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is, as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word. .