Feeding the Multitude
That’s the message. The message is this insufficient becomes sufficient. In the hands of Jesus Christ, the little loaves suddenly become superabundant plenty. The little loaves become a feast, and an entire city is being fed. Jesus Christ says, “My power can come through you.” There’s a place where he says, “… if you have faith … you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ … Nothing will be impossible for you.”
How can Jesus talk like that? What he’s saying is: “It’s possible through me to have a power available to you that would enable you to deal with obstacles so far beyond your native ability as to move this mountain is beyond the strength of your right arm.” Jesus’ purpose here is to teach Philip and his disciples about this. He’s a master teacher.
Incomparably great. What’s really neat about it is in the Greek it’s huperballo megethos dunamis. You can almost hear it in English, can’t you? Because we have actually English versions of all those words. Huperballo megethos dunamis. The “hyperballistic megatonic dynamite” of God. That’s what Paul says. He’s heaping it on top. It’s incomparably great.
Think about this. A nuclear warhead is a thousandth of the power of a hurricane, and yet the Bible says the Lord sits enthroned over the hurricane. Psalm 29. A hurricane is just a billionth of the power of just an eruption on the surface of the sun, which is just a small star, and the Bible says God scatters stars like sand. Then, of course, it’s just a small sun. It’s nothing compared to the power of a supernova, a millionth of the power of a supernova, and the supernova is just one of the infinite number of points of power in the universe.
Jesus Christ says it doesn’t matter how insufficient you are, the gospel is: “Put whatever you have into my hands and my power will come through you like a freight train, superabundantly, more than you can imagine, destroying the power of death at work in your life.” The power of God. The power of Jesus. “Who is this,” they’re always saying, “that the wind and the seas obey him?”
We’re told in verse 6 very clearly he knew what he was going to do, but he asks Philip a question. Hey, come on, Jesus. What is he doing? He is trying to get us involved. In Ephesians 1 in that place I’ve mentioned, Paul prays and says, “Oh that you would know his power,”
Have any of you ever tried to sing and suddenly found yourself in front of somebody with an incredible voice, and have you ever noticed they sing through you? Have you ever noticed they sing through your voice? You’re singing, but you have never sounded so good.
Jesus will always do that, because until you know your powerlessness, you can’t be a channel of his power. That’s a rule. Now friends, if that sounds cruel, just recognize that it works on so many other levels.
For example, everybody who has ever been in a 12-step program knows what the first step is. What’s the first step? “You are powerless over your problem.” Thousands and millions of people have been helped by that one first step.
First step. Why? Because until you see your powerlessness you can’t tap into any other power. Period.
Now everybody does not need a 12-step group. That’s for addictions and other things like that, but the Bible says that at the most fundamental level it does work for everybody. If you believe you are competent to run your own life, you haven’t gotten past the first step. You have not yet seen your powerlessness, and you cannot be a channel of his power. Some of you have gotten off to a good start in life, especially if you’re young. If you had the right education, the right connections, the right kind of talent. Things look great.
At the beginning, you’re off and running and you say, “Hey, I think I have what it takes. I have the power to master my own life.” But you’re only thinking professionally. As time goes on … It may have already happened to some of you, even those of you who have made it professionally. A lot of you even sense your powerlessness there. But those of you who feel like you’ve made it professionally, as time goes on you will find that your relationships begin to overwhelm you.
Your marriage can’t be managed on your own power. Your children can’t be managed on your own power. You can’t manage them. Or the loneliness you feel because you don’t have family and children can’t be managed on your own power. Eventually as time goes on, you will growingly feel powerless over your emotional life, even if you’re professionally wonderful, and there aren’t that many who are.
But let’s go deeper. Eventually, at times in which the busyness in your life begins to diminish, you’ll start to realize you’re not just powerless over your emotional life but over your spiritual life. Every so often, and more as you get older, you eventually stop and say, “What am I doing everything for? What am I living for? What is the purpose of it all? How do I even know right from wrong?”
But let’s go deeper. Eventually, at times in which the busyness in your life begins to diminish, you’ll start to realize you’re not just powerless over your emotional life but over your spiritual life. Every so often, and more as you get older, you eventually stop and say, “What am I doing everything for? What am I living for? What is the purpose of it all? How do I even know right from wrong?”
And you know what you do in most cases? You go back and get busy so you don’t have to think about those anymore. Because what you’re really admitting at that point is you’re saying, “I have no idea what I’m doing in purpose and meaning in life. I’m spiritually powerless.” If you stop living superficially, if you stop living on the surface of your life, if you start to think and develop any kind of wisdom at all, you will begin to see your powerlessness.
Some of you, if you’re feeling like that now, don’t despair. It’s Jesus asking you these hard questions. It’s Jesus bringing you there, because there’s no other way you’ll ever become a channel of his power. Jesus is like a surgeon. Remember that. And you have to move on. You can’t stop here if you just feel powerless. You can’t.
No surgeon cuts people just to make a hole in them. He doesn’t say, “Oh, my job is done. There’s a hole there now.” Jesus doesn’t do that. He cuts you so carefully, so tenderly, because he wants to get something healed. That’s why you have to move on to the second step. The first step is you have to see your powerlessness or there’s no way you can be a channel. The second step is a scary one.
Here’s this little kid out there in the middle of the desert with 15,000 famished people. At least he had lunch. And Jesus took it.
The principle is he lost control over his lunch. He lost it. It was gone. The only thing he had. And because he lost it, because he gave it up, he ended up eating far more of it than he ever could have possibly had.
He gave it up. He lost control. He put it in Jesus’ hands. Think about that. You say, What does that mean concretely? It sounds scary and it sounds wonderful, just like the gospel.
First of all it means to obey, but to obey with the knowledge of his power. I don’t know where that little boy was, but here’s what you have to do: When you obey, you’re showing you believe he is a God of power. You’re treating him as a God of power.
“Hey I’d like to obey the will of God in my life, but I don’t know. Should I stay in New York? Should I take this job? Should I marry this person?” Listen. What God is saying is, “For a minute will you stop thinking about the part of my will you don’t know, and will you start looking at the part of my will you do know?
I intellectually know there must be some great power running the universe, but when it comes right down to practically, I can’t obey.” What that means is, “I refuse to treat him as a God of power.”
Unless you’re obeying what you know, you are not putting yourself in his hands. You’re hedging your bets. You’re refusing to shift the center of your gravity from yourself to him, aren’t you? You can’t talk about seeing God’s power in your life. You’re not going to see anybody transform through your life unless you’re willing to obey what you know.
Secondly, to put yourself in God’s hands means to realize that God’s power is for you. Paul says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” This is a hard one. This is a very hard one. In fact, in some of your cases today, the reason you are not experiencing God’s power in your life is because you won’t see his power is for you.
Paul wanted God to take out of his life, and God wouldn’t do it. Paul was ranting and raving and saying, “Why don’t I have the power of God in my life to heal me?” God came to him and said, “… my power is made perfect in weakness.” What did he mean?
“Well, what good is all that money in the bank for my college education if I can’t go out and buy the records and the CDs I want and go to the movies? What good is that?” You look at your kid and say, “Will you trust me? My power is for you. I know what’s best for you. If you trust me, my power will be made perfect in you.”
isn’t it possible that right now the reason God’s power is not working in your life is because you are saying, “Yeah I know, you’re supposed to be for me, but I don’t see it that way. Why isn’t this happening? Why isn’t that happening?” Because you refuse to count God’s power as for you, you don’t experience it. My friends, he is going to make his power perfect in you if you trust him.
Some of you are not experiencing God’s power because you won’t obey him. Some of you are not experiencing God’s power because you won’t see it’s for you.
Some of you say, “Well how do I know if God is for me? I don’t know that.” Here’s why. The last verse says, “ ‘… this is the Prophet …’ ” Jesus was trying to get them to see he was the Prophet.
When Moses was on the mountain and the people were trying to listen to God speaking to them and they said, “We’re too powerless. We’re too weak. We’re too sinful. We can’t stay near God,” Moses went up the mountain and talked to God and came down and brought the message. Moses was the mediator. Moses was the bridge between the power of God and the powerlessness of the human beings down here.
Moses said, “Some day a real Prophet will show up,” and Jesus is the one. Jesus is the Mediator. Jesus is the one who says, “If you receive me as Savior I can be the bridge between the powerlessness you feel and the power of God. You see him as being perfect and you see yourself as being flawed. That’s right, but I’ve paid for that on the cross. I’m the man in the middle. I’m the mediator. I’m the bridge between his power and your powerlessness. I have paid for it. I have set it all up.”