Trusting God in All Things!

I hope your new year is off to a great start! We survived Christmas and New Year’s as we journeyed another time around the sun! I am hoping the 2020’s will be our best decade yet!

Why are we going to be gathering on Sunday’s in the 2020’s? (Pause)....That’s right! The same reason we have gathered on Sunday’s since August 14th, 1880!

We gather to worship and exalt the name of Jesus Christ, our risen King. Today, provides us another opportunity to fall more in love with Jesus Christ as we seek to follow Him as His disciples.

If you are visiting with us this morning, we want you to who we are here at Ephesus...

We are all one family of faith: “giving our all to love God, love people, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples in our generation.”

That is our mission, our purpose, why we exist as a church.

We have a connect card in the pew in front of you. I invite you to take one and fill it out! If you have prayer needs, you can let us know about those as well.

I promise, our prayer team will lift you up your request confidentially. You can place those cards in the offering plate when it comes around.

Church, I pray this year will be a year of abundant life for our entire church family!

Who’s Your One?

Scripture Memory

Colossians 1:15–16 ESV

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

Opening Scripture Reading

Exodus 16:1–36 ESV

1 They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. 2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” 4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” 6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” 8 And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.” 9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’ ” 10 And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. 11 And the Lord said to Moses, 12 “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’ ” 13 In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. 14 And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. 15 When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. 16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’ ” 17 And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. 18 But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. 19 And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” 20 But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. 21 Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted. 22 On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, 23 he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’ ” 24 So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. 25 Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. 26 Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.” 27 On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. 28 And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? 29 See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day. 31 Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. 32 Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’ ” 33 And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” 34 As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. 35 The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. 36 (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)

Prayer of Confession and Invocation

Introduction

Last week, we discussed our need to move out of survival mode; to move from surviving to thriving!

Today, we are going to begin our first new sermon series of 2020, THRIVE 2020! We Were Created To Do More Than Survive!

We’ll be creating a new acronym for our church family to get a practical handle on how to move from surviving to thriving at God’s house and your house.

Each week we will work with a different letter of the word THRIVE.

This week we begin with the letter “T.”

T stands for “Trusting God In All Things!”

This is a sermon about trusting God, about faith in God!

Opening Illustration

I’m sure you’ve heard the story which Christian apologists have told for years involving the French philosopher and playwright Voltaire (1694-1778). Voltaire was a prolific French Enlightenment writer who published over 20,000 letters and over 2,000 books and pamphlets in his 84 years on earth.

Voltaire’s hatred for the Bible and Christianity was unmatched. He believed he was “living in the twilight years of Christianity.”1 He even ended every letter to his friends with “Ecrasez l’infame” (crush the infamy — the Christian religion).2

In his voluminous writings against Christianity and the Bible, he predicted in 1776,

“One hundred years from my day, there will not be a Bible on earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity-seeker.”3

As history confirms, within fifty years after his death, in an ironic twist of Providence, (Yes, this confirms that God has a sense of humor) the very house in which he once lived and wrote was used by the Evangelical Society of Geneva as a storehouse for Bibles and Gospel tracts.

And get this: the printing presses he used to print his irreverent works was used to print Bibles by the thousands. Bible trumps Philosophy every day!

Have you heard of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche?

He was a German philosopher whose works became associated with Fascism and Nazism in the 20th Century. He was another godless man who had no trust or faith in God or the Bible. He died in 1900 after suffering from mental illness.

He was greatly influenced by another German philosopher named Arthur Schopenhauer. Do you know what his philosophy was? Well toward the end of his life he said he believed life was “a curse of endless cravings and endless unhappiness.”

How would you like to have that philosophy for the way you live your life?

All three of these men were philosophers.

All three of them were godless men.

All three of them were antagonistic and hateful toward the Bible and Christianity.

All three of them died apart from any faith or trust in Jesus Christ!

Let me share one more philosopher with you. This philosopher got it right!

Blaise Pascal.

Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, philosopher, and theologian.

Pascal saw life differently, he said,

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.”

Pascal understood that we were created for more than this world can offer. This world can provide us with a temporary existence. It can meet our needs for survival. But apart from Jesus Christ, we will never achieve the greatness we were created for.

Apart from Christ, we can only survive for a short time then comes death! But with Christ, we can not only survive, but we can thrive and we can do that for eternity.

Last week we talked about

John 10:10 ESV

10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Jesus gives us an abundant life unlike anything we can imagine. He wants us to thrive! But, the first step, if you will, of thriving is trusting. We have to learn to believe God! We have to trust Him! We have to have complete faith that what He says, He means!

Three of the four philosophers, all of whom were looking at the same world, the same history, the same truths, but their calculations were wrong because they left God out of the equation.

Today, we are going to look at a familiar passage of one of the most famous miracles Jesus provided to bolster our faith. The Feeding of the Great Multitude!

Find your way in your Bibles to John chapter 6. We will begin reading in verse 1.

John 6:1–7 ESV

1 After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. 2 And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. 3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.”

Let’s stop reading there for a moment. In this portion of our passage we find our first truth.

1. We Can Trust That No Problem is Too Big For God To Solve!

If you don’t believe that this morning, then you are living life simply surviving. You surely are not thriving!

The scene is the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee during the spring time, just before the Jewish Passover. Interestingly, of the three Passovers in John’s Gospel this is the only one where Jesus did not go to Jerusalem.

He stayed in Galilee, specifically in these mountains on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Golan Heights region today.

While sitting on the hillside with His disciples, Jesus saw the large crowd coming toward Him. The crowd had been following Jesus for a while now. As John tells us in verse 2, they are following because “they saw the signs that (Jesus) was doing on the sick.”

They are drawn to Jesus, not because of His glory and majesty, but because of His miracles, as they are mired in confusion and ignorance.

Mark tells us in Mk 6:34

Mark 6:34 ESV

34 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.

Matthew says in Mt 14:14

Matthew 14:14 ESV

14 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

When Jesus saw these people, He had compassion on them. He realized they had no Shepherd. They were mired in ignorance and confusion. So He began to teach them and heal them.

After teaching and healing for hours, everyone started to recognize a problem.

Here is the problem: There is a great multitude of people. (5000 men plus there families). Some estimate that there could have been as many as 20,000 people on this mountainside.

It is getting late. There is no food out there. They couldn’t run to McDonald’s. There is no Chick-Fila or Bojangles. Nothing. There is no food for these people and they aren’t making it back to their homes tonight.

So Jesus asks Philip a question

John 6:5 ESV

5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”

Philip how are we going to feed these people? During the wilderness wanderings of Israel, Moses asked God a similar question:

Numbers 11:13 ESV

13 Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me and say, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’

There are many parallels between the manna and quail of God to this event in the Life of Jesus.

Listen, God doesn’t panic, God plans! In fact, He planned this event out from eternity past!

John 6:6 ESV

6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.

Jesus was not wanting to learn anything about Philip. He know the heart’s of all men and women. He knew what was in Philip’s heart. He knows what’s in your heart.

What He wanted was for Philip to learn something about God, and I want you to learn something about God—and that is this: that we can trust that there’s no problem too big for God to solve.

Old Philip, if he lived in our day, would have whipped out his iPhone or android device and quickly calculated the cost of feeding that many people.

He looked at Jesus and said, “Lord, if we were to feed everyone here even a little bread, it would take about 8 months wages to meet that need.

John 6:7 ESV

7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.”

I love what Adrian Rogers said when preaching this passage about 20 years ago.

Philip “didn’t do anything that a good red-blooded atheist could not have done that day. I mean, he calculated, but he did not come to the right conclusion, because he left something out of the equation. What did he leave out? God—God.”4

Listen, there are three attitudes in every church.

First, there are those who are driven by emotion. If they feel like they ought to do something, they do it whether it is what God wants or not.

Second, there are those who are driven by rational thought. They determine in their minds if something can or can’t be done before they even attempt to do something for God. Leaving God out of the equation like Philip did.

Then there are those who walk by faith. They listen to God as they pray and read His word. They hear what God wants to do and then they go and do it, no matter their feelings or fears, and no matter whether they think it can be done or not. No matter the cost, If God want it done we are going to do it!

Some of us live our lives like God isn’t part of the equation. Like He is on vacation or something. If you are living by your own emotions or rational thought apart from faith, repent and believe this.

Say it with me.

We Can Trust that No Problem is Too Big for God to Solve. And God’s people said, “Amen!”

Think of your biggest problem. Get a clear picture of it in your mind. Now multiply it by 100 times the difficulty. Now double that! Is that too big for God to solve?

No! There is no problem too big for our God to solve if we trust Him with that problem. He may not solve it the way we want it solved, but He will solve it if we trust Him.

2. We Can Trust That No Person Is Too Insignificant For God To Use!

No remember that Jesus already knew what He was going to do, but what did He do here with this problem?

John 6:8–9 ESV

8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?”

Andrew said, Lord here is a young boy with five barley loaves of bread and two little fish, don’t think Crappie or Brim here guys. Think Sardines! I mean this was a really insignificant little lunch from one of the youngest ones in their midst.

Barley was the common food of the poor, less expensive than wheat with a much less desirable taste. It was a staple of the food ate by the poor in Roman times.

Not much of a recipe for one of the most memorable meals in history. But I want you to remember that there is no problem to big for God to solve and there is no person too insignificant for God to use.

This little boy trust Jesus with his meager lunch and Jesus does the seemingly impossible with it! The little boy gave everything he had over to Christ. Have you done that with your time, your talents, and your treasure. Understand that everything you have is His, it’s not yours. We are simply stewards.

John 6:10–11 ESV

10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. 11 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.

Jesus had the people sit in the grassy place, then before all the people He took this seemingly insignificant meal from this insignificant little boy who trusted Christ with all that he had into His magnificent hands and blessed it!

He probably uttered a traditions Jewish prayer of thanksgiving, something simple,

“Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”5

What was entrusted into His hands, though meager and insignificant, was transformed and multiplied into a meal that satisfied the hunger of nearly 20,000 people on that hillside by the Sea of Galilee. And there were leftovers! Twelve baskets full so that the twelve disciples who carried them might learn a few important lessons about who Jesus was!

John 6:12–13 ESV

12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

This whole event can not be explained apart from God miraculously intervening. God delights in taking insignificant things and people and using them for His glory. I have told you before that God can take ordinary people and do extraordinary things with and through them and then He gets all the glory!

Do you believe that God can use you? Of course he can! Don’t insult God by saying God can’t possibly use you.

No matter how small or insignificant you may feel, no matter how insignificant you feel your gifting may be, He can still use you! Thinking He can’t is the thought of someone merely surviving life.

Knowing He can and will use you and releasing yourself to Him to be used is the thinking of those who will do more than survive, why they will Thrive.

This young boy will be remembered forever for being the young man who trusted God with all he had allowing God to work a miracle for all the people to see.

We can trust that no problem is too big for God to solve.

We can trust that no person is too insignificant for God to use.

and...

3. We can Trust That Jesus Is Greater Than Anything We Can Imagine!

John doesn’t just record this so that we can see a miracle that Jesus performed. He wants us to see that what Jesus does is shown to reveal who He is - the giver of eternal life, the Messiah, the Prophet who is to come, the King of kings!

John 6:14 ESV

14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”

John 6:15 ESV

15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

This was brings back memories of the Old Testament promises to the peoples minds. He is doing the work of Moses and Elisha!

Even Deut 18 promised something they surely remembered.

Deuteronomy 18:15–18 ESV

15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— 16 just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ 17 And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

Isaiah picked up on this and said,

Isaiah 54:13 ESV

13 All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.

Later in this same passage Jesus would say to this people and to us....

John 6:32–33 ESV

32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

John 6:35 ESV

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

John 6:45 ESV

45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—

John 6:44 ESV

44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

John 6:47–48 ESV

47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life.

Do you not see? Can you not hear?

Jesus is greater than anything we can imagine!

If you can’t trust Jesus, then you cannot trust anything!

But if you trust in Jesus, He can move your life from simply surviving to thriving for eternity.

Do you want to thrive? You can’t thrive without Jesus!

This journey you are on leads to making many decisions about what steps you must take next.

We have included a few possible next steps for you on the last page of the bulletin. I would encourage you to prayerfully look over those next steps right now and respond as the Holy Spirit leads you during our song of response to God!

Hymn No. 315, Room at the Cross.

Would you pray with me first though?

Bibliography

1 Website accessed on 1/3/2020, https://crossexamined.org/voltaires-prediction-home-and-the-bible-society-truth-or-myth-further-evidence-of-verification/

2 Ibid.,

3 Ibid.,

4. Adrian Rogers, “Heaven’s Bread for Earth’s Hunger,” in Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust, 2017), Jn 6:1–68.

5. Kostenberger, Andreas J., John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. (Baker Academic 2004), p. 209.

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