You Give Them Something to Eat 1984

I'd like to begin by reading one verse from Matthew chapter 14, verse 15. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, This is a lonely place. The day is now over.

Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves. Send them away. Lord, you've got thousands of people on your hands and they're running out of food.

Send them away. We jump over to the next chapter, chapter 15 of Matthew, verse 21. And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.

And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David. My daughter is severely possessed by a demon. But he did not answer her a word.

And his disciples came and begged him, saying, Send her away, for she's crying after us. Send her away. She's making a scene.

She's embarrassing us, Lord. Send her away. Great, great need.

So great that we just don't feel we have anything to help. The only logical, sensible thing to do is send them away. I think of a man I see almost every day in the summertime.

And I know this man is hurting. And I know that this man's despair is a lie from Satan. And I'm sure of what he needs.

He needs the one hope there is in this world. Every time I see this man, I say, Hi, how are you doing? He says, Okay, how are you doing? And I go on my way and leave him sit there in his despair. And the reason I do this is because even though I know what he needs, I say to myself, I just don't have the words for him.

I can't think of anything that I could say that's going to get through this man's heart. And so rather than blunder, make a mistake, do something that's going to be embarrassing for both of us, I say, Hi, how are you doing? What am I doing? I'm doing the same thing to this man that the multitudes wanted Jesus to do. What the disciples wanted Jesus to do with the multitudes, and what the disciples wanted Jesus to do with that Canaanite woman, I'm sending him away.

I mean, he's too much for me. So keep a distance. And really there's not a person among us here, not one of us, who doesn't deal with such people every day in our ordinary round.

We know what they need. We know that they're hungry for that living bread, which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, the bread which we say sustains us every day. But we only have five loaves and two fish.

Not enough for them. We just don't have what it takes. And we don't want to stick our neck out and stand there like some kind of dummy.

Make a mistake, be a fool. And so we say, How are you doing? How's it going? And then on Sundays, we come together and we praise God. And we thank him for his goodness to us, and we marvel at the miracles which have been wrought in our own lives.

And we mean it. And our intentions are good, service ends, we go out, and we pass them again, and we do the same thing, we send them away. When it was evening, the disciples came and said to Jesus, This is a lonely place, the day is now over.

Send the crowds away to go into the villages to buy food for themselves. Jesus said, They need not go away. You give them something to eat.

They said to him, We have only five loaves here and two fish. He said, Bring them here to me. And he said, He ordered the crowds to sit down in the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke, and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, and they all ate and were satisfied.

They need not go away. You give them something to eat. But Lord, we have only five loaves here and two fish.

Bring them to me. And so the Lord says to me, This man you've been passing a hundred times, don't send him away anymore. You give him something to eat.

And I say, But Lord, I only have two little crumbs here. He says, Give them to me. And he takes the two little crumbs and lifts them up to the Father and gives thanks and blesses and breaks.

Now we have two loaves, and it's not magic. It's the kingdom of God. And then he says, Now feed him.

And you say, That's all very nice. That's all very nice to say in a sermon. But I've tried it.

I've asked God for living bread for that hungry one, that sick one, that needy one over there. And then I've gone and I've talked to that person, and nothing happened. You say that I've been sending these people away.

Well, you know what? I think God's been sending me away. I've gone to Him for living bread for the hungry, and nothing happened. You've gone to God, the Father, for living bread, and nothing happened.

Luke chapter 11, verse 5. Jesus said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, Do not bother me. The door is now shut.

My children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though, he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his opportunity, because he's a path, he will rise and give him whatever he needs.

So if this man had become discouraged when his friend said, Don't bother me, and said, Okay, if that's the way you feel about it, I'm never going to ask you for anything again, he would have gone home without the ant. Instead of this, he stays right there. And he says, I know your door is shut, and I know your children are with you in bed, but I also know that you have bread in there, and I know that I have a hungry friend sitting at my empty table, and I'm not going to let you get a wink of sleep until you lend me three loaves.

And he gets the bread. There is no such thing as going to the Father for bread and getting a stone or getting nothing. If we go to Him and keep going to Him and don't give up in the first five minutes and make clear to Him and to ourselves that we mean what we're asking for, we'll get the bread.

And if we ask the Father for the Spirit so that we can have a living word for those who are hungering and thirsting, He will give us the Spirit and the word that we speak will become bread in our mouths. Now the ones who had the most wonderful time that evening when Jesus fed 5,000 men and their wives and their children and their mothers and their sisters with five loaves and two fish, the ones who had the great time that night were the disciples. You know, they were going to Jesus for bread, going out to the multitudes and passing it out, back to Jesus again for more iron loaves of bread, back to the multitudes again.

This is their first lesson on how to feed the sheep. Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Feed my sheep. Don't you remember? I showed you how to do it.

This evening is the sign that shows how these men are going to be spending the rest of their days. They're going to be spending the rest of their lives going to Jesus for bread, passing out more bread, out to the people for more. And now the time has surely come when the Lord is showing us that this is precisely what he's calling us to do as a congregation.

He's saying to us, don't be sending them away. Feed them. This man at the job, this woman who lives across the street, this friend who comes in to see you and this relative who's on the verge of suicide.

Don't send them away. Give them living bread. To give them living bread means that we're going to give them three things.

First of all, we're going to give them a living word from God. Second, we're going to give them a living sign of the kingdom of God. And third, we're going to give them a taste of the living Jesus.

First, we're going to give them a living word from God, a word of encouragement, a word of hope, perhaps a call to repentance, but something that will be more than just some dead religious platitude, something we wrench out of scriptures and jam down their throats and they get indigestion from it, but something that's alive from scripture or as the spirit gives it, but something that's alive. This verse, we all know it, but I'm going to read it again from Isaiah 50, verse 4. It's a verse that we ought to memorize, we ought to burn into our hearts because it's given to every follower of Jesus. The Lord has given me the tongue of those who are taught that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary.

Morning by morning he awakens, he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. And so the people said, what did this man get? I mean, this is the son of Mary and Joseph, he's never been to school, where did he get this wisdom? And his answer is, the Lord God, my Father has given me the tongue of those who are taught that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. Morning by morning he awakens, he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.

Peter and John go up to the temple to heal a man lame from birth. They're arrested after they preach the next morning they're dragged out of prison and taken before the council, the leadership. And these men say, where did these men get this wisdom? Where did they get this boldness and this outwitness? The Lord God has given us the tongue of those who are taught that we might know how to sustain with a word him that is weary.

Morning by morning he awakens, he awakens our ear to hear as those who are taught. And now this applies to us. We are the ones, it's our turn.

It's our turn to be taught. Morning by morning he awakens our ear so that we can hear. Gives us a word.

And this word that we speak isn't going to come back empty. Skipping over to Isaiah 55, 10. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and return not thither but water the earth making it spring forth and sprout giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater.

So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth it shall not return to me empty it shall accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing to which I send it. So you go to this person asking for a word from God and you open your mouth and he fills it. And that word that you speak becomes living bread.

Oh but what if I make a mistake? Even if you make a mistake if you do it in good faith if you're not trying to manipulate somebody or push them around or make them bend them to your point of view or in some way use them and dominate them if you're seriously just giving them the word free from your own ego even if you make a mistake God will turn that into living bread. Then we're going to give them a sign of a kingdom not to be afraid to give people a sign that God in fact not to be afraid to offer people healing and some evidence that he's really there for them. From Matthew chapter 10 verse 6 Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and preach as you go saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand heal the sick, raise the dead cleanse leopards, cast out demons you receive without pay, give without pay.

So when you're praying for somebody who's sick not to be afraid to lay your hand on them with their permission not to violate them not to push them around but with their permission and ask for their healing for somebody who's full of despair to offer them in the name of the Lord that somehow God will open the door. I've mentioned before about Bill Perch Bill Perch was a member of the flock back in Nova Scotia years ago and people here have mentioned he visited here once or twice in the early 60's but one night the message came that one of us in that flock was to be going overseas in the name of Jesus and after the service Bill came up and he said I'm the one and he was principal of a school outside the town and within two years he was in Tanzania and one day some Maasai tribesman came to him and stood around him and said if your God is real please tell him how desperately we need rain and Bill in many ways was very, and still is has all kinds of guts and in other ways is very timid and Bill just felt that his back was to the wall and he had no choice but to pray for rain so he prayed for rain and to his own astonishment the sky grew dark and it thundered and lightning and down came the rain and Bill was really pleased with him and they sent him back to Canada and he went back out to Tanzania on his own and worked for the government for a while he ended up principal of a school in Elliott Lake, Ontario where they have the uranium mines and one time we tried to find him up there but he was in India he's like a character from a Joseph Conrad novel really if you saw him he was something else he was in Halifax Harbour and Bill said you know I quit that job in Elliott Lake because it was getting too soft and too secure too easy I was rotting but now I need a job and he says I send out resumes and nothing happens and I says well Bill we'll pray and you'll get a job he says wait a minute we'll pray and you'll get a job and then these people came to me and said pray for our sick children and he says that's going too far I says to myself come on Bill and it was like the Lord says to me come on yourself you know we're all we're afraid to stick our necks out we can see that he should have taken a chance taken a risk we're exactly the same way we're not living foolish but to offer people evidence of God's love God won't let us down and if they're overwhelmed with guilt tell them what happened on the cross offer them total forgiveness by the blood of the lamb nothing less than this give them a sign of the kingdom and finally to give them living bread is to give them a taste of the living Jesus Jesus says in John 6.51 I am the living bread of the life of the world any man eat of this bread he shall live forever and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh in Revelation he says I die and behold I am alive forevermore see but the picture most people have in their minds of Jesus is that of a man who lived once upon a time in a far away place maybe and what we need to do Jesus who rose from the dead will manifest himself with that I will not leave you desolate I will come to you if they will open their hearts he'll manifest himself to them as the living one and if there's anybody in here who's never experienced that he'll do it for you when it was evening the disciples came to him and said this is a lonely place the day is now over send the crowds away Jesus said they need not go away you give them something to eat they said to him we have only five loaves here and two fish he said bring them here to me you give them something to eat they don't have to go away don't send them away you feed them now if we will take this as a word from the Lord to us today and if we will resolve to feed them the Lord will take our five loaves and two fish or our two little crumbs and he will multiply them into more than enough and we will give them living bread a living word from God a living sign of the kingdom a taste of the living Jesus and that word will not come back