Food in Matthew 14:15

The Gospel of Matthew, first of all, chapter 14 and verse 13. This is what prompted me to try to give a little word. When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart.

And when the people had heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities. And Jesus went forth and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick. And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past.

Send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves vittles. But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart, give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves and two fishes.

He says, Bring them hither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed and break, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat and were filled.

And they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. Now chapter 15, verse 1. Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread. But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? Verse 8, he said, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and on with me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Now farther down the chapter, verse 22. And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David.

My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil or a demon. But he answered her not a word. And this his disciples.

And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for she grieveth, for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me.

But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs. And she said, True, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the master's table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith.

Be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. Now we know that God will bless the reading of his word.

We all know lately that this miracle that we read of, the feeding of the 5,000, is recorded in all four Gospels. So it's something that must be very important in all the Gospels. It's a little different.

Maybe, for instance, in the Gospel of John, John tells us that there was much grass in the place. And John is a man, of course, who's occupied with the sheep. And the one thing, if a shepherd wants his sheep to have much to feed on.

When we come to the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of the servant, we're told that the grass was green. And it seems that the servant was thinking of the comfort of those sheep in the green grass. However it is, we know that there was lots of food for God's people or for these people.

Maybe it was natural food, but we want to apply it, of course, in view of the meeting here. So we have the feeding of all these multitude. The disciples said, send the multitude away.

But the Lord said, no, you give them something to eat. And they don't need to depart. But they said, we have only five loaves and two fishers.

And I've often said, maybe said it here in our own assembly, often wondered what five loaves and two fishers stand for. I haven't maybe a very good explanation for it. But some people like to work with figures and five, the number of a man, we have five fingers and so on.

And two is witness. And you can multiply things out. Sometimes I find wonderful ways to subtract and add to make things work out.

Well, I believe the thought is very simple. It's just how small it was. It was just something that was very small.

And you know, in the Old Testament, people of God, they had very little understanding, it seems, most of them at least, of the scriptures. But the Lord came and he enlarged what they had found. It was all, he's a secret.

He's the key to the Old Testament scriptures. So now when the Lord comes, things are multiplied. And the Lord feeds the people, but he does it through the disciples.

And of course, that's very easy for us to apply a meeting like this. We trust that those that come along to minister to us would have gotten something from God, something that's suitable. Sometimes we don't know what is suitable.

Sometimes our messages fit in and sometimes they don't. But anyhow, we hope that we would hear messages that come right from God. God gave them to the disciples and he said, you give them to the people.

And it must have been a wonderful feast. It was a real feast. When I think of a feast, I think of an overabundance.

Lots of times when we just eat on our own, we just eat and that's it. But if we have company, there's always a lot left over. There's always more.

And when it comes to God feeding his people, there's always more left over. Even in Ruth, she got six measures of barley, wasn't it? She didn't get seven, although later on she got one more. But I think that the thought is there that there's always more.

There's always more. And that's wonderful to think that there's so much in God's word, such a variety. And you know, our safeguard today isn't just having one little thing from God's word.

Our safeguard is all the word of God. And that's going to keep us out of trouble. We just don't take up one thing and forget the rest.

God has given us a great variety to eat. And if you're like me, you like a good variety of food. Although I could eat all potatoes, but there's nothing else.

But it's nice to have a full variety of food and then have some left over. Now, we not only read of a feast, but in the next scripture, we read of false teaching. That was false food that was on the go at that day.

There were the scribes and the Pharisees, and they have all their own ideas, and they're all taken up, not with the food, but about washing your hands. And it's not just what we should wash our hands before we eat and so on. But they're talking about a whole ritual that they had, washing our hands up to the elbow and all that stuff.

They're more occupied with that than occupied with the things of God. And I'm glad that I'm part of a local assembly. And I haven't heard too much false teaching, very little in my day among us.

Once in a while, I may not agree with some of the things, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. But anyhow, we find that there was false teaching. And you know, we should appreciate God's assembly.

If we ever leave God's assembly and go some other place, you're going likely to a place where there's some false teaching or maybe a lot of false teaching. But aren't you glad that we come to a conference and we can hear God speaking to us, and we come with anticipation to hear God speaking. So we're glad that we're at the feast and we're not at something that's false teaching.

Now, we come to the last scripture we read, and I suppose we could call that commendation. But what God commended this woman for perseverance. But what drew me to this was, you see, it was a matter of eating, you know.

And it's a good subject that I'm well aware with, eating. You can tell that to look at me. But the thought here was a fragment.

There were 12 baskets that were left. There were fragments. And if you look at the feast of Israel, well, you know, they're fragments for the Gentiles.

But I'm just thinking of all that was left over. And at the conference, we'll hope we can get just a crumb, just a little crumb. Some of the old preachers, the big preachers, they used to say, we're aiming where the Christian's head should be.

And some said we should be spiritual giraffes and reaching up. But the Lord said, feed my sheep. And there's going to be sheep and lambs at the conference.

So it'd be good if we could break the bread right down, break it down so that even the younger ones can take it in and understand. And most of us, maybe what we're feeding on is crumbs. And it's okay.

If we can get at least one crumb to take home from the conference, I think it would be worthwhile. Now, we're not looking for crummy ministry, but we're looking for crumbs from the vast. We'll never be satisfied, not even when we get to heaven.

We'll always be learning more and more, but we'll have a greater capacity on that day too. But meanwhile, when we gather together, it's good to know there's a feast. There's lots that our brethren can draw from that the Lord has given them and they can give to the people.

And then there's the crumbs for those of us that maybe haven't made so much progress or for young believers and older believers that haven't been saved maybe for very long. We trust that they'll go home not hungry. Some places I have been, when I was young, I went to Blackpool in England.

I wasn't saved and that was quite a place. And I was amazed that outside the restaurants, there were people trying to get you in. Didn't wait for you to walk in.

They said, don't go home hungry. Some of them said, don't go home hungry. Can't get your steak and kidney pie or whatever it is.

Well, there's lots of variety for us, but may God help us even at least. Let us believe one might be able to say we've got something from the ministry, even if it's just a, I shouldn't say just a crumb, even if it's a crumb. Crumbs are important.

And this woman got the crumb because of her faith in the Lord. Even though she was from a foreign nation, she was a Gentile. But even though she came, first of all, pleading the son of David, which she had no right to do.

But then when she came just in simple faith and she said, you know, even the little dogs get crumbs that fall from the table. So may God help us to be well fed as we leave the conference. We'll be well fed physically.

I can vouch for that. But well fed spiritually would be even more important. Now maybe I should pray.