John 6:1-13 (Teaching)

[0:00] Morning. Back in the Gospel of John this morning. We wrapped up John chapter 5 last week.

[0:13] Seems like it took us a little while to get through that, but that's okay. There's a lot in that chapter. 47 verses, I believe, in that chapter.

[0:26] But anyway, we wrapped that up and John chapter 6 begins with the three words that we see so often after these things.

[0:37] So we would naturally ask ourselves after what things? Well, after everything we covered the past few weeks, I guess, in John chapter 5. Beginning with the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda.

[0:52] And then after that healing, we find the religious elite chastising Jesus for what he done, chastising the man for carrying his bed on the Sabbath day.

[1:06] We find all these things and we find that the rulers are actually getting together to come up with a plan to kill Jesus.

[1:17] They can't stand this man. Jesus can't stand. One broke their own laws, which was the man carrying his bed on the Sabbath day.

[1:30] And can't stand that people are flocking to this man the way that they are. People are flocking to Jesus. He's performing these miracles. We talked a little bit about how, you know, if anybody should have seen Jesus Christ as Messiah, it should have been these religious elite, as I've called them, these rulers, these Pharisees and the scribes.

[1:54] They should have seen him for exactly whom he was. But anyway, we see after they congregate to try and come up with a devise a way to kill Jesus, get rid of Jesus, we see Jesus's long reply slash rebuke to them.

[2:15] That's what we actually wrapped up last week there at the end of John chapter 5. So all that being said, we'll begin John chapter 6. I know where I'd like to get this morning.

[2:28] Don't know if we'll make it that far, but we'll see how far we get anyway. But John chapter 6 and verse 1 again says, after these things, Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias.

[2:43] And a great multitude followed him because they saw his miracles, which he did on them that were diseased. And Jesus went up into a mountain and there he sat with his disciples.

[2:57] We'll stop there and back up to verse 1. After these things, Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed him because they saw his miracles, which he did on them that were diseased.

[3:15] So here we have Jesus crossing back over the sea. Now where was he? He was right over in the thick of everything, of everything Jewish, we'll say.

[3:27] He was right over in the midst of his own people here at this pool of Bethesda. He was there at Jerusalem in Judea and it says that he crossed over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias.

[3:43] And the Holy Spirit through John would have wrote that in there that it is the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias, just so nobody confuses one with the other.

[3:55] They're both the same body of water. But what's significant about this is that when Jesus crosses the sea of Galilee from Jerusalem, he has nowhere to go except to predominantly Gentile territory.

[4:11] So he's right over there in the thick of the Jewish territory in the main part of it. And so he's crossing the sea and everywhere else around there is predominantly, not 100%, but predominantly Gentile territory.

[4:27] So that's where Jesus has crossed him. He's gone from his own across the sea to a land that's not his own people per se. He's going over there to the Gentile lands.

[4:41] It says, a great multitude followed him because they saw his miracles, which he did on them, that were diseased. So we have here the what? A great multitude followed him and we have here the why because they saw the miracles that he performed on those that were sick and diseased.

[4:59] They saw the things that Jesus Christ had done and this is why they were following him. And it's no different today as it was back when John was writing this or as it was in the days of Jesus Christ.

[5:15] Different people follow Jesus Christ or different people may follow the church or follow a pastor or a preacher or an evangelist or different people follow other people for different reasons.

[5:29] These people were following Jesus because of the miracles that they had seen him perform, not because they thought he was Christ. If that were the case, I think that the Holy Spirit would have inspired John to have written that that the people followed Jesus because they thought that he was Messiah.

[5:48] But that's not why they were following him. They were wanting a show. They were wanting to see more miracles. They were wanting the toughest cases to crack to be brought to Jesus Christ so that they could witness him crack these cases per se.

[6:07] But they were following him because of the miracles that they had seen done. And verse 3, Jesus went up into a mountain and there he sat with his disciples.

[6:18] Now there's some debate in the theological world, I guess you could say, as to why Jesus Christ went up into the mountain here and sat with his disciples.

[6:31] Because we see in verse 2 that there's a great multitude of people that followed him. So it seems like Jesus Christ is fleeing from these people.

[6:43] But really you could take verse 2 and kind of put that in parentheses if you wanted to. And you could couple that with verse 1 which says that he just sailed across the sea of Galilee which is the Sea of Tiberias.

[6:59] It says in a great multitude of people followed him and he went up into the mountain to sit with his disciples. So all these things did not happen simultaneously. He couldn't go up into the mountain and be crossing the sea at the same time.

[7:13] So when he went up into the mountain these people were still following where Jesus Christ was going. So he didn't go up into the mountain to flee from the people. And we know this because of the miracle that we're about to read about the miracle about feeding the 5,000.

[7:29] He didn't flee the people, he wasn't afraid of them, he didn't want rid of them or anything along those lines. These things did not happen simultaneously, they happened in a succession.

[7:40] And that succession would have been Jesus crossed the sea, the people knew he was crossing the sea. So they were following on foot but when Jesus and his disciples crossed the sea while these people were making their way around.

[7:52] Jesus went up into the mountain at that point. And I said that to rebuke the thought that Jesus Christ was fleeing these people.

[8:03] That he wanted nothing to do with them, they were trying to get away from them. That wasn't the case at all, it's much like when Jesus Christ, when there was a great throng of people that was coming around Jesus Christ at one point in the Gospels.

[8:16] And Jesus steps into the boat and tells Peter to shove off a land a little bit. He didn't do that to get away from the people, he just shoved off just a small distance from the land. But he knew, one, the people weren't going to come out in the water.

[8:29] But two, more people would be able to hear what he had to say if he was out there on the water. If you've ever been out on the lake late at night, you can hear people plumb across the lake having a conversation.

[8:44] You can hear it because the sound of their voice bounces across the water. It doesn't go down into the water, the water carries their voice to you. I've been in situations where people were a quarter mile out in the lake or wherever it was that they were.

[8:59] And I could hear every word that they were saying, even though they were talking in a lower voice than what I am now. Jesus didn't have Peter shove that boat out to get away from the people.

[9:10] He had him shove the boat out to get out in the water so that his voice would carry two more people. When you read about Jesus going up into the mountain here and other points where Jesus is seemingly getting away from the crowd, he wasn't concerned for his own safety.

[9:29] Jesus knew his hour had not yet come. It wasn't his own safety that he was concerned for. There are other things that surround these issues where Jesus disappears per se or goes to another place.

[9:43] It says Jesus went up into the mountain and there he sat with his disciples. So when he crossed the sea, he and his disciples went up into the mountain and he sat with his disciples.

[9:55] What a place for them disciples to be, huh? They're on a mountain top, up on a hill, just them and Jesus. Folks, it's good for us to get along with Jesus sometimes. It's good for us to get in a prayer closet.

[10:08] It's good for us to get away from everybody else in our household as much as we may love our wives or our husbands or our children or whoever it is. As much as we may love them people, it is good for us to get along with Jesus Christ.

[10:24] It was good for these disciples to get along with Jesus Christ. They had just witnessed, remember in verse 1, it says after these things, they had just witnessed everything that had happened, the man of the pool Bethesda and the Pharisees and the scribes coming against Jesus.

[10:40] And if they were coming against Jesus, they were also coming against those that were following Jesus. They had just seen all these things happen. So this was a good reprieve for them to go up into this mountain with their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

[10:55] Verse 4 says, and the Passover, a feast of the Jews was nigh. There's a whole lot more in this verse here and in this line of Scripture than what we really see if we're just skimming over it.

[11:10] John specifies, the Holy Spirit through John specifies the Passover and then he says, a feast of the Jews was nigh. Now the Passover was and is a feast of the Jews.

[11:23] That promise was given to no one else over in the book of Exodus when God told the Israelites, this specific night, this specific time, you'll kill this type of a lamb, a lamb without blemish and without spot and you'll strike its blood on your door littles.

[11:42] And when I pass through Egypt this night, I'll pass over you. If I see the blood, I'll pass over. This was something that was promised to the Jews, so it was a feast of the Jews and they were to feast on this lamb that they had slaughtered.

[11:57] Yes, but why would John specify like that, the Passover, a feast of the Jews when John was writing to a mainly Jewish audience? His Gospel was written mainly to Jews.

[12:10] You wouldn't think that he would have to write that. But I think what John was getting at was what the Passover had become to the Israelites. It was just a feast.

[12:21] It wasn't really a celebration of God liberating them from Egypt anymore. I mean, at this point, there had been over a millennia past since all that had happened.

[12:37] Since God had brought the Israelites up out of Jude. So over a thousand years between a thousand and fifteen hundred years had passed at this point that we're reading about here in Scripture.

[12:49] And over that fifteen hundred or so years, give or take a hundred years, over that time it just become a reason for the Jews to celebrate.

[13:00] But they weren't really celebrating what God had wanted them to celebrate, why he had put the Passover into effect. And my goodness, our church life is so much like that nowadays. I'm not talking about necessarily here at Frigate of Gospel Mission, but as a whole church life has become that, it's become something that people just do.

[13:18] And y'all have heard me say these things before. You know, people go to church because that's what they do on Sundays. It's not to worship God. It's not to go get fed by the Word of God.

[13:29] It's not to go receive the bread of life. They go because that's just what they've always done. And they don't know anything else to do. I can't say, I won't say anything to be buried because there is nothing to be buried.

[13:41] Besides, gather with your brothers and sisters around the Word of God and the worship of God. But the church has become so much like that, that it's just something that they do.

[13:53] And the Passover feast, that's exactly what it had become to the Jews. There wasn't a real celebration of God delivering Israel out of the bondage of Egypt anymore.

[14:05] It had just become, hey, Passover's coming up. Are you ready for it? What are you going to do for Passover? What are you going to do for this or that? I mean, it's much the same way even nowadays.

[14:18] That's what it had become to the Jews. The Passover and the Passover, a feast of the Jews was nigh. Verse 5, when Jesus then lifted up his eyes and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, When shall we buy bread that these may eat?

[14:34] And this he said to prove him, for he himself knew what he would do. So it says, when Jesus lifted up his eyes and saw a great company come unto him.

[14:46] Now this kind of indicates to me that the time on the mountain had ceased at this point. The disciples were still up on the mountain or the hill that they had gone up on.

[14:58] And now granted, if Jesus was up there, he could simply lift up his eyes and see the multitude coming down below him. Yes, but the succession of events that we find here in the next few verses indicates to me that Jesus is right there with these people.

[15:14] And it doesn't indicate that they had climbed up to the mountain where he was at that time. In fact, it indicates just the opposite to me that Christ and his disciples at this point would have descended down to where the people would be.

[15:30] It says, when Jesus lifted up his eyes and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, When shall we buy bread that these may eat? So there's the what, but then we have the why in verse 6.

[15:41] And this he said to prove him, for he himself knew what he would do. He said this simply to prove Philip, because he knew what he would do.

[15:52] And this will revert back to the end of chapter 2, what I've repeated over and over in chapter 3 and chapter 4 and chapter 5. You know, Christ knew what was in man, and Christ now knows what is in man.

[16:06] He knew what was in Philip, and he knew how Philip would react. And he'd done this to prove Philip, he'd done this to try Philip, and to show Philip something.

[16:18] Not only Philip, but Andrew here in the next couple of verses. But in verse 7 it says, Philip answered, and two hundred penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.

[16:32] So Christ asked a valid question, when he said, When shall we buy bread that these may eat? And Philip answers with a valid answer, seemingly.

[16:44] He says, Two hundred penny worth of bread is not enough that each man should take a little. So Philip has done a real fast calculation in his head, after he's looked out at this great company of people that had come to where Christ and the disciples were.

[17:01] And he calculated this in his head, but what did he leave out? He said, you know, we got all these people here, and I'm sure he didn't count them individually, and say, okay, we got five thousand. But he was estimating, he was just looking out.

[17:12] He said, Two hundred penny worth of bread isn't enough. But when he calculated, he left out crossed. And we are so guilty of doing that, as New Testament Christians, even here in 2023, will look at our situation.

[17:27] And that's exactly what Philip was doing. We'll look at the situation, we'll look at the circumstance, we'll say there's no way this isn't possible. It's not going to happen. And when we have that attitude, it's because we have left out Christ.

[17:42] We have left out Christ out of the equation. We've left him out of the formula. We've left him out of everything when we say it's impossible, because the Bible says with men it is impossible, but not with God, because with God, all things are possible.

[17:58] So it was completely possible, and these disciples here, including Philip, should have known that it was completely possible to feed this multitude of people that had come to where they were.

[18:12] They had just witnessed a man at the pool of Bethesda be healed, not long before this. They had just seen that happen. This man that had laid there for 38 years, and don't you think that when Jesus was addressing that man, that the disciples were somewhere far behind him, and they didn't know what was going on.

[18:34] They were right there with Christ when he was healing this man, the man that had had this infirmity for 38 years, and suddenly he picks up his bed and walks when Christ commands him to do so.

[18:46] They had just seen this. So what made Philip think it's impossible to feed this great company of people? But he says at the end of that statement, he says that every one of them may take a little.

[19:02] That wasn't even to feed them to the full, to feed them till they were filled. So he was just talking about somebody taking up just to have a bite or two here, and then verse 8, one of his disciples, Andrew Simon Peters, brother saith unto him, there is a lad here which has five barley loaves and two small fishes, but what are they among so many?

[19:26] So we've got two disciples knowing that these two disciples would have seen the man at the pool of Bethesda in chapter 5, would have seen him heal, not to mention the other things that Jesus Christ had done up to this point in the Scripture.

[19:40] But we've got two disciples that are displaying so little faith here, so little faith in Christ, just like you and I display so little faith in Christ, depending on the circumstance that we are in, depending on what we are facing at this point.

[19:55] At a given time, we will display a very minute amount of faith in Almighty God, just as these disciples, we have no right to look down our nose at them and say, well, if I had been there with Jesus Christ and he had asked me, when shall we buy enough bread for all these people?

[20:16] I would say, well, Lord, you can supply, no, you wouldn't have, and I wouldn't have either. I would have looked at them 5,000, and I would have said, I've got no clue how we're going to do this. Even though Christ, the very bread of life, which we find later in this chapter, but the very bread of life was standing there with them, even though that was the case, they still displayed so little faith.

[20:42] One of his disciples, Andrew Simon, Peter's brother, say, is under him there, is a lad here, which had five barley loaves and two small fishes, but what are they among so many? So we have Philip saying that 200 penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that everyone may take a little, and we have Andrew on the flip side of that same coin saying, what are these loaves and what are these couple of small fishes here among so many?

[21:11] So both of them are showing very small amounts of faith, if any, faith at all. And verse 10 says, and Jesus said, make the men sit down.

[21:22] Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down in number about 5,000. So Jesus tells the disciples, make the men sit down.

[21:34] And what do the disciples do? We didn't get that far. I'm sorry, we did. So the men sat down in number about 5,000. So the disciples did exactly what Jesus cross commanded.

[21:47] And folks, this is an incredible lesson for us as Christians in 2023 to read about 2,000 years after this happened.

[21:58] When we feel our faith dwindle, when we feel our faith has just shrunk, when we have nothing more than just a little glimmer or a little flicker of light within ourselves, what is the best thing we can do to grow that faith?

[22:18] I've told you all before, be careful if you ask God to increase your faith. That's something we should pray daily, but you be careful with that prayer, because things might come our way, trials might come our way.

[22:31] In fact, that's more than likely, that's what's going to happen. That people will say, well, I can just pray for faith, and you can, and you know what? God is perfectly capable of just giving that faith, but that's not how God works.

[22:45] And we have example upon example, upon example in Scripture, that God does not just walk over in the heavens to a jar that's labeled faith, and he gets out a spoonful of it, and he dumps it on you. That's not how faith works.

[23:02] These two disciples here were exhibiting very, very, very little faith, but Jesus gave them a command. He said, make the men sit down, and they did what Jesus commanded.

[23:15] That is the best way to grow our faith, is to do what we are commanded to do. To do what this book here commands us to do. If we walk by this book, if we walk by the things that are written within the pages of this book, if we walk by them and by nothing else, that is sure to increase our faith.

[23:38] Because if we're doing that, we're keeping the commandments of God. What did Jesus say? He said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. And if we love Christ, we will be keeping His commandments. But if we're keeping His commandments, knowing that the world disagrees with His commandments, knowing that the world will ridicule us, and there are poor, all sorts of derision down upon us, knowing that our families might hate us for it, knowing that our coworkers might hate us for it, knowing that it's going against the grain of what the rest of the world says.

[24:08] If we walk by the commandments of Almighty God, that has got to increase our faith. There's no way that it can't. So when Christ gives a commandment, the best way to increase our faith is to obey said commandment.

[24:26] Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks, He distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down, and likewise of the fishes, as much as they would.

[24:39] So we have Philip first saying, 200 penny worth is not going to be enough, even if every man would take just a little bit.

[24:51] Then we have Andrew saying, what are these loaves and these fish among so many? And Christ, because He's Christ, and because in Him was fullness, period.

[25:07] Because of Christ, these men, and likewise of the fishes, as much as they would, as much as they could handle, as much as they wanted, but folks, it is like that now with the gospel.

[25:24] It is like that now with the Word of life, and with the bread of life. People have been saved for 30 and 40 years, saying, I just don't feel God like I once did.

[25:37] You know whose fault that is? It's their fault. That's not God's fault. It's my fault when I feel like that. It's my fault when I don't feel as close to God as I once did.

[25:50] It's my fault when I feel like God's a blue billion lot years away from me. It's my fault when I feel that way, because He is fullness, and He is able to fill us not just with loaves of bread, not just with fish.

[26:07] He's able to fill us with joy. He's able to fill us with peace. He's able to fill us with love. He's able to fill us with His Spirit. And I mean, God, the Bible says Jesus crossed the same yesterday, today, and forever.

[26:22] If He was able to fill me when I was first saved, and He was able to fill me five years ago, if He was able to fill me last week or last night, He is able to do so today.

[26:35] So if we're not getting that, it's not God's fault. It's not God's fault at all. These people were going to be fed. These people were being fed in this account that we are reading right now.

[26:49] But it wasn't because of the disciples' faith that they were being fed. Because we've already seen two of the disciples showed very little faith. It wasn't their faith because they were being fed. It was because of the grace of Almighty God that they were being fed.

[27:05] If they were being fed, according to the faith of the disciples, those 5,000 would have left their hungry. But they weren't fed because of that. Now, I've seen this verse in other passages of Scripture, or yet in other passages of Scripture, and I've seen it taught and I've heard it preached about how God gave to the disciples and the disciples dispersed to the multitude, and they'll use that as an illustration.

[27:36] And it is a very good illustration as far as God given to preachers and to teachers and evangelists and missionaries and so on, giving to them first and then dispensing it to the multitudes.

[27:49] And it is a good illustration, but that's not what God was getting at with this. That's a wonderful illustration for that. I'm not going to back down from that. But that's not what God was getting at here. What God was getting at in this Scripture was the lack of faith in some disciples, but then their obedience, their obedience.

[28:09] But ultimately, the grace of Almighty God, because Christ was under no obligation to feed these people, no obligation whatsoever. He could have looked out at these 5,000 men and keep in mind that was just the men.

[28:23] That wasn't the women and the children included in that. There's 5,000 men that sat down there, Mark's account says they sat down by 50s and by hundreds. But regardless of any of that, Christ could have looked out and said, Y'all are crazy for following me all the way over here. Why are you here? Go back home. Go back from whence you came.

[28:47] Go to your own towns, to your own villages, to your own places and find food there. But He didn't do that. But you also see these other little glimpses of the grace of God in this. It says in verse 10 again, it says, Make the men sit down. It says, Now there was much grass in the place. Well praise God.

[29:07] God provided a cushion for these people to sit down. It says there was much grass in the place. Just skimming through this, you don't catch that. But viewing this as an act of the grace of God, you pick up every little piece of the grace of God that's in here.

[29:23] And we won't hit every one of them, but that's one of the more obvious ones there. The grace of God, another picture of that was the lack of faith of the disciples.

[29:35] And regardless of their lack of faith, Jesus Christ still acted on behalf of this multitude that had fought Him. And they had only fought Him, remember, they had only fought Him because of the miracles they had seen Him work.

[29:48] Not because they thought that He was the Son of God, but He still in grace acted on their behalf. Not only did He feed them, but He provided a cushion place for them to sit down.

[30:00] So the men sit down in number, about 5,000. Jesus took the loaves. And when He had given thanks, He distributed to the disciples. This is a wonderful picture Jesus has given, not only His disciples here, not only this multitude that was around Him, but to us here 2,000 years later, how we should be in the breaking of bread.

[30:19] We should give thanks to God in the breaking of bread. When we pray the Lord's prayer and we say, give us this day our daily bread. When we say that, when we say, give us this day our daily bread, we are admitting God's got the bread.

[30:37] And it's up to Him whether we get it or not. That's exactly what we're admitting when we say that in the Lord's prayer. It's His to give. Everything is His to give.

[30:50] Every good and every perfect gift coming down from the Father of Lot according to James in chapter 1. So this was a good gift that these people were getting. Every bite, every morsel of food that you get today in the past and anything you get in the future, it is a gift from Almighty God and it is His to give.

[31:10] We use, I remember when I taught 1st and 2nd Peter over at Boone's Creek years ago, and Peter says to humble yourselves in the hand of the Lord, He shall exalt you in due time.

[31:27] But if we're putting ourselves in the hand of God or if God has put us in His hand for that matter, and we're sheltered in there, He's got His hand closed on us.

[31:39] Nothing can get to us, right? But if He's got His hand closed on us, we're depending on Him for everything. Absolutely everything. We're depending on Him to shove bread in there.

[31:50] We're depending on Him to allow light in there that we can see our way. We're depending on Him for water. We're depending on Him for air. We're depending on Him for everything. If we're closed up in the hand of God and that kind of shelter, we're depending on God for absolutely everything.

[32:09] And these disciples here were being taught to depend on God for everything, to depend on Christ for everything. Even when the situation seems bleak, even when it seems impossible, you depend upon God for absolutely everything.

[32:27] He distributed to the disciples and disciples of them that were sat down, likewise the fishes, as much as they would. When they were filled, He said unto His disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.

[32:38] Therefore they gathered them together and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that it eat.

[32:50] So when they were filled, it's very significant here, because I've heard it taught, and my opinion, it's about heresy to do so, but I've heard it taught that the greatest miracle in the feeding of the thousands was not that Jesus multiplied the bread and multiplied the fish.

[33:14] Folks, what Jesus was doing there was creating something. He was bringing something into existence that did not exist. When He multiplied the loaves and the fish, there were only a few loaves and there were only a couple of fish, but He brought things into existence that did not exist before.

[33:33] That was a miracle. The greatest miracle was that Jesus Christ was here, period. I mean, here, walking on this earth, that He had condescended two men, two earths, a sinful man.

[33:47] That's the greatest miracle, and that He came here to save sinners. That's the greatest miracle in all of Scripture. But it says, when they were filled, I've heard it said that the miracle within the feeding of the thousands was not that Jesus multiplied food, but that these people were able to split a few loaves and a couple of fishes among thousands, and nobody complained against each other.

[34:16] Now, folks, that's a woke way of looking at this, and that is not the miracle that is here. It says they ate till they were filled, till they were filled.

[34:27] You can't take 5,000 people and a few loaves and a couple of fish and then those 5,000 eaten till they were filled, not including the women and children that were present.

[34:39] You can't do it. It's impossible to do that. So the miracle was the multiplication of the food. It was the creation, the bringing into existence of something that did not exist.

[34:53] And folks, this isn't the only time that we see that in the Gospel of John. We've read about it in the second chapter of the Gospel of John when Jesus Christ made water into wine. He brought something into existence then that did not exist before.

[35:09] It says they ate till they were filled. He said unto His disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore, they gathered themselves and filled 12 baskets with the fragments of the 5 barley loaves.

[35:20] 12 baskets. What's significant about that? Well, how many disciples were there? There were 12 of them. Normally when we read the word 12 in Scripture, we're reading about a government of some kind.

[35:31] 12 represents government. There's 12 gates that are surrounding the city, going into heaven. There were 12 disciples. There were 12 tribes. Normally there's something to do with government.

[35:46] And here it was no different, but there were 12 disciples. What had those 12 disciples done? They had obeyed the command of Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ told the men to sit down, Jesus Christ broke the bread.

[35:59] They took the food. They dispersed it to the multitude. They were doing exactly as Jesus Christ wanted them to do. And therefore, they were acting as the government of Christ at that point.

[36:12] But they had fed everybody else. I didn't read anything in this account where they had eaten themselves. They filled 12 baskets. Now, folks, we ain't talking... I don't think we're talking about, you know, three or four bushel baskets here.

[36:26] It would have been baskets big enough to carry a few loaves and a couple of fish in, just like the little boy had, just like the lad here had, that Andrew brought up in the Scripture.

[36:38] But that was enough for themselves. After they had dispersed to everyone else, Cross took care of his own. He took care of his own after that, and he does the same thing with us.

[36:51] We might go out into the world. We might go to our families. We might preach a street corner or a pride event, or whatever the case is, and tell the world about Jesus Christ.

[37:04] And we're dispersing the bread of life out there. Where are they taking it or not, is up to them. But God will take care of his own. He'll take care of his own. He'll say, go out and get the fragments.

[37:15] Don't waste it. Bring in those fragments. You can have them for yourself. If I go out and I preach the word of God and nobody wants it, it's still there for my taking, and I can have as much of it as I want.

[37:28] Praise God. They gather themselves. They gathered them together and filled 12 baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above under the imbibed eatin', over and above.

[37:41] That's the parts. It's not that those people didn't want it. Remember, it said that they ate till they were filled. They'd had enough of what was provided there. But God provided for his own. He provided for his disciples there.

[37:56] And God does the same thing for us. Praise God. Anybody got any questions? That's the exact point I wanted to get to today. It was verse 13. So anybody got any questions or comments on any of that?

[38:11] Alright. God bless y'all. I appreciate you.