SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/17/2022 7:04 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-5 “The
Display of Power”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 13:18-21
Message of the verses: 18 And He said,
"Bring them here to Me." 19 Ordering the people to sit down on the
grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven,
He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the
disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, 20 and they all
ate and were satisfied. They picked up what was left over of the broken pieces,
twelve full baskets. 21 There were about five thousand men who ate, besides
women and children.
We continue to look at the lessons that the
disciples learned from this miracle of Jesus as He feed over 25,000 people, and
perhaps the supreme lesson for them to learn was to trust God to supply what
seems impossible. We have mentioned that
Jesus gave a challenge to His disciples to feed these many, many people in the
morning, and it was now late and they did not come up with a way to feed
them. So even pondering all day of Jesus’
instruction for them to feed the crowd themselves, the thought of turning to
Him did not enter their heads, something that should have because of all that
they have seen Jesus do in the past, but perhaps what they were thinking was
that they had to do it on their own, which of course was their problem all
along. So the problem was that they
inclined to look everywhere but to Him to solve this problem. So within the lesson was the lesson that, “although
God is perfectly able to do His work without us and without what we have, He
chooses to use us and our meager resources to magnify His goodness and His
power” writes John MacArthur.
He
goes on to write “God’s plan of redemption involves the witness, the work, and
the means of power through our weakness and His abundance through our poverty
(1 Cor. 1:26-29). God often uses the
small things to greater effectiveness than the things that are thought to be
the greatest and most promising.” “26 For consider your calling, brethren, that
there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble; 27 but God has chosen the foolish
things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the
world to shame the things which are strong, 28 and the base things of the world and the
despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the
things that are, 29 so that no man may
boast before God” (1 Cor. 1:26-29).
You may know this part of a song “Little becomes
much in the Master’s hand.” Here are a
few examples to think about that goes along with that song. God used a baby’s cry to move the heart of
Pharaoh’s daughter and He used a shepherd’s crook to work mighty miracles in
Egypt. God used a boy and his slingshot
to lay Goliath and rout the Philistine army.
He used a poverty-stricken widow to sustain Elijah and a young girl to
lead the leprous Naaman to Elisha. God
used Balaam’s donkey to teach His truth and the jawbone of another donkey to
slay a thousand men. God used a little
child to teach His disciples humility, and He used one boy’s lunch to feed
25,000 people and there were even a great deal of leftovers.
THE FAITHFUL REMNANT WAS
CONFIRMED
As
we think about who was in the crowd we have to believe that there were only a
few of the multitude who had already trusted in Christ for salvation and who
followed Him to the other side of the lake not to be healed or entertained but
to be spiritually blessed. Next there
were also those who sought and received salvation. It was on the next day that some of them
asked Jesus, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” and then
thy begged “Lord, evermore give us this bread (John 6:28, 34). It was the elect remnant who saw God’s divine
power at work in Jesus and they glorified Him.
It was with their spiritual eyes they not only saw the crowds being fed
but the Lord’s compassion being manifested through this great miracle. They saw Jesus’ great integrity and
stewardship. Jesus did not resort to
spectacular demonstrations that mesmerized the audience, like so many
charlatans and false healers have done and still continue to do even
today. I have to say that I have never
heard of one of these fake healers who say that they can do miracles feed
25,000 people with only a boxed lunch.
These also saw a manifestation of the kingdom of God, because they saw
the King Himself at work. They also saw
the King graciously minister to His subjects and even those who would not have
Him as their Sovereign Savior.
MacArthur
concludes this rather long section: “The
unbelieving rejecters were revealed. By
far the greatest amount of soil on which the gospel of the kingdom fell that
day was hard and thorny. Most of the
people saw nothing more than what seemed an amazing feat of magic. They saw the human Jesus plainly, but they
could not see the divine Son of God at all.
They had their stomachs filled to a satisfaction they had never before
experienced, but they did not have so much as a taste of the Bread of
Life. They left physically filled but
spiritually empty. Because they had
received great light from God but oeferred darkness, they went home further
from Him and in greater sin than when they came. They came there for what Jesus could give
them, but their self-indulgent, unbelieving hearts prevented them from
receiving His greatest gift of all.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: It is my desire to learn the spiritual things
from this very familiar story that are included in each of the four Gospel
letters. I don’t want to have a hard
heart and not learn things from what is seen in the great miracle. Over the last few days I have had spiritual
things pointed out to me that I did not realize were in this story and I am
thankful for that.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: To ponder on
the spiritual truths of this miracle.
6/17/2022 7:42 AM
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