Give Ye Them To Eat

GIVE YE THEM TO EAT

Setting: Tired, Looking for rest, Followed by the crowd) Jesus comes out and begins to teach.

Its late, They haven’t eaten, they haven’t had any private time with Jesus, They’re tired.

When you’re tired and hungry and emotionally drained it’s easy to be a little cranky, calloused, indifferent and even a little selfish.

The disciples come and tell Jesus, it’s late time for ministry is passed, send the people into town to get food for themselves.

* sometimes we can cover selfish motives with religious sentiment.

*Jesus said: They do not need to depart you give them something to eat

(Sometimes we can be guilty of being nothing more than religious well wishers, kind of like what James said: Depart be ye warmed and filled, we wish you well, I’ll mention you in my prayers.

That’s called dead faith).

we cannot be true disciples of Jesus with this dead faith, He wouldn’t allow it then and he doesn’t allow it now.

True faith does more than acknowledge the problem it becomes part of the solution.

A. The disciples saw the problem, but they did not see themselves in the solution.

Out of every 100 who see the problem, only one will actually become part of the solution.

Give ye them to eat

Jesus made them responsible for the problem.

That’s where we’re at today, we are responsible, we are the light, and the salt.]

If there is no light where I am then it’s because my light is hid, if there is nothing being flavored where I am it’s become I am not being salt.

How many loaves have ye go and see.

Before we can do anything we must take inventory, we must know what we have.

Like the widow in 2Ki 4 She needed a miracle to get her out of debt, the first requirement was to take inventory, (what have you in your house go and see).

We may have had a great experience, a great compassion, a great love, a great anointing but what do we have now?

What I had doesn’t help anybody, it’s what I have now that can be used for the masters service.

Thy handmaiden hath nothing save a little pot of oil

We have five loaves and two fishes

This is where the miracle starts, with what we have no matter how small or how little it is, All God requires is for us to take what we have and give it to him.

It’s not our responsibility to make the bread, or multiply it, only to bring it to Jesus

Too many times we feel like Andrew in John 6:9 who said (what are they among so many).

If we are not careful we can allow the immensity of the task to keep us from doing anything.

Multitudes of Christians look at the greatness of the needs of humanity and then they look at what they have (or I should say, what they don’t have) and based upon what they do not have they excuse themselves from doing anything.

God never ask us what we don’t have,

God already knows what we don’t have but what God does is call our attention to what we do have.

What we have is where our responsibility starts

They did eat

I love that phrase, (they did eat) they did (eat) What that means is while we are excusing ourselves for not witnessing, and not sharing Jesus because we are believe no body wants to hear it. (There are multitudes who are hungry and who will eat, when they are offered the bread of life. (Not religion, not church, not philosophies not traditions, but the bread from heaven Jesus Christ).

We find this same thought repeated in John 4:10

Jesus said to her: If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

(That means that Jesus who knew the heart of this woman, said that If she knew the gift of God she would have asked for the living water)

It wasn’t that she didn’t want it, it wasn’t that she wasn’t interested (It was that she hadn’t heard the good news yet).

When she heard and had knowledge of the gift of God she received living water.

Till they were filled

First of all: this shows us that God meats every need of humanity, physical spiritual emotional, only God can fill every need.

Then Secondly:

This very often describes the church, we have eaten and we are full, we have become full, satisfied, satisfied to know that we are saved, going to heaven,

Unfortunately many times this same satisfaction begins to produce in us indifference, wastefulness, and we begin to take this great salvation for granted and we actually become neglectful of the precious promises and like that crowd on that day, crumbs or fragments of that precious bread was ignored, brushed aside.