More Food For Your Faith

More Food for Your Faith

Matthew 15 29-39

Sermon by Rick Crandall

McClendon Baptist Church - Feb. 1, 2009

*How much faith does God want you to have? He certainly wants us to have saving faith. On top of that, God wants us to have more faith, even great faith. And there is good news for us tonight in this miracle. Jesus feeding the 4,000 can feed our faith. Notice four things in this story that can feed your faith tonight.

1. First of all, feed your faith on the Lord’s compassion.

*We can see it in vs. 32, where Jesus said, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.”

*Why did the Lord miraculously feed these 4,000 men, plus thousands more women and children? -- Simply because He genuinely cared for these people. He had compassion on them. Thank God for being compassionate and kind! God cares for people like you, and He wants you to know it.

*There is another wonderful story of the Lord’s compassion in Luke 7:11-16.

11. Now it happened the day after that (Jesus) went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd.

12. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her.

13. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, "Do not weep.’’

14. Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, "Young man, I say to you, arise.’’

15. And he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother.

16. Then fear came upon all, and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen up among us’’; and, "God has visited His people.’’

*God is full of compassion for people, and the best place to see that is on the cross of Jesus Christ! Jesus loved us so much that He died for our sins. As Paul said in Rom 5:8, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

*Thomas Pilgrim told the story of a little girl named Charlotte. One day she went with her grandmother on a shopping trip to the city. When Charlotte got home, her parents asked her what she had seen and how she liked it. They asked her if she had been afraid of all those people and cars as she crossed the street. Charlotte said, "No. The big policeman held up his hands and all the cars stopped and we crossed over."

*And Thomas Pilgrim said: Jesus the carpenter had strong hands bronzed by the sun. His hands were the hands of God lifting up a fallen humanity. Early in His ministry Jesus was in the Decapolis, the ten cities around the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The people brought to Jesus a man who was deaf and dumb, and "they begged Him to put His hand on him." With those hands Jesus miraculously multiplied the bread and fish in this story. Later Jesus healed a boy possessed by a spirit which caused him to fall on the ground. Jesus "took him by the hand and lifted him up." A woman was brought to Jesus and accused of adultery by a mob. But Jesus knelt down and with His hand wrote in the sand. When they put Jesus to death they drove great nails through those hands of (compassion) and kindness. And when he rose from the dead He said to His disciples, "Behold my hands." (1)

*God’s is full of compassion for us. We can see it in His hands and His heart. So feed your faith on the Lord’s compassion.

2. But also feed on the disciples’ confusion.

*Listen again to vs. 32-33:

32. Then Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.’’

33. Then His disciples said to Him, "Where could we get enough bread in the wilderness to fill such a great multitude?’’

“Where could we get enough bread to fill such a great multitude?” That is a mind-boggling question, if you think about it, because no more than a few months earlier, Jesus had already fed 5,000 men plus women and children. And He did it all with just 5 loaves and two fish. All of the disciples had seen that first miracle of multiplied food, but they still had a long way to go when it came to faith.