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[0:00] Good morning. Welcome to Tri-State Community Church, our wonderful family.! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

[0:10] ! Red, pink, white. Just so awesome.

[0:35] Got one more, just a couple little information here, just to keep everyone updated. So again, we continue to welcome our new pastor. Thank you, John, for preaching. It was really great.

[0:48] And if you haven't met his beautiful, wonderful wife, Kara, you should do that, because she's an amazing person to have with us also. So continue to do that.

[0:59] And, yeah, those are the two things I wanted to share. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father, I thank you again for your goodness of our family here, the love we see for one another here. It's just amazing. It's your work.

[1:19] It's your handiwork. That we're able to love one another as we can. We trust you to do that more and more. And we do that so the world can see your amazing love.

[1:31] We want to share that love with the world. Continue to help us, Lord, to do that. Think about that. Our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, our family that need Jesus.

[1:42] Continue to show us ways to love them and to share the good news with them, Lord, in days and weeks to come. We do have some still praying for people that are sick here and healing and have cancer and Trish, Jim Potter, Becky's struggling with her heart.

[2:00] Please help these people, Lord, get better. Just we're not going to give up. We're going to plead with you, Lord, to move. And thank you again for today.

[2:11] And open our hearts to the word. Lord, please help me speak clearly the truth. I wouldn't even think that there would be something that would be wrong, Lord. I want to share it clear and truthfully.

[2:22] Help me do that today, Lord. Amen. I was out in the backyard with my dog. He's pretty old.

[2:33] I have to almost like push him along. He can hardly hear or see. And I was checking out my apple. I got two apple trees and I love to see the blossoms. So I was just seeing if there's any buds coming. And they were just starting to come out, my apple tree.

[2:46] And I overheard there's some bushes in the adjacent yard. I overheard some children playing and talking. And one kid goes, who's your favorite person in the whole wide world?

[3:01] One kid goes, well, I got five of them. And so I'm kind of waiting to hear. And I was eavesdropping. And I couldn't quite hear what he said. But then I think another little young child said, I got two.

[3:16] My mom and my dad. I thought that was so sweet. Their favorite person in the whole wide world was their mom and dad. And that just warmed my heart.

[3:28] I wish I had a tape recorder I could send it to the parents. You'd love to hear that, right? Sometimes we wonder, you know, when life's hard at home with kids and fighting and all those things, it's hard to see good things like that.

[3:43] All right. So we're in the book of Mark. I'm going to get my thing fired up here. So we're at Mark chapter 6.

[3:56] And let's read the scripture here that we're going to go over. And this is the famous story that we hear quite often in the scriptures about feeding the 5,000. It's in all four gospels.

[4:08] We read this passage a little different in each one, but it's a very similar message. So let's read it. And Roger, I think it's a little loud.

[4:19] Just turn it down a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's good. And the people saw them going, and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities and got there ahead of them.

[4:35] And when Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd, and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.

[4:46] And when it was already quite late, his disciples came to him and began saying, This place is desolate, and it is already quite late.

[4:57] Send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.

[5:10] But he answered and said to them, You give them something to eat. And they said to him, Shall we go and spend 200 denarii on bread and give them something to eat?

[5:21] And he said to them, How many loaves do you have? Go look. And when they found out, they said, Five loaves and two fish. Five and two fish. And he commanded them all to sit down by groups on the green grass.

[5:35] And they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fish. And looking up toward heaven, he blessed the food and broke the loaves.

[5:48] And he kept giving them to the disciples to set them before them. And he divided up the two fish among them all. And they all sat and ate and were satisfied. And they picked up twelve full baskets of the broken pieces and also of the fish.

[6:04] And there were five thousand men who ate the loaves. And they all sat and ate the loaves. So just to kind of get us back in the groove of where we're at with this chapter and what was taking place, I wanted just to recall the message we had prior to this one, which I think Pastor John Hopkins did a few weeks ago, when he came to interview, it was on the previous section.

[6:27] And so I want to read a little bit coming into this so we get the context of what's taking place here about feeding of the 5,000 people and what were the disciples doing and why they were traveling and so forth.

[6:41] And so let's read this passage here. This is prior to the story here. And the apostles gathered together with Jesus, and they reported to him all that they had done and taught.

[6:53] And he said to them, come away by ourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.

[7:04] And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. So this is where the story picks up. They're in a desolate place. They're going to a desolate place to find rest.

[7:15] And so what were they doing previously to this going to get rest? They were preaching. We learned that they were out preaching and healing and casting out demons.

[7:27] They were doing God's work. They were really doing some amazing things. And now they're with Jesus and they're reporting to him all the things that they had done.

[7:39] They report to Jesus. This is what happened. And so Jesus called them to go to a desolate place to rest. Since they had no time even to eat.

[7:50] They were hungry and tired. And that's what happens when you do God's work. You get tired. You get tired. When doing God's work, it can be a very tiring thing and necessary to rest.

[8:03] And we see even Jesus taking a nap. We saw that in the storm. That they were across the lake in the storm. He fell asleep in the boat. It's good to take a rest. And they're hungry.

[8:15] And they're hungry. So this is kind of how the story picks up. Let's go back to verse 30, 33 here where the story begins. And the people saw them going.

[8:26] And many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities and got there ahead of them. So evidently they're going to this desolate place to get a rest.

[8:39] But nope. Doesn't look like they're going to get a rest. All these people. We know it's going to be 5,000 men. I mean, wow, that's a lot of people. They're not going to go there to get a rest.

[8:52] They thought they were, but it's just not going to happen. Even though we know, again, that rest is a very important thing. It seems there's a very good reason why God sets an example for us to rest.

[9:08] He says, rest on the seventh day. Sabbath day rest. When I'm done today, after this 30, 40-minute lecture here, I'm going to be very tired.

[9:20] To be honest, I'm always very tired when I preach. It's just tiring. I'm going to go rest. Really, everything we do is for God, isn't it?

[9:31] It's tiring. Raising kids, it's tiring. Am I right? Very tiring. Work, some of you have jobs, very tiring.

[9:44] Hopefully, you're working unto the Lord, right, when you go to work. Work out in the yard. Things you do. Sometimes even have fun. You get tired, right?

[9:55] It's tiring. Our bodies have limits. They need rest. It was the right thing. Jesus said, you know what? We're going to go and get some rest. It was the right thing to do.

[10:06] However, we see the story had a little turn in that event. The crowd hurried over the land to intercept the boat. They ran, it says.

[10:18] I'm trying to imagine all these people running to see Jesus. They were so excited to come to see Jesus. They beat him there.

[10:29] They beat him there. They got there ahead of them, it said. Anticipation. Anticipated where Jesus was come. They even figured out, we need to go here.

[10:41] They're going to come. There's the boat. We're going to get there ahead of them. Get there. So I've just been pondering this. I'm just curious your thoughts as well about when you think about this anticipation of Jesus coming.

[10:55] They're rushing to see Jesus. Were they impatient? Ever been impatient with Jesus? Not there? Rushing to see Jesus.

[11:08] That really encourages me. Honestly, even if it's a bad motive, good motive or bad motive, I think this is a great thing. Rushing to see Jesus.

[11:19] They got there ahead of them. That's a good thing. Even you go in there with a bad motive that you want something from them. You're going to see Jesus? He'll help you with your motives.

[11:31] If you're going to go see him, I promise you, he'll help you have good motives. There's times I think we need to rush to see Jesus. We should rush to see Jesus. Many times, sometimes we need to get up early, rush to see him, so to speak.

[11:46] Spend time with him. Talk to him. Listen to him in his word. Get up early to see Jesus. That's a very important thing. Look up to him.

[11:59] Anytime you're out and about, look up. There he is. Talk to him. Our actions toward Jesus. Any actions, any actions, any actions towards Jesus is a good thing.

[12:12] It's a good thing. Continue the story. And when Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd.

[12:24] He felt compassion for them. Because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. So despite the need for a rest, Jesus feels compassion.

[12:38] They're going there to get a rest. And he sees what's more important. He feels compassion for these people. And he says, he mentions that these are sheep without a shepherd.

[12:50] He sees the people. He sees that they're shepherdless. And how important it is that they need a shepherd. So I don't know if you know much about sheep. I've read about it.

[13:02] I've heard people talk about sheep. Usually they say they're pretty dumb. But I know there's studies that they have some intelligence. They do have some degree of intelligence. But we do know that sheep that don't have a shepherd wander aimlessly.

[13:20] Can't find food. Can't find shelter. And probably most importantly, they're exposed to the enemy. And that's what Jesus saw. He saw these shepherdless sheep that needed protection.

[13:34] They needed his protection. And that's why Jesus uses an illustration, I think, of sheep. Because it fits. So here they are.

[13:46] This desolate place looking for a rest. And they're not getting it. And I'm thinking to myself, do you think there will be a time when you're tired and God is going to give you an opportunity to have compassion on someone?

[14:00] It happens. You want to take a nap, but yet someone wants to talk. Someone wants to stay up late. Someone gives you a phone call when you're tired.

[14:12] Sometimes we have to adjust our schedule, don't we, to help someone when we're tired. It's the right thing to do. He sees a whole people without direction, without purpose, without a leader.

[14:26] He's looking around this crowd. He sees the whole people without a leader, without purpose. And I'm thinking about that too. Sometimes we feel purposeless.

[14:38] You ever feel that way? You feel like you don't have a purpose? What's my purpose in life? What's God's will for my life? I've heard that spoken many, many times. Well, they came to the right place.

[14:51] They came to Jesus. And we're learning in the Gospel of Mark about this. We're learning the incredible value, importance of his message in the Gospel of Mark.

[15:05] And most importantly, we're learning that they need him. They need Jesus. They came to see Jesus. So, so incredibly important.

[15:22] Verse 35, And when it was already quite late, his disciples came to him, Jesus, and began saying, This place is desolate, and it is quite late.

[15:34] Send them away, so they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat. Now, after the disciples have just got having this great victory, if you will, preaching and healing and casting out demons, or saying to Jesus, send them away to get food.

[15:56] They want to dismiss the crowd to get their own food. And really, they're clueless as to what Jesus is about to do here. He's about to do an amazing thing, and they don't get it.

[16:07] They don't see it. They aren't thinking about getting them food, get their own food. They had forgotten what took place earlier. So it appears.

[16:24] But he answered and said to them, You give them something to eat. And they said to him, Shall we go and spend 200 denarii on bread and give them something to eat?

[16:35] In their minds, this is an unreasonable request of Jesus. This is unreasonable. How can we possibly feed 5,000?

[16:50] There's 5,000 men. Well, we know there's more than that. There's a verse I'm going to read later that there's women and children as well. There's probably, many scholars believe, maybe 15,000 to 20,000 people.

[17:04] So they're just looking at the enormous of this situation and thinking, Wow, this is impossible. How can we possibly feed these people? Well, the truth is, The truth is, any of God's commands are impossible without Him.

[17:21] Without His help, without His Holy Spirit's work in us, it's hard to do, really can't do God's work the way He wants us to do it. So I'm going to jump over here to the Gospel of John.

[17:35] So as I mentioned before, this story is in all four Gospels. So I'm going to glean a little bit now. I'm going to go to John, and we're going to read a little bit about Jesus' intent, His intent in this feeding of the 5,000.

[17:48] What does Jesus say? What's on Jesus' mind? John 6, 5, and 6. Therefore, Jesus, lifting up His eyes, and seeing that a large crowd was coming to Him, said to Philip, Where should we buy bread, so that these people may eat?

[18:06] And this He was saying to test Him, for He Himself knew what He was going to do. God knows what He's going to do. God knows what He's going to do.

[18:20] He knows what He's going to do in our lives as well. He knows exactly what He's going to do to help the disciples feed these people. Just like He knows exactly what He's going to do in our lives.

[18:34] It's good to be reminded of that. We don't even know what He's going to do, but He knows what He's going to do. And the more we connect with Him, and read His Word, and learn from Him, build that relationship, it's going to become more clear.

[18:53] Moses. Remember the story of Moses, of the manna that came floating down out of the sky to feed the people? That's another story of feeding people. Moses had a difficult task to feed the Israelites in the wilderness.

[19:08] I want to read that little expert, if I could. If you can find, I don't have it here, if you can find Exodus, it's the second book, chapter 16.

[19:20] I want to read this little story about feeding people. Exodus 16, starting in verse 8. I want to just read this, if I could.

[19:32] And Moses said, And Moses said, This will happen when Yahweh gives you meat to eat in the evening, and bread to the full in the morning.

[19:51] For Yahweh hears your grumblings, which you grumble against Him. And what are we? Your grumblings are not against us, but against Yahweh. Then Moses said to Aaron, Say to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, Come near before Yahweh, for he has heard your grumblings.

[20:10] Now it happened as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, that they turned toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of Yahweh appeared in the cloud. And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel.

[20:27] Speak to them, saying, At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread, so that you shall know that I am Yahweh your God.

[20:38] So it happened, At evening that the quails came up and covered the camp, in the morning there was layer of dew around the camp. Then the layer of dew evaporated, and behold, on the surface of the wilderness there was a fine flake-like thing, fine as a frost on the ground.

[20:54] And this was the manna that they got to eat. And God provided food for them, just like He does here, and going to do in this story. Even in their grumblings, He so cares for us.

[21:08] He so cares for us. They were in a desolate place. They're in the wilderness, right? They're out trying to find their way. A desolate place.

[21:22] God provides in desolate places. He does it all the time. Have you ever felt like you're in a metaphorically desolate place? Has that ever happened to you?

[21:34] It happens to me, many times. I feel like I'm in a desolate place, and there are God showing up miraculously to help people. We seek Him. There's examples of this all throughout Scripture.

[21:49] Elijah, one of the prophets. You can read about him. He was in a desolate place. He got fed by ravens. I don't know how God did it, but He did. He provided food for him.

[22:00] You remember Moses' maid, Hagar, had a son, Ishmaelite. They went off and out in the desolate place, and they had no water. God provided water for them.

[22:12] And I bet you can come up with a lot more, many more other examples from Scripture about God providing in desolate places is what He does. He doesn't forget about us. He still cares for us.

[22:24] It's awesome. It's awesome. Continue. And He said to them, How many loaves do you have?

[22:37] Go look. And when they found out, they said, Five and two fish. And He commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass, and they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties.

[22:53] Jesus is trying to draw attention. He's trying to draw attention on what they have. Go look. Not on what they don't have. It's important to look at what we have, isn't it?

[23:06] And not what we don't have. Go look. Shortest verse in the Bible is, Jesus wept, right? This may be the shortest phrase Jesus ever says.

[23:21] Two words. It's not a sentence, but it's a phrase. I think it's implied. You go look. That'd be a sentence, but two words. Go look. It's pretty short, but pretty powerful.

[23:33] Go look. Sometimes we spend time dreaming about the things we want to have. What we want to have that we don't have, right? You ever been there? Dreaming about what you want to have?

[23:45] Things that you want to have? Man, I'm just reminded to look at my own home. What I have. I have a bountiful stuff. My house.

[23:57] I don't know about you guys, but God's a bountifully given to me. It's amazing. And then I look around. Not only the things I have, then I look at the friends I have.

[24:10] What amazing. My fellowship here. It's amazing. It's amazing. I saw all those people at the event yesterday, Dave and Trish's event. All those hundreds of people that are coming out that door.

[24:21] That is just amazing. Almost makes me cry. My job. My new pastor and his wife, Kara.

[24:33] We have a lot. It's convicting me. Despite these pitiful resources, Jesus orders the people to sit down in groups of hundreds and fifties.

[24:46] Now I'm excited here because I've got a math problem here. I get to do some math. One of these days, I'm going to do an algebra problem up here. I almost can't help myself. I hold myself back here.

[24:58] So it hasn't spoken yet in the story about the 5,000, but we know there's 5,000 men. Again, probably 15 to 20,000 people. He orders them to groups of 50 and 100.

[25:13] So that's average about 75. So if you take 15,000 people, how many groups are there? You divide it by 75. That tells you how many groups there are. That's 200. So there's roughly about 200 groups of 50 or 75 people.

[25:29] So basically, this would be a group and this would be a group. There'd probably be 100 churches like that with two groups. That's a lot of people.

[25:40] There's 12. I'm thinking to myself, we know he's going to have the disciples feed these people. These 200 groups. And he's got 12 men. He wants them to feed the group. So you take the 200 groups divided by 12.

[25:51] You have about 16 to 17 groups that each disciple has to feed. Well, that's reasonable. It might take some time, but I think the story, it all fits.

[26:02] Jesus knows their abilities, what they're able to do while they're tired and yet even hungry. He has them sit in groups, kind of like a father would do.

[26:14] Hey, you guys sit here and we're going to take care of you and you sit here. He's taking care of these people. He knows what he's doing. He's taking the disciples. He's taking the disciples to a much deeper and dependent level on him.

[26:29] These meager means, two fish and five loaves of bread. He's taking them to a much deeper level with meager resources to help people.

[26:41] This is important to know because we think we need more. And we don't. We don't. He's given us, go look. He says, go look.

[26:52] Verse 41. And he took the five loaves and the two fish and looking up towards heaven, he blessed the food and broke the loaves.

[27:04] And he kept giving them to the disciples to set before them. And he divided up the two fish among them all. And much like the Last Supper, if you read about the Last Supper, taking the bread, the blessing, the breaking of the bread and giving the disciples, it was very similar.

[27:23] We read this account. If I can roll over to here in Matthew 26 about the Last Supper part of this here. Now, while they were eating, Jesus took some bread and after a blessing, he broke it and giving it to the disciples.

[27:37] He said, take it. This is my body. And so a little bit about some similarities, right? Jesus is blessing the food, breaking the bread, a foreshadow of the Last Supper.

[27:52] And going back to verse 41, it says there, he blessed the food. I was kind of wondering, what does it mean to bless the food? What would that look like?

[28:03] Well, if you just do a little research about Jewish's, their blessings of food, it might have sounded something like this. Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.

[28:20] That's a good blessing, isn't it? Sometimes when we're praying and thanking the Lord for our meal, it's good to hear other prayers and how people pray, isn't it? That's a good one.

[28:32] We didn't know Jesus' exact words. We just know that he blessed the food. And we noticed he gave the food to the disciples to give to the people.

[28:44] He instructed them what to do, but he gave the food to the disciples what to do, like he did on the Last Supper. With these inadequate resources, it requires the disciples to do the work to complete it.

[28:59] He's teaching them about serving and leadership, much of which we learned a few weeks ago when we heard the story prior to this. He tells them what to do, and they do it.

[29:12] This is, they're getting training. They're getting training all along. He's training the disciples how to be leaders, servant leaders, leaders serve. Very important element to leadership.

[29:25] No matter what we do in your jobs, at your work, help serve. I love it when I go to a restaurant and I see a manager filling in. When people don't have enough help, they're filling in helping serve.

[29:39] They do everything. They're a good leader. Helps serve in all areas of his business. It's humbling and a great thing to do. And they all ate and were satisfied.

[29:55] And they picked up 12 full baskets of the broken pieces and also of the fish. And there were 5,000 men who ate the loaves.

[30:07] Everyone was satisfied. Clean and unclean people alike. We don't know who was all there. They were coming to see Jesus. He's feeding all of them. And everyone was satisfied.

[30:22] Feels good to be satisfied after a meal. We eat good, don't we? Have a good meal. And, oh, it feels great. And then all the leftovers. His compassion, his love for the people.

[30:34] I'm not going to give you enough. I'm going to give you more than enough. And I've been married 30 years. One of the staples in our home is the food.

[30:45] My wife loves to cook. And she makes plenty. Plenty of food. And we so look forward to the leftovers.

[30:57] My kids come home. They always get a couple lunch boxes to take home with them. And they just love it. It's her extension of love to the family. And I love to do it. I love to eat it.

[31:10] I get the leftovers. I get to eat another meal. Sometimes two more meals are the same awesome food that she loves to cook. She spends a lot of time preparing food. It's her love for the family.

[31:22] You can pray for her. So she gets better. She wanted to be here. So what about the 5,000 men here? So again, the same story is in Matthew.

[31:37] And there were about 5,000 men who ate. Besides women and children. So remember we were talking about the 15,000 people. Possibly 20,000 people there. So there was a lot of people.

[31:49] All getting satisfied. Had plenty of food left over. It's an amazing story of provision. Provision. And it's not the disciples or the crowd that meets the need.

[32:03] It was Jesus. Jesus meets the need of the food. Those, again, two fish, five loaves. You could feed maybe, what, two or three people with that?

[32:15] Wasn't very many. Jesus fed 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 people. There's a story that I've been reading about a man named Hudson Taylor.

[32:30] Maybe you've heard of him. I've read him a couple of times. He is, he was a very, very, if you want to call him famous missionary to China.

[32:41] Especially inland China. He really wanted to reach the unreached. His whole life was all about that. And in his preparation to go to China, he was from England. This was in the 1850s, 60s, somewhere in there.

[32:56] In his preparation to go to China, he was doing lots of things. He was living on little, purposefully. He really didn't have much. He was learning to be a physician, so he was working under a doctor.

[33:11] And one of the things he always believed is that, is that I'm not going to ask people for things. I'm going to believe God to move in people's hearts to give, to help me go to China.

[33:23] So he never asked people. Rarely ever, on any account that I'm aware of, he never asked people to give. He just prayed that God would give. And even so much so that he had this little job working for a doctor.

[33:37] And he even decided, well, the doctor said I should ask him, remind me to pay you. Even that, he thought, you know what, I've got to trust God that God will move the doctor to remember to pay me.

[33:55] Well, sure enough, the doctor forgot to pay him. You can imagine the story. God's testing him. He's helping him increase his faith. And so he's living on little, little, little.

[34:08] He's down to half a crown and one meal. Half a crown and one meal. Wasn't much. And so he was at a service. And a poor man came up to him.

[34:20] And asked him if he could come and pray for his family. His wife is sick. His wife was, had a newborn baby, three days old. And they were home, home, they were poor and they had very little.

[34:33] And so Hudson, he's young. Hudson is a young man at this time. And he recognized that the guy was probably from another religion. I don't know how he knew that. He said, well, did you ask your priest?

[34:45] He said, yeah, I did. But the priest wanted 18 pence to come to my home. Wow. And so he knew he needed to go there. So he started going with this man to his house and they're walking through these neighborhoods.

[34:58] And then all of a sudden he recognized this neighborhood that they're coming to. And he goes, oh boy. I've been to this neighborhood before. I got thrashed around at this neighborhood when I was preaching the gospel before. It was not a very safe place.

[35:10] But he decided I need to go help this man. So he goes with them in this rough neighborhood and things are fine. He goes up this dilapidated stairwell up to this very old, beat up house.

[35:25] And there's his wife tired and sick with a three day old baby. And they're starving. And he decided, well, I'm just going to pray. He's got this half a shilling in his pocket.

[35:37] He's got one meal left in his refrigerator. Or wherever they store food back then. Maybe they didn't even have a refrigerator. I don't know. Half a shilling he's always got left.

[35:48] And God's tugging at his heart, you know. And so he prays with them. He still hasn't given them the coin yet. Lord, what do I do? And all of a sudden he's just getting this huge conviction that he knew he had to give him the money.

[36:00] And so he does. He gives the man the money. And so all he's got left. He's got left to help him out. Because he's poor. He has nothing. And so he goes home and he realizes he just needs to praise the Lord.

[36:13] And so he prays God that he's able to give this money away. And has a nice sleep. And gets up in the morning. Eats his last meal. Sure enough, the mailman comes with a letter.

[36:25] And inside the letter drops out a gold coin. God provided for him a gold coin. He helped that man so he could buy food. And God provided him the coin.

[36:38] The gold coin was worth four times the coin that he had given to the poor man and his family. And God provides in desperate. He uses meager means to do great things. He uses meager means to do great things.

[36:52] So, to conclude here. To conclude. And he said to them, how many loaves do you have?

[37:03] Go look. So, giving out a homework assignment today. Go look. Go look at what you have. God's given you enough.

[37:14] God's given you enough. He knows. He himself knew what he was going to do. So, go look at what you have. And look. Ask God what he wants you to do this week.

[37:25] To help someone. Help someone. Encourage them. Maybe you give them some food. Bake them a pie. I don't know. Something that's going to. Something from your heart.

[37:36] That wants to help someone. A friend. A friend in need. And I hope you gain some convictions. I have lots of convictions from this story.

[37:47] I've heard this story many, many times. It just came alive for this last couple weeks in my heart. I hope it did for you too. So, let's just praise the Lord here.

[37:58] Father, I want to say thank you. And we praise you for the day. Thank you for this story. It's truly amazing. Your work. The work you did back then. You want to do today.

[38:09] You do these things today. You know what you want to do with us. Go look. Help us to look at what you've given us, Lord. It's plenty. It's bountifully. We just praise you, Lord, for your goodness and how you take care of us.

[38:23]  Amen.