Miracles | Week 1 | Daniel Goulding | Echoes Church

So, again, we are we're starting a brand new collection of talks this morning called Miracles that again is we've subtitled it the signs of a savior and that's what John's gospel refers to the miraculous signs and wonders that Jesus does is signs

pointing to the fact that Jesus is much more than just a miracle worker and so, what I want to try to do this morning is lay a foundation

as we over the next eight or nine weeks depending on how some stuff shakes out. We're we're going to look at some of the different miracles that Jesus does but today, I just want to lay a foundation that we can kind of build on because I know even when I when I say miracles,

we all we all think different things, right? For for some of us, like a miracle is when you go to the Queen Creek Marketplace and Target has a parking spot that you can park in. I mean, come on somewhere. That's a that's a miracle, right? Or like, you get to Chick fil A at dinner time and it's not going to take two hours to get through the line. Like, that's that's a miracle in the name of Jesus. When when you have little children at home and your toddlers sleep past 05:30 in the morning, that's like a certified miracle, right? And again, sometimes in in our American vernacular,

we we attribute words to things that they don't actually make any sense, right? Like, what what even is miracle whip, right? Like, no, it's definitely not miraculous. It's gross. I don't think you're even allowed to eat it anymore, right? But but what I want to try to do is to go, hey, when I say miracle supernatural,

what immediately happens inside of all of our hearts and minds is all of our upbringing, all of our cultural and theological understanding

kinda comes to the surface and so what what I'm going to ask all of us to do today is as best as we can, let's wipe the slate clean. Let's start from scratch and just go, hey, let's let's just begin to build a healthy foundation. I want to walk through some theology today, some base understanding.

Again, I I my my tension in all of these sermons is I I genuinely wish we could be here for four hours. I know I'm the only one that wishes that but I I like I wish I could just teach because some of this stuff is is so deep intellectually to try to wrap our heads around but I think it's important to lay a foundation. So, here's going to be our working definition that we're going to use when we talk about miracles, okay? Here's what I mean when I say miracle. A miracle biblically, I believe is a supernatural act of god that interrupts the natural order to reveal

god's power, god's purpose, and his presence,

okay? It is a supernatural act that interrupts our daily lives that logic, reasoning, and science often cannot understand and if you do an inductive studies throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you will find that the miraculous and the supernatural is a constant theme throughout it but there's there's typically,

there's typically two main reasons that I see biblically why god and when god does the miraculous and the supernatural. The first reason that god does miracles is because he's trying to restore

order and here's what I mean by that. Okay, you gotta remember that you and I are now living in a fallen and broken world that is the that has the byproduct of sin affecting every single, every single part of the world that we interact with. That wasn't god's original design. In the Garden of Eden, there was no such thing as death. There was no sickness. There was no cancer. There was no heartache. There was no disappointment. It was paradise. It was perfect. That was what this world was created to be and often what god will do when the miraculous steps in is to restore our broken order back into

heaven's order and that's literally when Jesus was teaching his disciples how to pray. He says, here's how you pray. Ask for heaven's

reality to be brought into Earth's reality. That's that's our ask. Is that god's his status, his order would be brought into our our broken world. The first reason that god does miracles is to restore order. The second thing that you see throughout scripture

is that god will do a miracle to validate the messenger that he's trying to prop up, to to validate the person

that he's sending often with a message that people don't want to hear. Okay, one of the first accounts of this that we see in the scriptures is in the book of Exodus. God was he had figured it was time for his people to be brought out of Egypt. They were living in captivity.

So, he chose a man named Moses to go and be the redeemer of god's people but Moses was just like you and I. He was just a he was just a guy. He was a shepherd that had a past. He done some stuff that he wasn't proud of. He had a bit of a stutter and he's like, god, I don't know how you can use me and in Exodus chapter four, we see this interaction between god and Moses and god tells him as Moses protest, what what if they don't believe me or listen to me? What if the people say that the lord never appeared to you? And then the lord asked him, what is in your hand? Again, we're just setting the foundation but I do love the thought that the the makings of the miracle

are already in your graphs. That the makings of all that god needs to do the miraculous in your life, you already have possession of. Moses says, I have a shepherd's staff. Verse three, god tells him to throw it down on the ground. The lord told him. So, Moses threw down the staff. It turned into a snake and Moses obviously freaked out so he jumped back, right? Then, the lord told him, reach out and grab its tail. So, Moses reached out and grabbed it and turned back into a shepherd's staff in his hand. Perform this miracle. Here it is. Then, they will believe that the lord of the god of the ancestors, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the god of Jacob has really appeared to you. He then goes on to tell him, I'm going give you another magic trick. Put your hand inside your pocket. When you pull it out, it will literally be diseased and covered with leprosy. You'll freak everybody out but then put it back in your pocket, pull it out, totally healed, okay? And what god was doing through Moses was he was giving him the ability to do the supernatural things of god to validate the fact that there was something to his message because Pharaoh was not going to want to hear, hey, your entire labor force, the nation of Israel, all the slaves that you employ, yet you've gotta let them all go and he's like, I don't wanna do that and so god gave Moses a supernatural ability to understand

that hey, this is this is not a message just from Moses. This is a message from god. This is something we see all throughout the the Old Testament. When we get to the age of the prophet, again, a lot of the Old Testament is a bunch of prophets giving messages to god's people that again, we are stiff necked and we don't we don't want to listen to god often. We don't want to correct our behavior and so what god does often through these prophets in the Old Testament is he gives them supernatural

abilities so that the people around will listen to him. This is all over the Old Testament but one of the most famous examples is in second Kings chapter one, Elisha

in verse 12, it says that if I am a man of god, let fire come down from heaven and destroy you and your 50 men and again, the fire of god fell from heaven and killed all of them.

There's sometimes I'm like, god, can I have one superpower like that would be pretty baller? Just be like fire from heaven. You know what I mean? And like just fire rain down. See, what the prophets were doing is they were coming and speaking a message to a group of people that were like, hey, we're going in this direction and god was trying to move them into this direction and so often what god would do to validate his messengers is he would give them supernatural abilities.

Well, then, we see at some point, the Old Testament kind of closes. We we looked a few weeks ago as we wrapped up the book of Nehemiah. That's the last historical book in the Old Testament and then we have this four hundred year period of silence where we we don't hear anything. We don't see any supernatural

offerings. We don't see anything actually recorded in scripture until a man named Jesus is born and what was consistent with Jesus's ministry was supernatural signs and wonders. It was not something that he tried to do. It just was a natural byproduct of of who he was and the religious leaders at the time,

they understood, okay, there's something about Jesus because of how he operates. Yes, he teaches with authority but he does the supernatural

like it's ordinary. This is just a normal day in his life. We see an encounter with one of these religious leaders trying to connect the dots that I'm trying to help us connect today of what does the supernatural powers of Jesus mean for you and I. A man named Nicodemus, one of the highest ranking religious leaders at the time. He comes to Jesus in John chapter three and their their conversation is recorded starting in verse two. It says, after dark one evening, he being Nicodemus

came to speak with Jesus and he says, Rabbi, we all know that god has sent you to teach us. Now, this is the first mistake that you and I will be tempted to make when it comes to who Jesus is. See, the greatest mistake that the world makes with Jesus is believing that he just came to teach us some new things.

That he came with some better principles of how to understand being human and are there things that you can take from Jesus' teaching to apply to your life? Yes and amen. But Jesus did not come primarily to teach us some new things. He came to save us from our sins.

He came to redeem us. He came to restore us. He came to usher an entirely new way for us to understand being human. So, that's the first mistake that that Nicodemus makes but he does get this part right. He says, your miraculous signs are evidence that god

is with you. So, he understood that the miraculous power that Jesus operated in that just flowed from who he was was proof that he was not just a normal person. There was something about who he was. Now, again, the part that's kind of crazy with Jesus is all of his closest followers, all of the apostles,

including Paul who wasn't around when Jesus physically walked this Earth but became an apostle because of all of the encounters that he had with the resurrected Jesus. All of Jesus's apostles, the guys that write the majority of the New Testament,

they all operated in similar giftings. The supernatural was just a normal part of their life. It's actually recorded where Peter would walk in in his shadow,

sick people, and lame people that couldn't walk would just touch his shadow and they would be healed. There was this supernatural ability that walked that they all carry that they they walked with Paul.

In second Corinthians chapter 12, he validates himself as an apostle by saying this in chapter 12 verse 12. He says that when I was with you, I certainly gave you proof that I'm an apostle. For I patiently did many signs and wonders and miracles among you. See, Paul says that you can trust

that I'm an apostle because of the supernatural power and ability that I walked with. All of that to say, Genesis to Revelation, what is very clear is the supernatural, the miraculous is all over. The problem becomes, what does that mean for you and I today?

What do, how do we interpret this today? How do we operate in this? And this has divided churches from almost the beginning of time. This is where denominations come from because we we divide over certain things like this and what I want to tell you today is I don't believe that this issue though we might not all see it exactly the same is an issue that we need to divide over. Okay, there's two basic theological backgrounds when it comes to the supernatural and how it operates today. There are a lot of denominations. There's a lot of believers that I believe are going to the same heaven as us will be in heaven together but they would say, they believe what's called cessationism.

The root word is cease. They believe that the supernatural, the miraculous power that we see in the Bible, that was needed for the early church but what they would say was the crystallizing event where that was no longer needed was when the scriptures

were canonized and that the at the giving of the Bible, the word of god now gives us revelation. We don't need the supernatural power like they did in the early church. Okay, that's called cessationism.

I don't believe that. I don't believe I understand how some of them get there but that's not where that's not where I land. I land in the camp of more of a continuationist belief that I believe that what Jesus did is he ushered in an entirely new way for us to be human and he's given us his spirit that indwells in us and we we don't have the ability to do miracles because we are like Jesus. We have the ability to operate in the supernatural

because we have the same spirit that rose Jesus from the grave alive and active in us

but here's what I need to tell you, okay? I I wish I could just give you a little box and tell you, here's exactly how the supernatural and the miraculous fits in it but the reason that churches don't often talk about this stuff is because it's it's it's messy and it's not super easy. It's not black and white and we like things that make sense to us and the supernatural, I'm telling you, it will always be one of those things that defies logic

and we are in a culture where logic and reasoning is supreme but But here's what I promise you. If you ever get outside of The United States, you go to any third world country, I promise you what you will see all over is the supernatural

is almost ordinary and normal. Nobody is having conversations about whether or not the supernatural realm exists. It's just an a normal everyday reality. Yet, it begs the question, why is it not the case inside of The United States?

And I think a big part of it is because we have such little, we have such little faith and we have so much doubt and we've also seen this stuff abused and and not done correctly and so it creates this kind of weird tension where our knee jerk reaction is like, yeah, we just leave that alone. We let the charismatics do their thing in the corner like we don't really know. Freaks us all out a little bit but here's what I wanna do. What I what I'm believing and asking god for is that all of our faith this morning would just be collectively stretched

a little bit and no matter where we sit today and our understanding or belief of this stuff is that maybe we just would ask god, okay, maybe there's something here for us but again, I need you to see this that there's there's tension that's in here because Jesus, he says this in one side of it on on one side. In John chapter 14,

Jesus talking about all this stuff. He says, I tell you the truth. Anybody who believes in me will do the same works that I have done and even greater works because I'm going to be with the father. So, here it is. You can ask anything in my name and I will do it. So, that the son can bring glory to the father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name and I will,

I will do it. On one end of the spectrum, you have Jesus saying that you and I can do even greater things than he, that if we ask anything in Jesus name that he can do it, but then you go to the other end of the spectrum, you have Jesus in Matthew chapter 16 verse four, saying that only an evil and adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign.

He also goes so far to say in Matthew chapter 24, for false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive if possible even god's chosen ones.

Again, what's interesting for me is my faith journey began in a church that was I would say kind of dipping their toes in the water of the supernatural and the charismatic stuff. In my my faith journey also began with signs and wonders. I sat in a worship service like this and from the very beginning, god started to give me these visions where I was preaching on a stage just like this and I was like, this is probably a side effect of all the drugs that I did. Like, I don't know what is happening, right?

But for me, the supernatural was never a debate because my faith journey kind of began with it but then I also watched the church where it became the ultimate thing and it all became about signs and wonders and all of a sudden, I said, like, guys, we're we're worshiping the gifts more than we are the gift giver. It's become more about the miracles instead of the the miracle worker and what what I need us to see is that though I believe in am asking for and believing for god to do the miraculous and the supernatural in our life,

it's a really slippery slope into believing that you and I can become Jesus and that we can actually begin to do exactly what he did and every miracle has to happen because of our power and unfortunately, it just, it doesn't work that way and Jesus also says, you gotta be, you gotta understand that there's people that have the ability to do these miraculous things that are not from god and so there's a really real danger in making it all about just running after the supernatural things but I would also say there's as much danger in just ignoring all of those things and living over here and just believing that there is no such thing as supernatural power available to believers today.

I think both ends of the spectrum are really unhealthy but there's a tension in the middle if you'll live in it that I think is beautiful, it's messy, and it's faith forming

but you gotta understand when it comes to the supernatural and the miraculous, I think it's much more attention to be managed than it is a problem to be solved but we like things that are clear, that are black and white. We don't like messy. Again, here's what I believe. I believe the supernatural,

it isn't necessarily meant to make sense. It's meant to stretch our faith. You know the scripture say that it's impossible to please god without faith?

The only thing that pleases god is not your ability to give, not your ability to serve, it's faith and the one thing that is required for the supernatural to break out again is for the people of god to believe god enough to ask him to do it and at the same time, understand,

we're not god and there also is god's power and will that is taking place that we don't always understand but somehow in the middle of this tension, god will be, god will be glorified.

All all of that to say, what we're going to look at for the next eight or nine weeks are specific miracles that Jesus does because again, he doesn't do them randomly. He's doing specific things to show us different parts of who he is but what's interesting for us, even the scriptures that we have, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is four books that record the life of Jesus. Those books give us but a glimpse into the life of Jesus. Theologians believe on the low end, we have about twenty two days of Jesus's life recorded.

On the high end, we have maybe up to fifty five days but it's a month to a month and a half of his life that we have in the scriptures. In in those small, in that small glimpse that we have, there are 37 unique miracles that Jesus does but

what the scriptures are abundantly clear is that Jesus did tons more miracles than that. We just have those 37 that are recorded, okay? John chapter 20 says this about the supernatural power of Jesus. Says, the disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book but these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

Here's why the miracles of Jesus matter because

they show you and I that he's more than just a good teacher and that he's the savior of the world that you can trust with your soul but it also says that he's the Messiah, the son of god, and that by believing in him, you will have life by the power of his name. See, the second part of this thing that we often forget is that as followers of Jesus who've been given the same spirit that rose Jesus from the grave, a spirit that the Bible says is not a spirit of fear but one of power that gives us a sound mind and self control that you actually have access to power on this side of eternity to conquer some of the things that have been conquering you.

You have the ability to walk in victory though you've been walking in defeat for quite a quite a while. That you and I, to the spirit of god that lives in us, we have the ability to push back the darkness of this world and expand the kingdom of god. There's power available to you and I and I am just convinced that god did not save us to have us just sit in a bunch of pews and just wait for the rapture to come one day. That god saved you to send you into this world because there there is a kingdom to be advanced. There are people that need to be restored.

There is darkness that needs to be pushed back and you are god's messenger.

And I believe that one of the greatest tools and abilities that god has given us is to lean into some of these supernatural things that god has given us. Okay. Again, here's why the miracles of Jesus are so important for us to see because I believe that Jesus really shows us what is is possible for a life submitted to the power of the Holy Spirit.

For this to kind of make sense, you gotta understand this theological term that's called the hypostatic union. Okay, the hypostatic union basically says that Jesus, yes, he was 100% god but he was also 100%

man. See, the scripture say that Jesus was just like you and I. He was broken in every way. He was tempted in every way like we were but he never gave in to sin. He was also 100%

god. Yes, but he was also 100% man and now, again, it's a whole deep theological rabbit hole that doesn't matter. Did Jesus do miracles by the power that he had as god or did he do the miracles by the power that he had to the power of the holy spirit as 100% man?

I don't know and it's not super simple to understand but what I do believe is it begins to show us what is possible for you and I as we begin to lean into the Holy Spirit. Jesus was, yes, god but he was also 100% man. Paul talks about this in Philippians chapter two. He says, though he was god, he did not think of equality with god as something to cling to. Instead,

he gave up his divine privileges. He took the humble position of a slave and was born to a human being when he appeared in human form. All of that to say that gets us now to John chapter six.

Lots of miracles that are incredibly important but John chapter six records the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. Again, if you've been in church before, you know it's more of a crowd of 15 to 20,000 people. Massive audience.

The reason that this miracle is so important, the reason I wanted to start with it this morning is besides the resurrection of Jesus which is without a doubt the greatest miracle in the history of the world. The feeding of the 5,000 is the only other miracle we find in all four gospel accounts and I believe it shows us some things about the supernatural and about the miraculous that we that we need to see. John chapter six, here's how the story begins. It says, after this, Jesus crossed over

to the far side of the Sea Of Galilee also known as the Sea Of Tiberias. A huge crowd kept following him wherever he went because they saw his miraculous signs as he healed the sick. Then, Jesus climbed a hill and sat down with his disciples around him. It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration.

Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him,

turning to Philip, he asks him, hey, where can we buy bread to feed all of these people? This next verse is really frustrating to me if I'm honest. Verse six, he was testing Philip for he already knew what he was going to do. You're like, god, we're already just like big, dumb animals and then you ask us a question that you know we don't know the answer to and you already know what you're to do. Like, you're just setting us up for failure. It's like, when your wife asks you a question like, hey, do I look good in this dress? You're like, I, what do I say? Like, do I, you, I, you just say yes every time, right? Like, just, you say yes. It's a trick question. Like, Jesus asked Philip,

hey, how how should we feed all these people? Again, you've you've heard the story. Jesus's ministry by this point is is growing. People are understanding. There's something about him. All of the people that have ailments when they're in the presence of Jesus, they're they're healed instantly and it tells us here that all the sick people are made well and it's massive crowd is following Jesus. There's there's something to him and then it starts to get late and the disciples are like, hey, we gotta get these people some food. Chick fil A is about to close and Jesus doesn't even realize like we're we're we're going to miss it and so he tries to get him to stop but Jesus instead turns

and begins to show us how the kingdom of god operates and he turns to Philip and theologians have asked for years, why Philip? Most likely, it's because this was Philip's hometown and Jesus turns to a guy that was going to do exactly what we do when we come up against a situation that defies all human logic and reasoning.

We're going to try to solve it with our intellect and our ability and our power and quickly, we will realize that that power and that ability always fall short and what Jesus is doing is he's asking him what should have been a rhetorical question.

How we going to feed all these people? What are we going to do? And again, just putting my cards on the table. The story has nothing to do with bread. It never did.

It has nothing to do with physical food. Jesus was trying to teach us how the kingdom of god operates and he looks to Philip and he says, Philip, what should we do? How should we, how should we solve this thing? What I need you to see is that miracles,

miracles in the scriptures, they they always begin with a moment of testing. They always begin with the presentation of a problem that can't be solved through human ability and maybe what it begins to show us is that when difficulties come into our life,

we don't have to just panic all the time and that maybe when we walk through seasons that are really difficult, when odds are in front of us that we can't face and fix on our own to our own power and our own ability that maybe we are in the the setup for god to step in and intervene and do his thing

and then if there's a problem sitting in your life today that maybe you've got the miracles, you've got the makings of a miracle in your midst and you don't even realize it. See, the difference between miracles and magic is miracles require a problem. They require attention to be solved. They require something

for Jesus to intervene and the problem today for these guys is there's a bunch of hungry people that don't that don't have food. So, we ask Philip a logical question, how would you feed him? Look how Philip responds. Verse seven, he says, even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough money to feed them.

Why is this story recorded in all four gospel accounts? Because I think Jesus was trying to get us to understand when you make a decision to follow Jesus with your life, when you make a decision to bend the knee to the lordship of Jesus, you gotta understand you're entering into an entire new kingdom

and you will have to learn how to walk not by sight but by faith and your default, our default is to think through things logically yet we serve a god that doesn't exist in just the natural realms. We serve a god that is a god of the supernatural

and we need to learn what that means for us and how we can pray differently when you understand. Wait, god is not limited to what I can see and what I can understand. He knew that Philip's default answer. He knew that our default answer would always be to think through things through logic, in reasoning, in rationale.

You look how the story continues. Says verse eight, then Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, he spoke up. He said, hey, there's a young boy here that I, you know, he must have like wrestled him like, how do you even find this kid? But he's got five barley loaves and two fish and he says, but what what good is that with this huge crowd? Now, again, what's amazing to me is that there's only one mom that had foresight that day to like having to pack my kid a lunch, right? Like, one mom, you killed it, right? Like, you get the award for best mom of the week, right?

She sends her son with a lunch and somehow in the midst of this confusion and the chaos, we don't know how long the scene is unfolding but they find one kid that's got a couple pieces of bread and a couple pieces of fish and if I'm that boy to be honest and I hear they're trying to feed a crowd of 20,000,

I'm sitting on that lunch. I'm not saying a word, right? Like, I'm like, this is this is dumb. I'm not giving up my food to not be able to feed twenty, zero people. Yet, somehow, this little boy

when asked again, I don't know if it was a decision of faith or they just took it from him but I either way, this boy takes what he has in his hands. He gives it to the disciples who give it to Jesus and we begin to see the purpose of this whole miracle. See, think Jesus knew the whole time. All the teaching, the whole days long moment was all a setup to get to this place. You know, there's one boy in the crowd that has a lunch and I'm going to show everybody how the kingdom of god operates

and what you've gotta understand with the miraculous and the supernatural is that god can do immeasurably more than you could ever possibly imagine. What what it requires from us is beginning to see our resources, our faith, our abilities

different. What this story tells me is that what god god will multiply what it is that you're willing to surrender. See, god doesn't need you to have all of the resources to do the financial miracle that you need in your life. He just needs some resources and he needs you to be willing to surrender those resources.

See, the other part that I love about this is if it's true that god can do

great miracles with little faith. Remember the story that Jesus told about the parable of the mustard seed? He said, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can see mountains moved in the name of Jesus. What he's saying is that you don't have to have perfect faith to believe for healings and breakthrough and to watch the supernatural begin to move in your life. You just have to have a little faith and surrender it to Jesus and to bring it to god and to bring your unresolved

questions and the tension and how all you saw this stuff abused and again,

don't hear what I'm not saying. I have been a part of churches where this has become incredibly abused and it is not healthy but also, that doesn't mean we just throw it away. We don't just throw it out with the baby with the bathwater because there is still beauty

inside of this and what Jesus is saying is that if you're here and there's things in your life where you're desperate for a miracle, begin to invite the miracle worker in. Open up the door and watch what Jesus will do with your your little. Your little faith can move mountains.

Addictions can be broken. Marriages can be restored. Families can be reconciled. Loved ones can come back to Jesus through the faith of some people who are willing to surrender it to Jesus. Again, I wrote it down this way. God, god doesn't need much. He just needs it to be yours and he needs it to be surrendered.

There's power on the other side of surrender in the kingdom of god. This is what Paul says, Ephesians chapter three verse 20. Now, all glory to god who is able through his mighty power at work within us to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

So, Jesus gives his little boy's lunch and then he tells everyone, sit down.

You know, it's going be a good day when Jesus tells the crowd, hey, guys, it's time to sit down. You're about to see something, right? Jesus said, so they all sat down on the grassy slopes. The men alone numbered about 5,000. Then Jesus took the loaves. He gave thanks to god. He distributed them to the people and afterward, he did the same with the fish Then, they all ate as much as they wanted.

After everyone was full, Jesus told his disciples, now gather the leftovers so that nothing is wasted. So, they picked up the pieces and filled 12 baskets with scraps left by the people who had eaten them from the five barley loaves. It's a beautiful story with one little lunch.

Jesus feeds a crowd of probably 20,000 people, and there's so much left over at the end that each of the 12 apostles walks home with a basket full of bread and fish, remembering the faithfulness of God. Imagine, imagine the faith that those 12 apostles walked away with after watching that.

Sitting there with the basket full of bread in their house going, man, thought god couldn't do anything yet. I'm sitting here tangibly holding the fruit of what I thought God couldn't do.

And what I'm asking for is for God to bring us some baskets of bread to increase our faith, to watch him again do powerful, mighty works in our midst because there's a world that is desperate to meet a Jesus that they don't know yet and the god is going to use you and I to be those messengers

but here's the best part about this whole miracle. The best part about feeding of the 5,000

is it's one of the few stories where Jesus connects the dots for us. Often, he he leaves it kind of open ended and it forces us to go through the rationalization and the logic of going, wait, what was Jesus doing? See, in this miracle, Jesus just plainly tells us, what was the purpose of the whole miracle? Why did you do all of this? The the third thing that you need to see from the story is what Jesus was setting up is it's Jesus that satisfies like nothing else can. See, the hard part is that you and I, we will be tempted to believe if we just had a little bit more bread, if we just had some more money, if we just got the next job or the next car, if we finally got out of our season of singleness and got married, that's when this thing inside my soul would finally be filled and I would have purpose and I I would have meaning and and life would be colorful again and I'm here to tell you today that all of those things,

they're good. They can help momentarily but in and of themselves, they cannot satisfy your soul and what Jesus was saying that the abundant bread that is available for all of humanity is Jesus himself

and here's what's amazing to me. Jesus literally just plainly tells us that that Jesus doesn't just give the bread, he actually,

he is the bread. He is the one that is abundant, that is waiting for humanity to come back to him, who is sitting here today beckoning to his children to to come home to him and watch what he can do with the life surrendered to his. See, here's what's amazing. If you skip down with me, John chapter six verse 26,

this exact same thing happens a couple days later. The story gets out that Jesus can turn a little into a lot and so a crowd forms again and Jesus kind of rebukes them and in verse 26, he says, I tell you the truth, you you want to be with me because I fed you not because you understood the miraculous sign. See, this is the danger when you make it all about the miraculous.

See, if you miss that the greatest miracle of all is that god has redeemed lost and broken people. I'm telling you, the greatest miracle that you and I will ever get to experience is the fact that god could redeem and restore broken people like you and me.

That god would take a wretch like us and bring us into completion that he who knew no sin became sin so that you and I, we could become the righteousness of god and you could be a friend of god again. I'm telling you, that is the greatest miracle. All the rest.

Man, it's just cherries on top of the cake. It's icing but the greatest miracle

is that god is not asking you to fix your life yourself. That he's the bread and he paid the price so that you and I could have a relationship with him. Again, skip down with me to verse 35.

Jesus plainly says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. What is the point of the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000? Jesus was trying to say, he's not just what we want. He's everything that we need.

Jesus is life. He's the totality of meaning and purpose and significance and as long as you still keep thinking that Jesus is just a part of your life and that you'll just contain your faith to like a Sunday morning thing but the rest of your life is yours.

I'm telling you, it's no wonder that the people of god who identify as Christians don't operate in what we see as a normal kingdom reality that when you truly begin to understand who you are, that all of this is passing away, that this is all gonna perish one day and all of us are gonna spend eternity with god someday

that sometimes it begins to reframe even how we approach god and ask for healings. See, I know right now that there are people who are in our church who are desperate for god to move. The tension of a message like this is what do you say to the people that prayed and prayed and prayed and yet their loved ones still died.

The cancer diagnosis didn't change. See, sometimes we go, well, then that means that it it didn't work or maybe it means it didn't work like we thought it was going to work. That god's healing just looked different than we thought it was going to look.

See, here's amazing. We're gonna look at the story of Jesus bringing a guy named Lazarus back to life and he literally takes a person who's dead and he brings him back to life and for some of us, we think that's what we needed. God, I needed him to come back to life and if you just did that, then I would believe.

You know what's crazy? Lazarus still died again. Even though Jesus brought him back to life once, he still died. It was years and years later but he still died and had to face what was going to happen to him in eternity

and I need you to see today. I believe that god can do anything. There's nothing in your life that Jesus can't intervene and begin to bring supernatural power into but there's only one miracle that I can guarantee you that god will do every single time. There's only one miracle that I see in the scriptures that happens 100%

of the time and it's when a lost and broken person sees the power of Jesus and comes to him in repentance, asks for him, confesses with his mouth, and believes in his heart that Jesus is lord, 100%

of the time, that person will be saved. You don't have to wonder. You don't have to worry. Jesus is enough. He can save you. He can redeem you and he can restore you.

All the rest of it, man, we're gonna believe, we're gonna ask, and we're gonna trust that god is gonna do something powerful in and through us but let us never lose sight that the greatest miracle

is that we have life on this side of heaven through the resurrection power of Jesus. It is why everyone of you on your way in, you got one of these guys here. Jesus told his disciples

that I need you to do this in remembrance of me because you will get caught in the hustle and bustle of this life. If you didn't get a communion cup, just throw your hand up in our ushers. We'll give you one here. He told his disciples that I need you to do this to remember that for us, it was just an act of faith. It's something that we receive.

We just believe that Jesus is who he says that he is. It doesn't really cost us that much but for us to go from darkness to light, from death to life, it cost Jesus everything and so Jesus took his closest friends the night before he was betrayed.

He gathered him in an upper room and he took a piece of bread and he held it up just like he did in John chapter six. He took the bread. He blessed it before the father. He broke it. He distributed and he said to you and I, take and eat the body that was broken for you. And

then with his friends gathered in the upper room, he took a cup. He said, guys, I want you to remember the blood that will be spilled for you.

That your ability to have life on this side of eternity came at the cost of Jesus's blood poured out for all of humanity. So, he took a cup. He held it up and said, to do this, drink and of bit

a

that god is going to stretch our faith and I'm encouraging you to believe again that maybe maybe god is bigger, maybe god's power is more real than you could ever possibly imagine. Can I pray for you? Father, I thank you. God so much for who you are. That god in the middle of our mess, in the middle of our brokenness,

you step in and you speak life, you speak hope. There is nothing that you can't intervene in and begin to change and father, know that there are people sitting here this morning who who are desperate for you to move, whose marriages are on the brink of failure and god, we're asking for a miracle.

God, whose health is in decline and all the doctors have said that there's no, there's no way this changes. Jesus, by your blood, we are asking for miracles and healing to break out in the body of Christ in Jesus name.

Father, I know that there are finances that are in ruins and Jesus, we just ask your provision to be there

but father, all the unspoken needs that I don't know about. Lord, you know and father, we just right now, we lift up our collective prayer, our collective faith to you, and we ask in your name. Jesus, would things be different? It is in the mighty and holy name of Jesus that all god's people said. Amen and amen.