God Almighty’s Instrument

Transcript

Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Yes, that greeting establishes the fact that this is indeed your friend Dr. Cook and I’m glad, so glad to be back with you, to share from the Word of God. What we try to do is to put a handle on it so that you can it hold of it for yourself, God’s inerrant Word is forever true whether or not anybody reads or believes it, but it becomes of value when it is hidden in your heart. The psalmist said, “Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee”, so he put a handle on it so you can get hold of it for yourself. Well, I trust everything’s going okay at your house, bless your heart. If some of you have struck a rough day, look up and say, Lord Jesus see me through this one and He will. Not every day is full of roses as you know, we have some rough ones. The tears fall, and our hearts ache, things go wrong, that’s how life is, but He said, “I”, this is God talking, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee”, so that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, the one who built this universe is helping me and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.

In those days, the multitude being very great, now people were following the Lord Jesus wherever He went. He just couldn’t get away from people because the news had spread concerning the miracles that He was performing and everywhere He went there were just crowds so, and there were people just, that was what they did, they just hung around and they didn’t go home. They just stayed wherever He went they went. That was the deal. “In those days the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples unto Him and sayeth unto them, ‘I have compassion on the multitude because they’ve now been with Me three days and have nothing to eat and if I send them away fasting to their own homes, they will faint by the way, for different ones of them came from far’, and His disciples answered Him and said, ‘From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness’”? Oh, you can just hear them. Who me? I can’t do that. ‘From whence can a man satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness”, and He asked them, “How many loaves have ye”? Now this is the second time that our blessed Lord has done that very thing to the disciples. Back in chapter 6 He said, “Give ye them to eat”, and they asked in terms of human potential, you want us to going by 200 days wages worth of bread? No, He said, “How many loaves have ye? Go and see”. You would think by this time that they would’ve learned the lesson, but no they hadn’t. Mark remarks in the end of chapter 6, it says, “Their heart was hardened”, 6:52, so they hadn’t learned. So He said, “How many loaves have ye?” they said, “Seven”. He commanded the people to sit down on the ground, He took the seven loaves and gave thanks and break them, gave to His disciples to set before them and they did set them before the people and they had a few small fishes, and He blessed and commanded to set them also before them. “So they did eat and were filled and they took up of the broken meat that was left, seven baskets of they that had eaten were about 4000 and then He sent them away”.

Now what do you make of all this? Let’s just look at what the words say to us as we go through the passage. Here you have the presentation of an impossible problem. God delights to face you with something you can’t handle, so He can handle it for you. Have you learned that yet? God delights to face you with something you can’t handle so He can handle it for you an answer to prayer and faith. You had the multitude being very great, turns out to be 4000 people, and it was a hungry multitude, nothing to eat. Jesus is there, the disciples are there, now this is the combination, a human need, nothing to fill it, Jesus and somebody who trusts Him. Will you remember that combination? When there’s a human need and it’s impossible and you don’t know how to grapple with and how to meet the need, remember the combination is the need plus Jesus and you. That’s all it takes because He can take what you and I have and multiply it by His grace and power to meet the need and face the challenge.

So, it said, “He called the disciples”, didn’t call somebody else, “He called the disciples”, people who knew Him and were working with Him. They were the responsible ones. He wanted to teach them that. He said, “I have compassion on the multitude because they’ve been with Me three days and have had nothing to eat, if I send them all now they’re not going to make it home because they came from such a long distance”. Stop here long enough to think about that word compassion. Greek word splagchnizomai which refers us to the ancient belief that the seat of the emotions was in your viscera, your vital organs, your gut. That was the belief. Well of course it takes medicine about 2000 years to come around again, and so today the psychologists and psychiatrists are talking about “a gut reaction”, aren’t they? In any case the word means that if you want to make it just exactly what seems to be wrapped up in that verb, it means He had a spasm of pain His vital organs. It hurts Him, it hurts Him. He said, it hurts Me to look at this multitude. I have compassion. Our Jesus is said to have been moved with compassion on a number of occasions and the I remember the leper that to came to our Lord Jesus Christ and said, “Lord if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean”, and Jesus was moved with compassion and said, “I will be thou clean”, remember that? He had compassion on the multitude, we have that here. He had compassion on the unfortunate people, He moved compassion over Jerusalem, He said, “O Jerusalem how often would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you would not”. He had compassion on the leper we just talked about that, He had compassion on the poor widow that had lost her son and on Mary and Martha who had lost their brother. Compassion, compassion. It hurt Him.

Now this tells us again something that we must always remember. The Lord Jesus knows how you feel. We have, the writer to the Hebrews says, “We have a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities”. Somebody comes to see you, you’re in the hospital, you’re doubled up with pain and this cheerful friends says, “Well, cheer up. It isn’t so bad”. You look at him and you say, “You don’t understand how I feel”. The love of your life walks away from you and leaves you with a broken home and a broken heart and people say, “Well buck up and face the future and it will turn out all right”, and you say, “You don’t know how I feel”, and you’re right, aren’t you? How can we know how the other person feels? See, but the Lord Jesus Christ knows. It says, “He was tested in all points like as we are, yet without sin”. He knows, He’s faced the tests. He’s faced the sting of ingratitude, He’s faced the heartache of loneliness, He has faced something you and I will never have to face, thank God, the entire load of man’s sin, “As He was made to be sin for us, He who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him”. Yes our Lord Jesus Christ knows and because He knows, He can help, “I have compassion on the multitude”. He cares about crowds, He cares about individual hurting people, He cares about people who are crying because someone has died, He cares about people who are sick and have no hope apart from God’s intervention, He cares about them.

Somebody sitting in a cold apartment and the money has run out and there is nothing that you could do, and you’re saying, “Does Jesus care?” yes He does. Not only that, but my friend, if you get out on your knees and pray and then believe Him for the answer, He will either send the answer to you or send you to the answer. Did you know that? I’ve been through this now, I know. I have been broke and I have prayed and God has answered my prayer. I know that God answers prayer and He’ll answer it for you. Now, as long as we sit and complain, God can’t do much because that’s unbelief, but it will believe Him for it and thank Him in advance for the answer that’s coming, He’s going to see is through. God can make a way, He’s a way maker and He’s a heart rearranger. He’ll give you a new heart and a new spirit andmake a way for you. Yes, thank God, He will, He has compassion. “Casting all your care upon Him for He careth for you”, that verb means you are His concern, you are His concern, He’s concerned about you. So, you can cast your care upon Him. The psalmist said, “Roll your burden on the Lord and He shall sustain thee”.

Well He said this to His disciples didn’t He, said, “I have compassion on the multitude. They’ve been with me three days, they have nothing to eat, if I send them away hungry they’re going to collapse by the way because they came from a long distance”. Now, the disciples knew that He was facing them with the challenge. They knew that Christ, they knew that Christ was facing them with the challenge because immediately they answered defensively, didn’t they? Said, “From whence can amend satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness”. How can you get anything to eat here? You’re expecting the impossible of us. Now, He asks them the question, “How many loaves have ye”?

Go back to God’s dealing with Moses there on the backside of the desert. Moses had had 40 years now to become wise and humble in the ways of trusting God, and He’s now in the presence of God there at the burning bush. His shoes are off his feet, he’s standing reverently in the presence of God, standing on holy ground and God says, “I want you to deliver my people from Egypt”. You’re ready now, you weren’t ready before, but I want you to do it. He says, “Who me? I stutter, I stammer, I can’t do it”, and God said to Him in a question, said, “What is that in thine hand”? Do you remember the story? “What is that in thine hand”? Moses said, “It’s a shepherd’s staff”, and God through miraculous intervention right there in that desert scene, caused Moses to know that there was power enough in what Moses had in his hand, to demonstrate that God was still on the throne.

Whatever you have today, now some of us don’t have much, but everybody listening to me has something that God can use, do you know that? Everybody listening to me has something that God can use, and so at this point, you give it to Him, “What is that in thine hand”? He said to the disciples, “How many loaves have ye? Give ye them to eat”. Well, we get back at this the next time we get together.

Dear Father today, help us to realize that Thou are looking to us to be the instrument for God’s Almighty power in meeting a need, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!