Authority Over Scarcity

it'd be easier if I don't try to help fix your issues cuz I'm too broken. But Jesus uses the broken disciples and he says, "I'm going to bring my church, my gospel through you." He says, "You feed them." The disciples knew they didn't have enough. Jesus didn't care about the reservations of their inconvenience. He cared about the people, the crowd that was there. The first move of every miracle is his mercy. And when he moves, he often moves through ordinary people like me and like you who are willing to hand over the little they have. So we are glad that you're here in this time where we just get to dive into God's word and see what he has for us. And I want to encourage you if you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it and open up to Matthew chap 14. Matthew chapter 14. And we're going to be starting in verse 13 in a second. And today we're going to spend the majority of our time here planted in this passage, but it's also going to kind of launch us into John chapter 6. And eventually we'll end at John chapter 14. But as we dive into this text, we're going to see this topic that naturally comes up is, do we have enough? You know, that's a question that I spent all last week asking because school ended and in the Bailey households, we have four kids in our house and two of them who have been in school now all of a sudden are in our house the whole time. And the question me and my wife is, do we have enough? We do not have enough food. We go to Costco a lot. I think we're going to have to go to Costco twice a week and the food just never ends. And then I'm like, are we do we have enough food? The question is, no. Do we have enough money to buy all this food that they keep on eating? Nobody financially prepares you for the very stage of kids' lives. Like little kids. Like my wife's like, "I bought blueberries." I was like, "How much were they?" They were like $8. I was like, " $8 for blueberries?" Like, "It was it was at Sam's Club. It's fine." I'm like, "Just do." They're like, "They like it." I'm like, "Well, tell them to like a different fruit. find a neighbor who we can steal it off their tree. But as I'm looking around my house, I'm like, do we have enough? Do we have enough? And today when we come to our passage, we ask the question, do we have enough? And Jesus answers it. Because today, as we come to Matthew 14, starting in verse 13, we're going to see that Jesus addresses this issue of scarcity. Now, if you've been with us through this series, we've been going through the miracles of Christ, and he's addressed storms and demons and sin and darkness and death. And you're like, scarcity? Like, I don't know if that's on the same level as the rest. But scarcity is something all of us must face. Scarcity is the voice that whispers that there is not enough, that there is not enough money. Can I get an amen on that? There is not enough time. Can I get a bigger amen on that? That there is not enough margin in your life. That there is not enough sleep. I have four kids, nine and under. There is not enough sleep. There is not enough patience to deal with the problems of your day, to deal with the kids in your life, the job you are doing. There is not enough years to maybe accomplish and do all that you wish you could do. There is not enough of you to go around. You see, I don't think I have to convince anyone in this room that scarcity is a very real thing. That you woke up this morning aware that in some area of your life, you do not have enough. In some area, there is something missing. Maybe the bill that you can't pay, the child that you can't reach, the marriage you can't heal on your own, the diagnosis that you cannot heal, the hope that you cannot quite muster anymore. And the question this text is asking is the question I want us to wrestle with this morning is what does Jesus do when we don't have enough? So, if you'll read with me in Matthew 14, starting in verse 13, it says this that when Jesus heard about it, he withdrew from there by boat to a remote place to be alone. When the crowds heard this, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a large crowd. He had compassion on them, and he healed their sick. When evening came, the disciples approached him, and they said, "This place is deserted and is already late. Send the crowds away so that they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves. You don't need to go away. Jesus told them, you give them something to eat. Verse 17, but we only have five loaves and two fish. The disciples replied to him, bring them here to me, Jesus said. Then he commanded the crowds to sit on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fish. Looking up to heaven, he blessed them. He broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples. And the disciples gave them to the crowds. Everyone ate and was satisfied. They picked up 12 baskets full of leftover pieces. Now, those who ate were about 5,000 men besides women and children. Let's pray to our father as we start this study. Dear Lord, I thank you. God, I thank you that as we come to this passage where we wrestle with what is enough, Lord, you answer it for us in yourself. God, I just thank you for all who have gathered here today, I thank you for this Memorial Day holiday where we reflect on maybe those who have we have lost, maybe those who have paid a sacrifice and there are still hurt in our families and in our friendships of those who have paid great prices. Lord, let us remember them. Let us honor them and ultimately let us worship you as the God over everything. Lord, we just thank you for this time and we ask that your presence be in this place and we lift all this up in Jesus' name. Amen. As we dive into this passage, we need a little context as we start in at verse 13 because right away it says, "When Jesus heard about it," and we have to ask, "What did Jesus hear?" Well, what immediately precedes this is Jesus's cousin John the Baptist had been arrested and he had been killed and beheaded by the queen and these wicked people around him. And when news of his cousin, his friend, the one who baptized him, the one who was the next coming of Elijah, who had foretold that he was coming, when news of John's death had reached the ears of Jesus, we dive into this scene. And in verse 13, it says when he heard about it, this trigger word here, he hears the news and Jesus withdraws. He's grieving. He's having he's heading for solitude. He gets in a boat to be alone, but the crowd finds him. And what we see happen next in this story is really just preaches straight to us. And I think as we start this, the feeding of the 5000, this miracle that we're going to unpack, it shows us two things. And the first thing it shows us, it shows us compassion for our hurts. As we said, Jesus has just gotten the worst news of his earthly life. He he crossed the lake to be alone. You know when you try to go somewhere alone and people follow you? If you got little kids in your house, you try to go to the bathroom alone and they follow you. Maybe you've been married for a long time and you try to go to the bathroom alone and your spouse follows you. You can be like, "Can you leave? Like go away like far away on the other side of the house." Okay. And and Jesus was just like looking for a quiet place to grieve. This was before there was restrooms with shut doors and then you could just be and scroll on your phone for an hour. Um, which gets you hemorrhoids and that's I'm sorry THAT IS NOT IN MY NOTES. WHY DID I SAY THAT? What are we talking about? Gets away from me quick. Don't listen to the voices in your head. Anyway, so Jesus goes to be alone and he gets in this boat and hits land and then he's greeted by thousands of people. It says that right in verse 14 it says as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd. Can you just picture this for a second that Jesus going to be by himself to be alone he steps offshore and he steps there and he sees this huge crowd. If I am Jesus in this standpoint, I'm slipping out the back door. I'm trying to disappear. I'm done. I have nothing left to give. But that's not what Jesus does. And this is the beautiful thing over and over again when we look in the Gospels and we see Jesus be like, I would do this. Jesus usually does the opposite. Why? Because he is God. And here's what it says. When he saw the large crowd in verse 14, he had compassion on them. The Greek word for this word compassion is splatinazimo. Or it's even harder to say than that. I actually listened to it 10 times over the week and I still got it wrong. It's a big word, but here's what it means. It's this gut level word. It means that the insides, his gut was moved when he saw the crowd. It's like when you have someone you love, a child or a spouse or a close family member when they are sick and you're like, I wish we could just trade places. I see you in pain. I see you in agony, in this gut level compassion just comes up. This deep physical ache that says, I cannot leave that person where they are. And that is what Jesus felt when he looked at the crowd that had ruined his grief. You know, as I was reading it, I was like, you know, this is honestly as as I was like trying to get into the mindset of Jesus, I was like, this is the hardest part about being a dad or being a mom is that some times there are just no days off. I I I found tried to look for the time clock of where I could clock out being a dad and I could not find it. And we can't clock out from being a dad or a mom or a spouse. It's something we do all the time. And sadly, we fail time and time again at that. But the hardest part of opening people into our lives, in being a part in leading, in loving people is there are no days off. And here's the thing, Jesus compassion for us, it didn't take a day off even when he was hurting. And here's the beauty of this. There has never been a moment in the history of the world when Jesus has been too tired, too sad, too overwhelmed, too disappointed to feel compassion for you. Hebrews 4:15 says that we have a high priest in Jesus Christ who is able to sympathize with our weakness. That's why he came here on earth to understand how messed up and weak humans are to know what our experience is like. And Jesus didn't just have compassion when his tank was full. He had compassion when his tank was empty. And then it moves on to verse 15. And I love it cuz this one stings because I see myself in the way that the disciples answer here. They they basically come up to him and say, "Hey Jesus, send them home." They're like, "It's getting late. They're hungry. They need to figure it out for themselves. This isn't our problem." He literally says, "Send them in the villages so they can eat." He's like looking around. He's like, "There's no Chick-fil-A out here. Go tell them to go somewhere else." He's like, "It's like being in like Tucson. There's nothing good there. Go somewhere else." That wasn't in my notes either, but it's the first thing that pops in my head. But he's like, "Hey, this is not our problem, Jesus. Let's not take this on." But I love Jesus' answer in verse 16. It's one of the most striking lines in all the gospel. He says, "They don't need to go away." And then he puts it on the disciples. You give them something to eat. And the disciples, they wanted to dismiss the hurt. But Jesus wanted to address it. And he didn't want to just address it. He wanted to use them to address it. Now, now church, think about what is happening in the story. As we come to 2026, the world is full of hurting people. And the temptation of every church member, every disciple in every era is to say, "Send them away. It's not my problem. Let them figure it out. I'm tired. I'm tapped out. I'm dealing with my own stuff. Let them figure it out." But Jesus looks at his tired, grieving, underresourced disciples and he looks at us today and says, "You feed them." You see, it's hard to love and feed our world because it takes a lot of energy that Christ calls us to be. Over the past year, we kind of rolled out in our church. We say our mission is to make Jesus known. But we ask like, how do we know we are making Jesus known? like what is he doing in building in us and creating us to know we're headed the right direction. And one of the things we unpack here at Christ Church is surprise is we will know we are making Jesus known and being effective when we are hungry, humble, and hospitable. When we are hungry, that we are chasing after Christ. We're getting closer to him. We're spiritually craving on him. Where we are humble. where we stop thinking that we are on second base because we hit a double, but we realize that God has moved us and provided so we can give our time and energy to others. But we also talked about this last one. I think the hardest one in the suburbs of surprise is to be uncomfortably hospitable. And when we said we want to be uncomfortably hospitable, we said we want to bring people into our homes. those who are church members and saints, but those who are also sinners of our neighbors and those who are hurting around us. And let me tell you, it's not always easy to host and love people in your home, to get meal, to break bread, and to do life together. Me and my wife have fully embraced this through ministry. And God has challenges this more and more. And I and I love having people over. I love having family. Just last weekend, we had families over. And uh whenever we invite like two families over, it ultimately ends like there's like 20 kids in our house just because we have so many and they have kids and it's just chaos. And I love cleaning up our house and making the food and doing all that. But sometimes even unforeseen things happen. Like the hardest part of hosting for us now isn't the cleanup. It it isn't the food. It isn't making sure our kids aren't jerks and hit other kids. It is the stuff that sometimes happens after the fact. This past weekend, we had two families over. Everything went great. We enjoyed it. And then at 11:00 p.m. at night, my 2-year-old daughter, Alice, started throwing up in her crib. So, that meant we had to text the other families to be like, "Your kids are going to start throwing up any minute now." And and it was almost like this gut-wrenching thing. Even when we're trying to do the right thing, even when we're loving our community, even when things are going well, sometimes there's a temptation of like, I I don't know if I can do enough. I it would be easy if I just like put my kids in a bubble. You put your kids in a bubble. We don't even do life together. It'd be easier if I don't try to help fix your issues cuz I'm too broken. But Jesus uses the broken disciples and he says, "I'm going to bring my church, my gospel through you." He says, "You feed them." And you see, the disciples knew they didn't have enough. They knew they didn't want the liability of getting all these people out here, feeding them food, and them throwing up after and then be like, "Oop, that was bad." But here's the thing. Jesus didn't care about the reservations of their inconvenience. He cared about the people, the crowd that was there. And in this front half of this passage, here's what I think we need to see. Jesus has compassion for our hurts. The first move of every miracle is his mercy. And when he moves, he often moves through ordinary people like me and like you who are willing to hand over the little they have. Which leads us right into the second thing this miracle shows us. Not only the compassion that Christ has, but it also shows us the resources for our needs. The resources for our needs. You you look at verse 17 as the story keeps unwinding. It says here as he's telling them, you feed them. The excuses come. But but we only have five loaves and two fish here. They said to him, "Five loaves, two fish." And now we're talking about a small little packed lunch. These five loaves are probably like the size of a biscuit. This was not like your sourdough bread that you might bake in the oven if you're in your sourdough era and your starter hasn't died. Some of you know what I'm talking about, right? These are like tiny little bread little baskets like little things you you get at without the cheese at Red Lobster. Okay, so like less than that but small. And then these are two fish. These aren't like big old fish. These are probably dried fish almost like the size of sardines. And all this this was this little boy's lunch as John tells us in his account. This was all they had. You think about this for a second from the disciples perspective is do you know what it's like to feel like your food is always disappearing and the shelves as soon as they get stocked are just empty again. They were probably going around they're like there's got to be some food here. Maybe I'll look in this area. Maybe I'll look in that area. And everywhere they tried to look there was just not enough. But check out what God does with this. As he sees that there is not enough food. It then turns to it gets the problem gets more complex because then all of a sudden they see there's not enough food because they start counting the crowd. Verse 21 it says, "Now those who ate and and we're skipping ahead, but we'll get to how they ate in a second were about 5,000 men besides women and children." It says 5,000 there. And this is why this miracle is commonly called the feeding of the 5,000. But they only counted the men. They didn't even count the women and children. Ancient estimates said this size of the crowd was probably more like 15 to 20,000 people. 15 to 20,000 people hanging out in the middle of nowhere in a wasteland slightly better than Tucson waiting for some food. And all the disciples can bring to Jesus is five little loaves of bread and two small fish. And what does Jesus do with it? Well, we're told in verse 18 as they collect these and it's the only thing they can find in the whole sea of 15,000 to 20,000 people, they bring it to Jesus and he says this in verse 18, he says, "Bring them here to me the stuff they had." Then he commanded the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he blessed them. He broke the loaves and gave them to disciples. and the disciples gave them to the crowds. Now, slow that down. There are four things that Jesus does right here. He took the elements that he was given. He blessed them. He broke them and then he gave them out. These four words will be used again throughout the gospel. These of he took, he blessed, he broke and he gave. And the next time Matthew will use these four words is actually in Matthew chapter 26 where he talks about the first Lord's supper that the night before Jesus was crucified when he sits down with his 12 disciples in a room they are going to do the same thing as Jesus is pointing forward to that miracle of what he will ultimately perform on the cross. And as Jesus takes and he blesses and he breaks and he gives, in verse 20, we see the results of this. It said, "Everyone ate and they were filled and they picked up 12 baskets full of leftover pieces." Now, I don't think there's an accident here that there are 12 baskets. There's one for each disciple that was present. And I don't think that's an accident or coincidence. The disciples started that day saying, "We don't have enough." And then each one of them got a whole basket overflowing with food, showing them how wrong they were. Jesus didn't just meet the need of the crowd. He outpaced the doubt of the disciples that were following him. And I think here's what the text wants you to see. that five loaves and two fish in your hands in the hands of disciples, that is a problem to feed 20,000 people, but five loaves and two fish in the hands of Jesus is a feast that will never end as long as he doesn't want it to. I love this because as we read this passage, I think about how God often calls us out of our comfort zone to show how he can provide. If this is your church family, in March, we launched an ambitious 2-year campaign called Let's Go. You heard about our Let's Go launch, which is our internship program where we want to raise up leaders in the church. But our Let's Go in March, we talked about how we also want to raise up the resources for this. And over the next two years, we asked our church family to say, "Hey, what would it look like for you to commit to funding the mission of how can we start more churches in more areas so the gospel and Jesus can be made known in a greater impact that not just has an impact today, but for generations to come?" And if you've been part of Cross Church, we're already doing this in our collective. By the end of the year, we'll have six locations in Arizona where we have pastors at each locations preaching and teaching and leading worship. That's already six of those in Arizona. We have three of those internationally. But we're asking God of like, how can you continue to do this more? How can you multiply what you already doing in a way that we can't even understand and we can't take the credit for? And here's the thing that I had the same mentality of the disciples as we came into this. Like, God, I I don't think we have enough. I know I don't have enough in my bank account. I don't know if I have any more time. I don't know if I have any more margin. I have any more bandwidth. I can only do this much. And sometimes when God calls us to big things, the first thing we say is like, I I don't think I have enough God. Like I I just have this little bit, these five loaves, these two fish. They're not going to contribute to the church. They're not going to contribute to the kingdom. And most of us, if we're honest, we rock around clutching what little we have, terrified to hand it over. But here's the thing. The only path to a miracle is when we hand over the little that we have to Christ and watch how he uses it in more abundance than we ever could. He says, "What's underlying all this story? What is in your hand this morning that you've refused to give it? When you give it to Christ, he will do more with it than you can do alone. Your money, your gifting, your story, your hurt, your pain, hand it over. And watch how God uses it. And you see, this is exactly what this miracle shows us. But here's what I love about this story is this is not where it totally ends. This is where Matthew's account ends. But what I love about this miracle is the feeding of the 5000 is the one miracle that's actually recorded in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And when you flip over to John's gospel in John 6, looking at verse 32, he gives some commentary on this miracle and why it's so important. And after Jesus does all these crazy things, here's what I love is not only does it show us his compassion for us, not only does it show us how we need, it resources our needs, no matter how little we have, but the feeding of the 5000 then points us to something. And what it points us to first is it points us to recognize who our true provider is. Let's keep going in in in this in in John 6:32. I love that the next morning after the feeding of the 5000 happens, the same crowd who just got fed all this delicious bread and fish, they come back and they track Jesus down again. Like Jesus left and they find him and they find him and they're like, "Dude, we want another meal. We want another miracle. We want another show." They wanted him to keep performing for them. And then Jesus says something in John 6:32 that pivots the entire conversation. He says, "As Jesus said to them, the crowd who was looking for their next meal ticket," he says, "Truly I tell you, Moses didn't give you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to this world." You see, the crowd was thinking, they knew their history and they knew their Old Testament and they knew this story about Moses as he was leading a million Jews through the wilderness, escaping Egypt, trying to get into the promised land. And they knew their stories and they knew that story of like, hey, God kept feeding them for 40 years. There was no Chick-fil-A in that wilderness. All right? For 40 years, God sent mana and dew to feed a million people. Mindblowing. And they're like, I think we just found our Moses. We found our next meal ticket. Like, let's stop working. Let's stop providing for our food. Let's stop being farmers or carpenters or whatever. Let's just follow this guy and he will provide. He will give us everything we need. And Jesus says, "Stop right there." He's like, "Moses didn't give you that bread." He says, "My father God in heaven did." And he says this, then he ups it. And he says, "And the real bread of heaven is not falling on the ground every morning. It's not being multiplied in baskets from a little boy's lunch." He says, "The real bread is standing right in front of you." What a mic drop moment. Jesus told them, he's like, "I am not the new Moses handing out the meal next meal. I am the bread itself to meet every hardship and hurt that you will ever have. You see, church, this is huge because if we're honest, I think often we're like the crowd and we come to Jesus the same way. As we come to Jesus, we're like, "Jesus, I got some more messed up stuff in my life. I really need you to pay this bill because because it's hurting and I don't know how I'm going to do it. Jesus, I really need you to heal uh this sickness that I'm going through because I I don't see around it. Jesus, I really need you to fix my relationship that I've been stupid and the reason it's so messed up is because I've made it messed up. But Jesus, if you could just fix it all, that'd be great. Jesus, if you could just make my wife love me more and fix my marriage because I said some dumb things and bail me out of this, that'd be great. Jesus, I haven't fathered and and led my kids the way I should. But Jesus, if you could just make them better kids, that would be awesome. Jesus, I really haven't put my full effort in at work, but if you could just make me a better employee and make my bosses like me, that would be great. And maybe you're not as superficial as that, but you come to Jesus, often just looking for the next meal, the next little hold over, the next fix to get you through the day. And we come with our hands out to Christ, just looking for him to give the things we need instead of give something lasting that goes beyond it. And hear this before you're like, "Man, that's that's a bummer." Because I do pray to Jesus for all those things. And you should because Jesus does fix our problems. He does do miraculous things. He does pay bills sometimes and restore relationships. And there's story and story after that. But Jesus refuses to be reduced to a vending machine of miracles. He came to give us not the gift, but to give us himself in the giver. not to just give us the bread but to give us his very body and himself. And you see what's happening in the story is the crowd wanted continual provision. The crowd wanted heavenly handouts. But Jesus as the provider, he's the one who gives heavenly handups. I was at our Phoenix location, Cross Church Phoenix. That's where I started with Cross Church 10 years ago. And I was there for about 8 and 1/2 years. And I love that church and is thriving and doing amazing things. But one of the things I was most proud about and most excited that I think when we just lend we leaned on God and he did a great thing is starting a celebrate recovery ministry. And it still goes to this day every Wednesday at 6:30. Actually another pastor in the area asked me if we're still doing it. I'm like absolutely. And what I love about Celebrate Recovery is it's saying we want to help people to have freedom from their hurts, habits, and hang-ups. And here's the deal. People come to CR, we have help and needs there. We'll we'll give out food. We'll we'll give out provision that they need. But what we're trying to point them to is how do you find ultimately your value in Christ that will then teach you the disciplines that will change your life forever? And instead of saying, "Hey, I just need this little more to get through and I'll be fine." How do you change your entire life? to organize it around Christ himself and watch how everything changes as a result. And then instead of coming to Jesus just for your next problem to be fixed, you start coming him to continually to change who you are and change how it affects you. And here's the deal. Until you recognize that everything you call provision in your life, your job, your house, your savings, your relationships, your health, and your family, until you realize it is from him, and it is only ever a picture of him, then you will spend your whole life just seeking Jesus for the next thing instead of seeking him to change everything about you. You see, the feeding of the 5000, it points us to recognize our true provider in Christ. But it also points us to embrace our true need. As this story is going and as Jesus already disappoints them because they're like, "Man, I wanted more bread." And he's like, "Bro, the bread is right here." And they're like, "I don't get it. What is he talking about? Is he saying we should be cannibals and eat him?" But he stops there in verse 34 as they respond and and they say like I I just want my bread. They say in verse 34, it's so revealing of their hearts. They then said, "Sir, give us this bread always." Like, "Okay, so you are the spiritual vending machine. Just keep giving us more bread." That they still didn't get it. They still thought they were at a buffet line. They still thought they're at the Golden Corral. Thank goodness those are all closed, right? They're all disgusting. You all get stomach bugs and throw up after anyway. So, sweet tomatoes. All those are gone. Actually, there's still sweet tomatoes. You know where it's at? >> Tucson. >> Tucson. Yeah, it came back around. That was the Holy Spirit planting that joke in early. All right. I didn't have it in my notes. Uh anyway, um what were we talking about again? I don't know. But here, they're like they JUST WANTED MORE. THEY WANTED MORE FOOD AND THEY'RE NOT UNDERSTANDING WHAT CHRIST SAYS. AND THEN I love this in verse 35. This is one of the great I am statements of John that Jesus lays them on as they're like, "Give us this bread. Give us more. We're just going to hang out with you and you're going to feed us. We're going to become fat on our laziness and just seeking you, but not actually doing what you say." And then Jesus says this, "I am the bread of life." Not the bread that you keep getting that you eat, but the bread of life. And then he adds this statement. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again. Just stop for a second and feel the weight of that statement. He says, "You'll never be hungry again. You'll never be thirsty again." And guys, he's not talking about food. He's talking about something greater than food. He's saying, "You're not going to be hungry for purpose. You're not going to be hungry for love. You're not going to be hungry for peace. You're not going to be hungry for meaning. You're not going to be hungry for forgiveness. You're not going to be hungry for hope. You will never be hungry again because something greater will fill you." You know, we're Baptists, so we don't often talk a lot about fasting because we like our potlucks, okay? But here's how fasting actually works. Is when you're deprived of food, you're depending more on God to provide for your needs. And it keeps you going. And here's the crazy thing. I'm not telling you guys to stop eating food, cuz you do need to still eat food. All right? But when you fill yourself with the spirit and you seek God and you love God, sometimes it fills you up that the other stuff, the superficial things of life like food and drinks and all those things like I don't even need Red Bull on Sundays if I'm being honest. I drink it because it gets me up. But I get jacked up on Jesus before I get jacked up on Red Bull. Okay? And here's the thing. Sometimes when the spirit is filling us up and we are seeking God and we're finding our sustenance from God, we don't even need those things. Here's what's funny. after church on Sundays is like I never have an appetite and my wife's like, "You want anything?" Our our our routine is we pick up salad and go and Wendy's on the way home to eat for the kids. And I'm like, "I don't even need food. Like, I'm not hungry." Sometimes I force myself to eat cuz I think I need it. But I'm just like so filled with Jesus from being with my church family and being with the word of God that I'm like, I don't even need food. I'm just going to go run until I pass out cuz I'm full with Jesus right now. One person thought that was cool. All right, that wasn't a clapping moment. I'll get you later. But here is our problem, church. We have spent our whole lives trying to satisfy our deepest hunger that our world has to offer with the wrong food. We've tried to filled our stomachs, our spiritual stomachs, our emotional stomachs, our mental stomachs with things like achievement, with approval, with possessions, with relationships, with substances, with screens. And every time we leave the table, we are still hungry. CS Lewis diagnosed this beautifully. I love this quote. He says, "If we have desires nothing in this world can satisfy, that is you. You have desires that you fill with thing after thing after thing and you are not satisfied. He says the most likely explanation is that we were made for another world. Oh, that's good. And here's the deal is you were be made you were made to be filled not with the stuff that we make in our world that just get us day by day. Is you were made to be filled with the bread of life, Jesus Christ himself. And until you embrace that need, until you stop trying to feed your soul on five loaves and two fish substitutes, you will never know what enough actually feels like. And here's what I love cuz this is the real message of this whole miracle that it points to and comes to fruition in John 14 is after Jesus has multiplied lunch and he has said he is the bread himself. I love this because the disciples who saw this in John 14:8, Philillip, one of the dude who collected a basket full of food, he says this, Lord, show us the father and that's enough for us. Philip's like, okay, I get it. We need more than food, but but show us God the Father and we'll be satisfied. And Philip thinks he's made this huge leap. He thinks he's theological. He thinks he's smart. It's the cry of the human heart. He said, "Show me what's enough. Show me what fills me. Show me what satisfies me." And Jesus answers in verse 9, and I love this. He says, "Have I been among you all this time without your knowing me, Philillip?" He says, "The one who has seen me has seen the father." Here's what Jesus is saying. If you know me, you know your creator. You know God the Father. You know everything you need to know. In other words, fill up what you're looking for, EVERYTHING YOU STRIVE FOR, EVERYTHING YOU'VE PUSHED FOR, IT IS ALL FOUND IN CHRIST. AND HERE IT BUILDS TO THIS miraculous truth that we see in this passage that you will never have enough, church. You will never have enough that you try to fill your life with. All the achievement, all the money, all the success, ALL THE FAMILY, NONE OF IT will be enough until you accept that Jesus is enough. All right? Do you hear this? None of it will be there. You will never have enough until you accept that Jesus is enough. You'll never have enough money until you think that Jesus is enough. You will never have enough success until you know Jesus is enough. You'll never have enough recognition, enough security, enough control, enough comfort. Man, we love OUR COMFORT HERE. WE'LL NEVER HAVE ENOUGH OF ANYTHING, ENOUGH RELATIONSHIPS, ENOUGH ADDICTIONS, anything until you come to the foundation that Jesus, you are enough. You see this boy? He gave Jesus five loaves and two fish that were not even close to enough to feed 20,000 people. But Jesus did it because he can take in your life what is not enough. He can multiply it. He can make it enough. and he can give you himself. That is all you need. So here's the questions that we need to wrestle with this morning. At first, if you are a believer in the room today, if you say, "I am a follower of Jesus. I have said that Jesus is enough." You need to ask the question, what are you still trying to feed your soul? that only Jesus can feed you. What are you trying to seek after? What's the loaf that you keep reaching for that always leaves you hungry? Surrender it. Give it up. Hand it over. Stop chasing crumbs at the feet of a savior who is offering you the feast. And maybe that's not you today. Maybe you don't know Jesus yet. And maybe you've never trusted him before. I want you to hear me that we get this truth from God's word. That you've spent your life trying to find enough. And I know if you're honest, you haven't found it. You haven't found enough purpose, enough love, enough peace, every meal, every hack, every lie that the world has fed you has left you hungrier than you were before. But there is a savior who took five loaves and two fish and fed 20,000 people. But this same savior took his own body. He broke it on the cross for us. He died in our place for our sins. And the miracle is he rose again to defeat those sins so that you can be forgiven. so that you can find purpose so that you can have a life that is enough. He is the bread of life. He is the offering himself to this morning that you will never have enough until you accept that Jesus is enough. church. He is enough.