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Newington Three Angels Church

Eric Walsh

The Miracle Walk

All right, if you have your Bibles we're gonna go to our scripture reading that Donnie read so well Isaiah 43 And we're gonna read this passage when you pass through the waters I will be with you And through the rivers they shall not overflow you When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled, The Miracle Walk.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word.

I pray now, Father, that you make me just a nail upon the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord.

But upon that nail, Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Instead, Father, let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

This is our prayer in Jesus' precious and holy name.

All right, we're gonna jump right into this in the book of Matthew chapter 14.

I'm gonna start at verse 15 And we're gonna start at the story of the feeding of the 5, 000 men Does not include women and children And we're gonna set this up to go into what we really are going into here today But just to give the backstory in Matthew chapter 14 and verse 15 And when it was evening his disciples came to him saying this is a desert place The times now pass send a multitude away that they may go into the villages and buy.

The disciples looked around at this massive crowd of over 10, 000 people for sure.

They saw that the people had been watching Jesus and hearing him preach and observing the great miracles, but the disciples realized that they had eaten and there was no way in their mind that the multitude could be fed.

They needed to be disbanded so they could go and find food.

It was also a time of difficulty for the disciples.

For in this same chapter, and this just before the story in more than 1 of the gospels, is the time when John the Baptist is killed.

So you've got to see that the disciples are in a bad place.

Yet John the Baptist was allowed to not just die, but to die what the Jews would have considered a most ignoble death.

He was beheaded because of a dance at a party.

And the disciples, after seeing all that is going on, want to send the people away because something else was afoot.

In Matthew 14 and verse 16, but Jesus said unto them, they don't need to depart, give ye them to eat.

Jesus said, listen, they don't have to go anywhere, feed them.

The disciples said in verse 17, we have here but 5 loaves and 2 fishes.

It's John who tells you that it's a little boy's lunch.

Of all of the 10, 000 some odd people, the only food they could find was in 1 little boy's backpack.

And when they find it and open it, it is desperately not enough to even begin to cover the needs of all the people.

In fact, Philip, or Andrew I believe it is, says, you know, if we had, you know, 2, 3000 dollars equivalent, we couldn't feed all of these people.

But they find this little boy, Jesus in verse 19 commands the multitude to sit on the grass.

And he takes the 5 loaves and the 2 fishes and looking up to heaven He blessed and break it and gave the loaves to the disciples and the disciples to the multitude What is implied in this text is that as Jesus?

Began to break the bread it never stopped breaking Don't miss this Christ shows here that the laws of physics do not apply to him.

There's a law called the law of the conservation of mass, which means mass cannot be created nor can it be negated It must it can transform, forms, but it cannot actually go away or be brought into existence when jesus begins to touch the bread And break it the bread continues to break.

It's as if as Christ prays before he does this, as he begins to break it, the bread begins to grow bread.

And the process, don't miss this either, had to be very rapid.

In order for the disciples to be able to deliver that much food to that many people, Christ must have been able to break and distribute this bread at a rapid pace.

The Bible says in Matthew 14 and verse 20, they did all eat and were filled and they took up the fragments that remained 12 baskets full.

Not only did Christ make sure that everyone ate, When Christ does something, he does it in abundance.

When it was all over, there was food left over.

Verse 21, and they that had eaten were about 5, 000 men beside women and children.

1 of the things that's key is that in John 6 and verse 12, in telling the same story, he says, when they were filled, he said unto his disciples, gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.

If you can imagine the oppressed Jews, downtrodden and beaten not only by the Roman power, but by their own religious leaders, they were in a place of suffering.

Poverty, don't miss this, poverty was a common place in that time.

There were cities that were desperate and had lack all the time, cities like Nazareth, where Jesus was from.

For them to be able to see someone take food and make food from food was mind-blowing.

In fact, later on, some of them followed Jesus across the lake and find them, and Jesus says, you're not here because I did miracles, you're here because I gave you bread.

This was something that blew their minds.

Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, "'This is of a truth, that prophet, "'that should come unto into the world.' When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.

Ah, now we get into the thick of this message.

When they saw the miracle that Jesus performed, they decided by proxy that they would find a way to make Christ King.

Imagine after all they've been through, and you can read about this in the Desire of Ages, that's why it expands upon it.

Imagine after all they've been through, all the oppression, all of the taxes they paid the Romans, all of the poverty, here is a man who they watched heal the sick.

They began to think Jerusalem and Judah can be established.

Israel as a nation can be brought back to its days of glory as it had with David and Solomon.

They began to think And they began to conspire with the disciples.

The disciples were tired of playing second fiddle to the priests and the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

The disciples wanted to show them who Jesus really was.

And they reasoned in their minds that Christ was simply too humble.

He was too meek to take his rightful place.

Spirit of prophecy tells us Jesus understood that there was already a bounty on his life.

If he was appointed the position of king, Bloodshed would run in the streets, blood would run in the streets of Israel.

There would be wars and fights all over the place.

Christ understood that there was no way this could happen now.

So Jesus in a very stern voice in Mark 6 and verse 45, and straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida while he sent away the people.

The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that they did not want to go, and John tells us that they delayed.

When he went up into the mountain, the disciples actually hung out in the boat and did not do what Christ told them to do.

They waited, they lingered, hoping that Jesus would join them.

The Spirit of prophecy says it like this, never before had a command from Christ seemed so impossible of fulfillment.

The disciples had long hoped for a popular movement to place Jesus on the throne.

They could not endure the thought that all this enthusiasm should come to nothing.

The multitudes that were assembling to keep the Passover were anxious to see the new prophet.

To his followers, this seemed the golden opportunity to establish their beloved master on the throne of Israel.

In the glow of this new ambition, it was hard for them to go away by themselves and leave Jesus alone upon that desolate shore.

They protested against the arrangement, but Jesus now spoke with an authority He had never before assumed toward them.

They knew that further opposition on their part would be useless, and in silence they turned toward the sea.

Jesus rebuked his disciples, told them to get into the ship and begin the process of crossing over the lake.

And I want you to understand that the principle that the Bible is trying to show you here is that the disciples did not understand Christ's mission.

Years they had spent with him, and yet they didn't understand his mission, so much so that they were ready to force him to be king.

They were arguing with him about getting in the ship and leaving him on the shore.

As they began to move across the water, they began to think, if he's really who he says he is, why did he allow John the Baptist to be beheaded?

Why would he allow his prophet to die such a terrible death?

They began to ask the tough questions that the Pharisees and Sadducees had been asking.

And I want you to get this, as they began to doubt Christ, Satan whispered the more in their ears.

But I wanna let you know that this idea of crowning Christ King in a place or time when he's not supposed to be is 1 of the things that will happen in the end times and has already begun to happen.

In fact, there are many Christians who are gonna be led astray because they believe that Christ is coming to earth now to sit on a throne and reign for 1, 000 years.

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The Miracle Walk

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