This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to our third day of looking at Matthew chapter 14. We've
been walking through these lessons of faith from the feeding of the 5,000.
Lesson one, don't measure a problem or challenge according to your own
abilities.

Lesson two, little in the hands of Jesus becomes much. And then today, lesson
three, every encounter with a problem or a challenge can bring an increase.
Every encounter that you and I have with a problem or a challenge can bring an
increase in your life.

Look at what happened. In the last half of verse 20, down through verse 21, "And
the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.
" The number of those who ate was about 5,000 men besides the women and
children.

Now, 5,000 just men. That means in the feeding of the 5,000, wherever there's
5,000 men, there's probably 5,000 women, more children. There's 15,000, 20,000
that were fed that day.

And they were all fed. The twelve disciples fed all these people and they picked
it up and they had twelve basketfuls of bread left over. Do you think Jesus is
trying to teach them something?

Not only did they feed everyone, but they're each left holding a full basket.
Remind you of what Jesus taught in Luke 6, 38, "Give and you will receive. You
will be given much, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

It will spill into your lap. The way that you give to others is the way that God
will give to you. " Simple lesson here.

If you want God to give to you, you give to others. And then guess what happens?
Just like these disciples, God gives more to you.

But because of that, then you have more to give to others. When you start to
live life this way, God gives to me, so I give to others. That's what we ended
yesterday talking about.

When you start to live life this way, instead of a consumer of the goodness of
God, you become a conduit of the goodness of God. You're not just taking it in,
taking it in, taking it in. You're taking it and sharing it, taking it and
sharing it.

And when you do that, Jesus' teaching here is that it brings an increase in your
life. They were left with the basketfuls. It's that old phrase, "You cannot out
give God.

" You give money to God, he returns to you in ways that you don't understand,
that you can't always understand. He gives increase in your life. Now, some
people think, well, it always has to be money for money or ministry for
ministry.

God is a lot more wonderful than that. Where does the increase come? How does
the increase come first?

And what is the increase that comes? Well, first, how does the increase come in
my life when I give? The increase comes when Jesus gets involved.

This principle doesn't work just by me giving as a human being. No, it's when
Jesus gets involved. That's when the miracle happens.

So I'm not just doing it in my name. I'm doing it in Jesus' name. I'm not just
doing it so people will be impressed with me.

I'm doing it because I'm impressed with God. That's when the increase comes in
my life. And what's the increase?

Some people act like it's always got to be material. And sometimes it is. God
blesses us that way sometimes.

But Paul said, "I've learned to live with very great material riches and with
humble means. God blesses me in both situations. " So it's not just material.

Sometimes it's something greater, deeper relationships, stronger faith. Greater
confidence, real hope. When you serve him, when you serve him by serving others,
something happens in your life.

There's an increase that happens in your life. Every problem that you face in
your life, there is the potential for an increase through that problem. When you
face a struggle, a difficulty in your life with faith, God increases your faith.

He increases your strength of faith in your life. When you feel a loss of hope
in your life and you decide to put your trust and hope in him, you actually
have, on the other side of that, an increase of hope. Now there's a material, a
very physical example of this in the building of muscle.

If you want to increase your muscle, you go and you lift weights. But if you
study what's happening, actually your muscle is broken down when you're lifting
the weights so that it can grow back stronger, so it can be built stronger. God
works in our lives in this way spiritually.

He allows problems, struggles, difficulties in our lives so that as we trust him
through that, increase comes into our lives. Now as you and I look at this
wonderful miracle of Jesus, I want to make sure we get the lesson of this
feeding of the 5,000, in fact in every miracle. Because in every miracle that
you see, there are always two truths to act on.

How Jesus works and who Jesus is. And we've been focusing mostly this week on
the feeding of the 5,000 in how Jesus works and what you and I can learn from
that. And we've learned, we've been reminded that our ways are not God's ways.

He brings increase in ways that we would not expect. He allows the impossible
situation to be happening in our lives so they can do things above our
understanding or above our expectation. Our ways aren't God's ways.

And knowing how he works and this miracle of the feeding 5,000 reveals how God
works, it helps us to see what he's doing. Sometimes you feel like I'm afraid of
water, but God keeps pushing me in to the water. What's going on here?

Well, don't be surprised that God is working in ways that help you to learn to
swim, that help you learn to have greater faith. So we've focused much of this
week on how Jesus works. But don't forget that in every miracle there is also
the example of who Jesus is.

Jesus says, "I'm the bread of life," and he feeds 5,000. He says, "I'm the light
of the world and a blind man sees. " He says, "I am the resurrection and the
life," and he raises Lazarus from the dead.

So in this miracle, you not only see the practicality of how Jesus works, but
you also see the reality of who Jesus is. And without the second one, the first
is meaningless. Just understanding the principles of how God works in this world
is not enough to have the power to do what God called us to do.

I've got to have the power of who Jesus is. I've got to have that in my life
today and every day of my life. I need the bread of life in my life if I'm going
to be able to face those impossible circumstances where I feel like I don't have
enough bread.

I need the light of the world in my life in the dark moments of life. I need the
life of Jesus every day of my life. So as we come to the end of this look at the
feeding of the 5,000, I want to focus for a few minutes with you on how you can
first accept the way that Jesus works and then accept the person who Jesus is.

When you look at your own life, there are areas of your life where you need to
realize I've been measuring my life by my own abilities and not by God's
ability. So how can I move to a place of faith from this place of comfort to a
place where I'm trusting and when only he can do? We talked about saying I need
help.

I trust you. Do that now. The second principle we looked at about how God's
works is this principle of the truth that little in the hands of Jesus becomes
much.

And I know as we've been walking through this, you may be one of those people
who all you can see is the little you have. Don't get focused on that. Focused
on taking whatever you have and giving it to Jesus.

It's not really up to you to evaluate whether it's a little or a lot. A woman
who had only two coins and gave them to God, her gift is in my mind the most
honored offering that has ever been given. So just because you think it's little
doesn't mean it is.

You just take what God has given into your hands and you give it to him. Stop
the evaluation game of whether you have more or less than others. And then
realize that with every problem, with every struggle, as you trust God, there's
the opportunity for increase, there's the opportunity for growth in your life,
the opportunity for greater faith, greater hope, greater love.

So you trust God for how he works, but in doing that, you trust Jesus for who he
is. He is the life that I need. He is the strength that I need.

I don't do it on my own. I trust in him. Let's do that right now in prayer.

Right now, Jesus, in prayer, we want to trust you for how you work in our lives.
We're not trusting principles, but we're not trusting business items on a list
or task things that we check off. We're trusting you.

You are the one who can do the impossible. You are the one who takes our little
and makes it much. You're the one who brings increase, even through the troubles
and struggles of life.

And so Lord, in this moment, we make this personal. We trust in you to work in
this impossible circumstance that we're facing. We trust in you to do this
impossible thing that's on our minds.

We trust you. In Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, we move from miracle to miracle.

We're going to look at how do you live a walk on water life?