- Well, hey everybody, man thank you so much for joining us. Today we wanna welcome you here and I wanna welcome all of you that are visiting with us today for the first time. Highlands is a one church in multiple locations. We're a multi-site church, we have locations in Bluefield, we have locations in Marin and Bristol and here in Abington. And then we have some partner churches down in Gray, Tennessee called New Collective Church. And you guys watch on TV in that area, I would encourage you to go over and check out New Collective sometime. It's an amazing, amazing church. So today I wanna come out of the gate and I wanna thank all of you who have been visiting with us in person. And I wanna thank you for volunteering. If you've been with us in person over the last couple of weeks, you know that we talked about our HF kids' ministry and our student ministry and here at Highlands, man, we put so much emphasis on that. So today, if you're at one of our locations in your seat, you have a volunteer card. And many of you said, "Hey, do we have enough volunteers now?" We never have enough volunteers, alright. And if you're still here and you're not volunteering in some capacity, I want as your pastor, I want you to really truly consider helping us out, volunteering a couple of hours a month, that's all we're asking, okay? Because I know how it used to be, I mean, you sign up for kid's ministry and you were waiting for the rapture, you know, you wasn't gonna get out until Jesus came but that's not the way we do it here, we're not gonna burn you out. We're just gonna ask you, "Hey, would you take what you got and would you be willing to offer that to God, couple hours a week, help us either in student ministry or kid's ministry or out in adult ministry serving in some capacity because the truth is God wants all of us to serve, right? He's given us all gifts to serve in different parts so that we can make the family all what God wants it to be. We call Highlands home. And in a home, we all care about each other. So I just really wanna challenge you to actually step to the plate and get out of that consumer seat, get on the team today and just take your card, sign up a couple hours a month and we could really use your help. For those of you that are watching online today or on TV, and you saying, "You know what, I probably need to eventually get back to an in-person gathering," well, if you wanna volunteer as you come back, man, you can come back from day one in a volunteer status. Just go to our HUB on our website, just go to HF.Church/HUB and you can put some information in there and we'll get you ready and send you an assignment so that you can volunteer with us from day one. It's really what it takes to make a church that's making a difference in our community. And here at Highlands, man, we're all about making a difference in our community, in our nation and in our world. Well, today I get the opportunity to kick off a brand new series. I'm excited about this called Kingdom Equations, right? I mean, we've all started back to school. My kids are already bringing home math homework. Now math was really not my super subject. I had to take a lot of it in school, as you did. We need some basic math skills, but we're gonna take it up a level in this series and we're gonna look at sort of God's math, okay? So today the first equation that I wanna look at is out of the book of Matthew and here's today's equation, alright, two fish times five loaves equal 5,000 meals. Wow, you know, now, I don't know if that's kind of Matthew had when you were in school, but it definitely was not the kind of math I had when I was in school. God takes math and He takes it to a whole new level. So let's look at the story, you know the story, it's the feeding of the 5,000. I remember a couple of years ago when I was with our pastors and we went to Israel and Mark Copas was sort of guiding us and we're at the sea of Galilee and we leave out early one morning and we come to this huge area where I could actually see this story unfolding. And Mark said, "This is where most people believe that the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 occurred," right off the sea of Galilee, this huge open matter where Jesus could sortta stand up on a hill and teach down and people just continued to gather. And man, I remember looking at that field and pastor Steven Craig, we were all sitting there thinking, wow, wouldn't it have been amazing to have actually been there to see Jesus do this incredible miracle. So let's look at the story. We find it in Matthew 14 and let's look at verse 14, this is what it says, "When Jesus landed and He saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them." Now I want you to remember that 'cause this is our God, right? He is a God of compassion. And when He had compassion, these folks that would come, the reason the crowd was growing by leaps and bounds is He did this next thing, He healed their sick. This is the reason people wanted to get to Jesus, they would take their sick loved ones. And if they were sick themselves, they would try to get to a place where Jesus was. He always had compassion and there was no disease that Jesus couldn't conquer. Scripture says that "This is taking place all day long, right?" And it says, "He's teaching, He's teaching and He's healing and He's healing," and then it says, "As evening approached, the disciples, came to Him and said, 'Hey, there's a remote place, it's already getting late. Jesus, you send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and they can buy themselves some food 'cause obviously they're getting hungry now.'" And notice what Jesus says, "Jesus replies, 'They don't need to go away.' And then He looks at His disciples and He says, 'You give them something to eat.'" Jesus goes a sense humor, doesn't He? And then the story goes on it says, "'We have only five loaves of bread and two small fish,' they said. 'Well, bring them here to me,' Jesus said. And He directed the people to sit down on the grass, and He took the five loaves and two fish and He looked up to heaven, He gave thanks. He prayed over it and He broke the loaves." Now I don't know it's your house but at my house, my five kids and a few friends, we often ask God, 'cause we often think there is not enough on the table, Lord, we're gonna pray over it. And we're gonna ask you to multiply. And He's never done anything like this, but it seems like we always have enough. And the scripture says, "Then He gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the people," and catch this guys, here's the miracle that take place. "They all ate, they were all satisfied. And the disciples picked up 12 basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over." There were leftovers. And we never have that at our house. The number of those who ate was about 5,000 men besides women and children. So how many were gathered there on that bank that day? We really don't know. What an incredible story, what an incredible miracle. Now I wanna get right into my points today because I want you to get this. I think when I look at this story that I think there are five things that will encourage you and we'll go through these really quickly. When you find yourself up against an impossible situation, 'cause you know, if you've lived long enough, I mean, you find yourself from time to time in a season, you just look and you look at what you have and you think, "Oh my goodness, it is impossible. This situation I'm faced with it is impossible." I'll guarantee you, every disciple thought that, right? I mean, this is impossible. We're not gonna take this little bitty fish and these few little loaves of bread, we're gonna take this little kid's lunch and feed these folks is this stupid, right? But this story will give you great encouragement. And I think we all need some encouragement in the culture that we live in today. So I wanna look at a few things about Jesus. Here's the first one. When we look at this miracle, Jesus had compassion. He had compassion. You know, if you love somebody, you're gonna care about somebody, right? It the reason we asked you to volunteer here at our church, because we love our children, man, they're the future of our church, right? We love our students. We want to do everything we can as a church, to help our children grow up and know Jesus Christ and live for Him. We want our students to know Jesus. And man, because of that, we love them, we care for them and Jesus taught us this. It's real interesting this miracle, you may not remember this some of you Bible scholars will, but Jesus performed this miracle right after He had had a great loss in His life. Jesus, right before the feet of the 5,000 has suffered a huge loss. As a matter of fact, most theologians believe that Jesus is in a period of grief. He had just lost His cousin and His great friend, John, the Baptist. You remember this don't you, Herod gave an issue to kill, to have John the Baptist killed in a very cruel way. and it was carried out and Jesus knew that. And because of that, Jesus Himself is experiencing great grief. And yet He still has compassion on the thousands of people that are there. Matthew says, "He had compassion on all those who followed Him. You know, He had such great love that even in the midst of facing His own loss, He still cared. He still loved. He never let it become about Him. Jesus knew His time on earth was short. So He pressed forward to do everything that God had called Him to do. And there were days in His life it had to be difficult, right? I think this feeding of the 5,000, He's, you know, He's tired, He's been teaching all day, He's experiencing the grief of losing a tremendous friend and yet He pressed on to do what God called Him to do. Tell you something guys He's still the same today. He knows the pain. He knows the struggles that you're facing right now. Jesus knows that. He understands. Jesus, the scripture says is never too busy. He's never too distant to care for us. He knows the grief that you're feeling today because here's the thing that makes Jesus a perfect savior, He felt that grief too. Everything that we will ever go through, He went through it first. He understands, He feels our pain. I love this scripture back in Psalm 34:18, the scripture says, and this is about God who Jesus is right? And He says, "He's near to the brokenhearted. He saves those who are crushed in spirit." I'm convinced that if you really knew the love that Jesus had for you, you would be so drawn to Him that you can not resist coming to Him and serving Him and surrendering your life to Him. He is a God of great love and great compassion. And Matthew reminds us of this in this story. Here's the second thing I want you to get in this miracle. Jesus is actually bigger than any problem that we'll encounter. Now sometimes that's hard for us to understand, but He actually is. When His disciples came to Him with this huge problem in their mind, I love what Jesus did. Jesus didn't say, "Oh, I'll take care of it. Alright, guys, don't worry about it. I'm here, Jesus's here saved the day," even though He did, you know. But all Jesus did was He looked back at the disciples and He says, "Oh look, they're hungry, don't send them away. Hey, hey, you, you give them something to eat." But can you imagine being one of the disciples? In other words, He encouraged them to look for a solution to take their eyes off the pressing problem and put their eyes back on the answer, which was Jesus, right? I mean, Jesus was ultimately gonna provide the solution to the problem. And you know what? Jesus is still the answer. Jesus is still the answer to every problem we face today. I'm almost 60 years old and it seems like just, our world there's fear amongst us. It seems like we're living in a dark time. There's so much darkness and fear. And I would submit that He is the only solution to the troubles that surround us. And He sends us out in His power and in His spirit. And you know what the Bible says, He instructs us to go out today and He says, "You are the salt of the earth, if you know Jesus, you are the light of the world." And He says, "Go out into this dark world and give them something, give them the very bread of life who can make an eternal difference in their souls, give them Jesus." The truth remains 1 John 4:4, "Greater is He who is in you than he that is in the world." Our God is bigger than any problem we face. Here's third thing about this miracle. Jesus, He simply asks us to bring Him what we have. He just asks for what we have. He asked the disciples to give Him what they had. So it's what it says right there in verse 18. Now, what did they have? Well, there was one mom that thought my little boy might get hungry as he goes out to Bible study today with Jesus. I don't know what the other 5,000 folks were thinking. But this mom decided I'm gonna pack little Johnny's lunch today, he might get hungry. So she looked at what she had, she had a couple of fish, they were small. She had a few loaves of bread, which really were probably slices of bread. She probably got five slices of bread, and she got two fish. And the disciples go through the crowd and Jesus, He says, "What have you got?" And they said, "Well, Jesus, nobody packed their lunch today. Only thing we got is what this little boy has. He's got five small loaves and two little fish." And this is what I love about this little guy, right? Because I don't know if my kids think like this, but this little boy was actually willing to give all he had. And he just simply said, "Okay, if there's a need, I will give you," he didn't keep a fish, he didn't keep a slice of bread for Himself, he just, when the disciples said, "Here's a need," this little guy gave everything he had. It wasn't much in the eyes of the world, but he gave everything he had, even though it looks so meager, right? Now, I think when Jesus looked at the disciples and said, "You give them some food, I think, oh man, Jesus, man, we've been with you. I mean, you know, we love you man been good to us, but you know, you've lost your mind. I mean, you finally reached your tipping point here. Jesus, you've gone crazy." I mean, it's honestly crazy what Jesus is asking, right? I mean, it's just crazy. And among 5,000 plus people, I mean these few little slices of bread, these two fishermen that hardly feed one family, I mean, much less the crowd, I mean, why even insult the crowd. But they still obeyed. And they simply brought what they had to Him. And this single obedient act ushered the way for Jesus to perform an amazing miracle that we're still talking about all over the world today. So guys, here's a truth, man, you might wanna write this down, I don't want you to miss it. Obedience paves the way for great things to happen. He desires our hearts to be fully yielded to Him. And when we have a heart, that's yielded to God, great miracles can occur as a result. That's why I got always asks us to keep Him first in our lives. Remember the great commandment we looked at this last week. Matthew tells us over in chapter 22, "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength," put God first and when you put God first, He simply asks you just to bring what you have, but in His hands, miracles can occur. Here's the next thing about Jesus. Here's the fourth thing. Jesus will actually bring blessing from what is broken. Have you thought about this? Jesus, the miracle worker, the God of compassion, the loving provider, He took what they gave Him and He offered it before God. He said, "Alright, Lord, alright, Father, this is what I got, and now I'm gonna offer it to you." Verse 19 says, "He gave thanks for it," He prayed over it, He blessed it, "and then He broke it." Now there's something about the breaking that allows the miracle to happen, right? And this is really where it gets powerful in this miracle working story because there are times in our life when we go through season of brokenness and we know it gets really, really hard and we're so tempted, our enemy comes and says, "Oh, you know, God's not gonna rescue you, just throw in the towel, just quit." Every weekend somebody gives me an email like that. You're just ready to quit because the season that you're in it's too much brokenness, it's just too much. But when we yield ourselves in our brokenness to a holy God, there is great blessing and power that comes through it. He offers our lives, broken pieces and all. And He puts us before His father and God extends grace and favor and He alone can bring into our lives in the midst His light to open up our dark places. If you fast forward a few months after the feeding of the 5,000, we see another time where Jesus breaks something, right? Very similar, He breaks bread again. And He was with His disciples for the last time. And the scripture says that they gather in this last meal, this last supper and they bring bread and Jesus took the bread again and He breaks it again. And it's the very picture of what He's willing to endure on our behalf. He goes from that day forward and He allows His body to be beaten and whipped and then His body is broken on the cross. Three days later, Jesus bursts forth from an empty tomb in the power of the resurrection and another awesome miracle occurred. Notice how Matthew describes it in chapter 26, verse 26. This is what he says, "While they were eating, Jesus took bread and when He had given thanks, He broke it and He gave it to His disciples and He says, 'Hey guys, take an eat, this is my body.'" And what was Jesus say in there? He's saying, "Hey, I want you to understand this is how much I love you. I'm willing just like this bread to be broken, to go through what I'm about to go through." They didn't have a clue what Jesus was getting ready to go through, right? But Jesus is trying to help them understand that through brokenness, blessing and miracle can occur. And He's our advocate. He's the one who models this for us, I'll be broken for your behalf. And then the last thing I want you to get from this story is this, finally, Jesus multiplies what we give Him. He just multiplies it. So, back to the story, He's got these two little fish, He's got these five little loaves of bread. Scripture says He prays over the fish and He prays over the bread. And as He breaks it into these barrels, the disciples start taking these barrels. And as they take it in an act of obedience, I don't know how it happens, but man, something happens in those barrels and people would get into the barrel, all the bread and all the fish they needed. And it went through not only 5,000 people, I mean, it was probably more like 10,000 at least probably really 15,000 people if you count women and children too. And it even says about this, "That everybody in the crowd that they was satisfied, was satisfied to the point there was leftovers." They were full, they were content. I mean, there's a lot of difference between being full and still hungry, right? I mean, sometimes we'll feed our family something and they're still maybe a little bit hungry and Chris, I'm thinking, "Dude, you just ate two hamburgers. You just ate everything we had." And He said, "Well, dad, I probably a little bit more." And so I said, "Well, it's it, it's all we got." 10 minutes later, it's about, "Hey, can I have a snack? I'm still a little hungry." But here's the deal about these 15, 10, 15,000 people, not only were they full, they ate so much, they were satisfied and there was leftovers. Think about that, there was leftovers. I mean, there's lots of mouth to feed on such a small offering of food. But with God it was enough. It was more than enough. And this was God, right? Now I've often thought when God does these miracles, I mean, He's God. He doesn't have to have two little fish and five loaves to do this miracle, He's God, right? I mean, He could have just said instant Chick-fil-A for everybody in the house today, okay? You're gonna get all your Chick-fil-A that you could possibly imagine instantly it appears before you, and you've even got plenty of sauce and avocado, lime dressing and all that stuff, you know? I mean, that's God, He could have done that easily. But this is how God works. God looks at what is offered from us, two fish and five loaves and our God who is sovereign chooses to involve us and invite us into the miracle working process that He brings. I mean, He could have not done that, He could've just did it without those little fish, He could have done it without that bread, but God chooses to take a little boy's lunch of hardly anything based on the need. And He is able to multiply it into a miracle. And surely in our lives when we feel inadequate, or what we have to offer seem so small. I want tell you something. If you give it to Him, He is enough, He is enough. He makes more than enough. Our God is enough. He's able to multiply our measly offering, our little gifts, and somehow with complete satisfaction, He is able to do a miracle that will bring the deepest heart level of our souls to peace, that's our God. So interesting to note that there's 12 basketfuls leftover, 12 disciples. I think God was trying to say, "Hey guys, look around." You look... You're gonna have to get this basket here, this big barrel of leftovers and I've got one for every one of you, because I want you to understand the God in whom you're committed your life to He is enough. He is able. There are 12 disciples that just had their life changed because they saw the God that they serve, do a miracle that was unimaginable. Here's the hope that we have. In Ephesians 3:20 this what it says. It's talking about our God Paul says this, "He is able, He is able," and I want you to believe this, "He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask, all we imagine, according to His power that is at work work within us." Our God is able, He's able to do more than we could ever imagine. I mean, think about this guys who in their right mind would have ever thought that our church, alright, in the midst of the chaos that we see happening on our local news, all the way over on the other side of the world, in a country in Afghanistan, that we would be actually helping a church plant a second campus only about 250 miles from the epicenter of chaos in our world. And it's because of you. It's because we understand that God's the only God for our locality in our region, our God's a God of the world. And somehow He allows our church to be on the front lines of what He is doing all around the world. Our God is enough. He is able. I thought if you still don't get it, I wanted to try to give you an illustration and you know this is a risk for me because I'm not a sports guy at all, but let's look at this football, alright, this football in my hands is worth nothing, alright? I mean, it's worth nothing. I couldn't even throw it to the, probably the third row, but you put this football and Peyton Manning's hands and all of a sudden man things happen. I think about this basketball, this basketball in my hands I couldn't dribble out to the mall alright? I'd probably fall and trip. And man, you put this basketball in Michael Jordan's hands and stuff happens. This driver, I mean, this is the only thing. This is actually mine. In my hands, a driver like this is worth what I paid for it probably about 200 bucks. Man, you put something like this in tiger woods hands and understand things worth a billion dollars. You know, two fish, five loaves in a little boy's hands, it's not worth much, is it? But when you take what you have, even though it looks meager and insignificant and you put that in the hands of our God, miracles happen, lives are changed, the world is better. How about you? What if you took what little you have and you placed it in God's hands just to see what God might do with it. I think you'd be amazed. What if, I'm praying today that no matter where you are in life right now, that you would simply take what you have and you would give it to Jesus, all of your brokenness, all of your pain, all of your loss, all of your patients that's probably in short supply, all of your inadequacies and doubt and that He would just breathe His blessing and favor over it. And you know what? I promise you, God will multiply greatly all that we offer and put in His hands. Here's the truth about our God. He is enough. He is able. Would you pray with me? God, I thank you for stories like this for this kingdom equation. It doesn't make sense in our earthly math it is far from it. But God you, because of your greatness and you're awesomeness, you took a couple of little fish, five little pieces of bread, and you multiplied it to feed 15,000 people, content fully full with leftovers. Only God can do that. You're the only one that has the book on kingdom equations. And I just wonder, I know there's people today that are watching online or TV or in one of our locations and you come today and you're suffering loss or you're in a period of brokenness or maybe just all this darkness in our world today, your mental health and your emotional health, I mean, you're still in the pit today. I would just say give what you have. Master up the strength to give what you have, even though it looks so meager and even though it looks like it is nothing and just put it in the hands of a God who loves you and has compassion on you. And as you surrender, your little, God will multiply it and change lives in your life and in others around you. Lord, I love you today. I wonder if there's one here that's never made the decision to surrender His life to you God. May today be the day that they turn in all their sin and all their dissatisfaction, and all their hopes that this world would give some kind of joy. And in their brokenness today, say, Jesus, I hear you. And today I surrender my life to you. I ask you to come into my heart and save me. I wanna be a child of God, I wanna be a part of your family. The scripture says, if you pray a prayer like that, and you mean it from your heart, that your destiny will be changed from hell to heaven for all eternity. And we'd love to know about it. We wanna rejoice with you so if you're watching online, hey, just click that little raised hand button today so we can be happy for you. If you're at one of our locations, man, just let somebody know on your way out because here's the truth hey, look up at me, all heaven rejoices when somebody comes home to the family of God, He is enough. That is our God.