Little Is Much When God Is In It: Trusting God’s Daily Provision

We hear Isaiah’s call: “Come, come you who are thirsty. Buy without money.”

Sounds like a great world to live in, doesn’t it? Imagine going to Walmart and filling up your buggy and not having to worry about it. But Isaiah is talking in a spiritual nature. He’s saying, “Hey, you come to the kingdom of God, and in the kingdom of God, our ultimate destination for those who love Jesus, all is provided. All is provided.”

In the middle section of Isaiah, when he talks about all of this, he says in verse six, “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” He’s speaking in that spiritual place: “Come, let the Lord fulfill your need.” He will. He promises. He always makes good on his promise.

How many of you have had somebody that hasn’t made good on a promise before? Maybe all of us should raise our hand on that, right? People are not always good at fulfilling their promise, but God is, and God does fulfill his promise.

When we get over to Matthew and we look at the gospel lesson, it’s a lesson that we all have seen and heard. Jesus is getting away from the crowds because he has heard the news that John the Baptist has been beheaded, the one that ushered his ministry into being, the one who baptized him in the Jordan. John had been beheaded. So Jesus was getting away, getting away by himself, dealing with the news that John had been beheaded.

But Jesus couldn’t get away a lot of times. He tried. It was important that he get away and have time to pray and time to be in communion with God. But often the people followed, they figured out where he was going to be, and it happened this time. They’re following Jesus, seeking him out. “Oh, if he went that way in the boat, we can get around to the other side.” And they met him there.

In this time when Jesus was seeking to be alone, verse 14 of Matthew 14 says that when he went ashore, he saw the crowd and he had compassion on them and he healed their sick. Now, can you imagine what it must have been like back in that day? You’ve got one who is the Son of God, who has the power of the Almighty, who has the power to heal the blind, to cause the lame to walk, to make leprosy disappear, to raise the dead. That’s got to be a hot commodity. If there were somebody like that walking around right now, how many people would be in line saying, “Heal me, heal me”?

He had compassion. Remember what the Psalm says: he has great compassion, he’s slow to anger. He has compassion and mercy, and this is that—he’s showing that compassion and mercy. This crowd of 5,000 people, everybody’s wanting to see Jesus, everybody’s wanting to touch Jesus, everybody’s wanting a word with Jesus. It’s a whole big crowd.

Now the disciples, being his handlers as you will, are like, “This has got to stop. The man needs his rest.” So they say, “Look, it’s getting close to evening. These folks are a long way from anything and they’re going to need food. You need to send them away so that they can get food.” Jesus looks up and he says, “You feed them.” “What? Us? But Lord, how can we do that? The only food that we have in our possession are a few fish and a few loaves of bread. There are 5,000 men here along with their wives and their children. How many thousands of people, and you want us to feed them with this?”

There are a lot of times in our lives when we become like the disciples. “What? You expect me to get by with this? Lord, you want me to do what for my neighbor when I don’t have? Lord, you want me to do what in the ministry?” And we forget God’s power and God’s faithfulness. They had forgotten that all things are possible through Jesus Christ, that nothing is impossible for God. Nothing.

Jesus says, “Give me the food.” Jesus does that miracle that stuns us. He takes the two baskets of food, and he speaks to the Father. He gives thanks and he sends them off: “Now go serve.” I wonder what the disciples were thinking when he handed them back those few fish and few loaves and said, “Now go start serving the people.” They were probably thinking, “Has he lost his mind?” But when it was said and done, they took up baskets full of leftovers and every man, woman, and child was fed and satisfied. That’s what God did.

There’s an old hymn that says, “Little is much when God is in it.” You probably have to be 70 or 80 to remember that one. But little is much when God is in it. God can take nothing and create the heavens and the earth and everything that’s in it. Why in the world can God not take a few loaves and fish? Why can God not take the situation you think you are in that seems so bad and not turn it around to the good?

We’re kind of spoiled in this country. A lot of folks think, “Well, because I don’t have everything I wanted on my list at the grocery store, I’m about starved to death.” You’ve been looking for something to eat and you walk through the house and you open all the cabinets and you see all this stuff, and you walk to the refrigerator and you open up and you see all this stuff, and you’re like, “We gotta go to the grocery store. We ain’t got nothing to eat.” We should translate that: “We gotta go to the grocery store because nothing I want is in our cabinet.”

But God provides not our want; God provides our need. In this time, there was a definite need. There was a need for these folks who were a long way from anywhere to eat, to be fed. He was not going to stop the process of the ministry that he had the opportunity to do in those people’s lives just to send them home and interrupt it. So he made a way to feed them. God makes a way where we think it’s impossible. He makes a way where we think it’s impossible.

“Oh yeah, preacher, tell me about that.” I will. Look with me, if you will, over in 1 Kings, Chapter 17. A fellow by the name of Elijah. Elijah has been sent to Ahab. He’s been sent to try to change the ways of the people, and they won’t listen. So God says, “You go tell Ahab that for three years there’s not going to be any rain.”

What would that mean? Three years, no rain. We’ve been through a nationwide drought over the last four, five, six months. What does that mean to us? I’ll tell you what it’s meant to my son. It’s meant that the hay he requires to feed his cattle—when they went out and did the first cutting, they only got a fourth of what they need for the whole coming winter and year. If he has to buy it, if he can find it, because every farmer’s in the same situation, it’s going to command a premium of money to where you can’t afford to feed your cattle and you have to sell them. No rain means no food.

Elijah the Tishbite said to Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word.” And the word of the Lord came to him: “Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, and he lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. After a while, the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land.

Elijah didn’t have to go out to the market or go knock on the door saying, “Where’s my food?” God provided. Was it ideal? Would Elijah rather have been sitting in somebody’s kitchen with the finest fare? Possibly. Would he have liked to have rolled through the drive-through at McDonald’s? Possibly. They didn’t exist then. But God provided for him.

It’s not the only time God provided. What about the children of Israel when they were released from their bondage in Egypt and they wandered through the desert for 40 years? Forty years. Left home, left everything, wandered through the wilderness of the desert. How did God respond? What did God give them? Manna. What about water? What about when they got tired of manna and they complained, “We want some meat”? He gave them quail. They didn’t do without. God blessed them. God blessed his people with what they need.

Understand the word “need”: what we need to survive. In America, we want more, and sometimes our want we think is our need, but it’s not. He promises us what we need.

As we read on down, the word of the Lord came to Elijah: “Arise and go to Zarephath and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow to feed you.” He arose and went, and when he came to the gate of the city, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel that I may drink.” As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”

Remember, this is the land and people under a severe drought. Crops aren’t growing, water’s scarce, and God has sent Elijah to this widow’s house. For a widow, it’s even harder because apparently when her husband died, he didn’t have a brother to take her into his care. She’s going it alone, and back then, for a woman to go it alone was tough. They had no respect, no privilege, no power. They were without. They scrounged. And this lady now is sitting there, and she’s got this guy asking her to bring bread and water.

Her response in verse 12: “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am now gathering a couple of sticks, that I may go and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” Because “I have nowhere else to get any from. We’re at the bottom of the jar. There is none anywhere. Here I am without.”

Folks, that’s true hunger. That’s true hunger when you’re getting ready to have your last and you have no idea where the next meal is going to come from. The poorest of our poor in America don’t know that feeling, but there are countries around this world where they do.

Elijah said to her, “Do not fear. Go and do as you have said but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son.” How would you have received those words if you had been that widow? You had just said, “I plan on going and making a little cake for me and my son. It’s the last we’ve got and then we’ve got no other future but to die.” Elijah says, “Well, go make me one first, and then take the scraps and make you some, and just do what you said.” “My last meal I’ve got to share with you?”

How would we handle that if we were in that spot and a stranger came to the door and said, “Hey, fix me part of that meal”? Elijah said, “Do not fear.” Why? Because Elijah walked with the Lord. Elijah knew that God fulfilled his promises to those who obey him. God will fulfill the promise. God will fulfill his promise.

Verse 14: “For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.” He didn’t just ask her to do that; he said, “Listen, this is what the Lord our God has said about this time and this place and this moment in your life. If you do as I say, your provisions will not go away.”

At that point in time, the widow had to make a decision. “Am I going to trust and believe what Elijah says, or am I going to trust in myself and what I have and say, ‘No thank you, because me and my son are going to enjoy our last meal and die’?”

Friends, the Lord is the great provider of all things in our lives. It is when we trust in ourselves, in our own ability, in our own ways that we get caught up in our wants, not our needs, and we really mess things up. How many folks do you reckon in this day are living in a house that’s really nice, above their means, that they decided to buy because they wanted a house and their house payment is really high because they bought in a time of high prices? How many folks have gone and bought that brand-new pickup truck between $80,000 and $100,000 and are making $2,000-a-month truck payments, but are wondering if they’ve got enough to get back to the grocery store this month?

Sometimes the decisions we make, depending on ourselves, our own ability, get us into real trouble. We need to be dependent on the Lord, seeking the Lord, following the Lord, depending on his provision. His provision is good and right. I would say sometimes when we get ourselves in those big quandaries where we’ve got more going out than we’ve got coming in, we’ve gone by what we want for ourselves, not what the Lord has provided for us to have.

But this widow, she thought about it, and she decided to trust the word of the Lord that Elijah brought to her. She went and did as Elijah said, and she and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. I can imagine what it looked like that that same amount of flour and oil stayed at the same level, allowing them to eat every day until the rain came and the grain grew and they were able to have new crops.

That’s what the Lord does, and that’s what Jesus is proving: you can trust the Lord. The Lord can take the worst of the situation and turn it around. It may not turn out to be the way that you want it to be, but he will provide your need. He will provide for your need and keep you in a place of life.

Listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 6, starting at verse 25. That day on the bank of the lake, as Jesus was doing all that he was doing, was as much about teaching his disciples to trust him, to trust the power of Almighty God in him. I bet they never asked the question again, “How are they going to eat?”

Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 were spoken to his disciples and are spoken to us as well: “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his life? Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

“Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat, what will we drink, or what shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” Do you hear what he’s saying? The Gentiles seek after these things—the nonbelievers, the ones who aren’t in relationship with God. They seek after these things. They don’t know the provider. They don’t trust the provider. They’ve not seen him work in their life. But you—you have seen the provision of God. You know his trustworthiness. You know what he’ll do for you. If we’re living not to our wants but are thankful for our needs and how he meets them, there is no anxiety.

Then he gives us the key. He comes back to that place that Isaiah was at. What’s the key? How do I have that kind of provision in my life? How do I get set up with that? “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” A lot of times our want takes possession of our mind and our heart and does not allow us to seek the kingdom of God. What sits on the throne of your heart? What sits in the thoughts of your mind? Are you seeking God, or are you seeking want and stuff?

Jesus closes with wise words for us as American people who are so messed up chasing our wants: “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow.” How many of us have great anxiety about tomorrow? Older folks ask, “Will my social security be enough?” Middle-aged folks say, “I’ve got to do everything I can to have this great big bundle so I can retire at 50 and have a big life.” Anxious. Worried about tomorrow. Worried about the next day.

Live in the moment with God. If you’re trusting God for your very existence, don’t worry about tomorrow. Live in the day. It’s the key to low anxiety. Enjoy the day. Thank him for the breath. Thank him for the meal. Thank him for the place where you get to lay down. Thank him for carrying you throughout the day. If you wake the next day and you have that breath, thank him again. Live for the moment, the day. No one is promised tomorrow. From the youngest to the oldest in this building, no one is promised tomorrow. If you open your eyes to it, you are blessed by God.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

So, God is our provider. God provides us our basic needs. He will provide us our basic needs. And God provides for us through Jesus Christ what we need to have assurance of a life beyond this place and time. We have nothing to be anxious about if we seek his kingdom and we walk with God and trust him. Amen? Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your promise. We thank you that we’ve experienced your promise and your goodness. Father, I pray that if there’s anybody in this sanctuary or anyone who will watch this message, if there are any that are suffering through the anxiety this world lays on us as we chase and pursue our dreams and our wants, if we are lost and we have let the things of the world sit on the throne of our heart, I pray that your Holy Spirit will bring us back to a place of fully trusting you for all things.

Father, let us live in the day and in the moment instead of chasing what might be years down the road. Let us walk humbly with you, trusting you, rejoicing in you, and giving you thanks for the moments you have given us and for the way that you have sustained us. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, and everybody said, Amen.