Loaves or Stones - Braden Brewer

turning to the word of the lord matthew chapter 14 verse 13 to 21 it says when jesus heard of it he departed fence by ship into a desert place apart and when the people had heard thereof they followed him on foot out of the cities and jesus went forth and saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion toward them and he healed their sick and when it was evening his disciples came to him saying this is a desert place the time is now passed when the multitudes away send the multitudes away that they may go into the villages and buy themselves victuals but jesus said unto them they need not depart give ye them to eat someone said give you them to eat and they say unto him we have here but five loaves and two fishes he said bring them hither to me and he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass and took of the five loaves and the two fishes and looking up to heaven he blessed and break and gave the loaves to his disciples and the disciples to the multitude and they did all eat and were filled and they took up the fragments that remained twelve baskets full and they that had eaten were about five thousand men beside women and children i'd like to speak to you for just a few moments tonight i'll i'll try and make this as brief as possible on the subject loaves and stones loaves and stones turn your neighbor and say loaves and stones amen if you could lift your hands with me as we go into the word of the lord if you could just help me tonight and pray for me and pray that god would just have his way jesus god we're so thankful lord for your presence that we felt in this place and god i pray that you'd continue to move and continue to have your way o god i pray in the name of jesus god that you would help us give us strength o god and give us liberty lord jesus to set aside our flesh this evening lord god i pray that you would begin to feed us with your word and with your spirit tonight i pray in the name of jesus that we would see young people that are called anew and afresh to step out of the world that we live in and to serve you with everything that we have i pray god in the name of jesus that your spirit would begin to have liberty in this place like we've seen something break in the spirit just a moment ago i pray in the name of jesus that a call would go out on young people tonight in the mighty name of jesus if you could just hand that with a handclap of praise and worship right now hallelujah praise god [Applause] i want to i want to tell you that i'm an avid podcast listener i'm someone that i dive into podcasts and i listen to them frequently and a few weeks ago i heard a podcast that was talking about the military necessity of food i love food i don't know about you but food is it's been said before food is my bread and butter it is it is what i look for after a good church service it's what i look for when when i'm going on a date it's just a big part of our lives can i get an amen it's just something that we need a and in the podcast was about the fact that in the olden days one of the most difficult parts of military logistics was the food how are we gonna feed thousands and thousands of soldiers that move from one place to another how is it that we're gonna feed this large massive group of people marching from place to place and there were times when when they would actually have to take a group of people almost as large as the army itself to follow them around and cook food for the men that were going out to fight there were also times when they when they discovered and they realized if we pay the men we can get them to go out into neighboring villages and neighboring places and buy the food and we're no stranger to how difficult food strategy can be we've all been at the end of a good church service and it's time for food and you say to the other person in the group across the way where do you want to go to eat everybody just stares at each other well i don't know there's too many options this is fredericton new brunswick there's a plethora of places we can go to eat and then you've got the other person on the on the other side of the group that says and this always happens it doesn't matter to me and then thank you and then somebody gets up the nerve then oh here we go dairy queen [Music] about dairy queen but then the person that said it doesn't matter to me looks across can i get a witness i don't know about dairy queen i was at dairy queen just the other night and i just i'm all dairy queened out wendy's what about wendy's we could go to win oh but somebody else has to be like well i don't really have anything i like at wendy's subway well nobody likes the smell of subway afterwards mcdonald's well no just know we we've all been there it's almost as difficult as the military strategy to try and find some place to eat after service and you get hangry real fast i don't care how spiritual church was when it comes to finding a place to eat after service you can lose all your spirituality really quick we've got to be fed in john chapter 6 and verse 35 says and jesus said unto them i am the bread of life he that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth on me shall never shall never thirst we know we've got to be hungry we know we've got to be fed but not just in the physical sense we've all come here tonight to be fed in the spiritual sense we know i've got to be fed by the word i've got to be fed by the spirit i've got to be fed by the bread of life i've got to be fed i'm going to get a little bit hangry if i don't get fat you know we're just coming out of a year and a half long pandemic and during this time many people found pastimes to just kind of move farther into the pandemic and try to push the time farther away and they would they would be working from home it became the norm and so people had more time to learn things and take up hobbies and there was one thing that completely exploded in popularity and that was sourdough bread anybody ever tried it for those of you that aren't familiar with sourdough bread it's the process in which you create your own yeast by leaving flour and water to sit out on the counter at room temperature and it is a process you've got to feed it more water and flour every single day you've got to make sure it's just the right temperature and after a week of feedings and nourishing and caring you're about to start the grueling process of which it comes to making it you've got to leave it to sit for an hour after you mix the water and the flour together you you've got to do this stretch and fold technique after it's set for a little while where you pick it up and you put it down you turn the ball you pick it up and you turn it put it down it's just this this process that repeats itself every half an hour for four hours and then you've got to put in the fridge overnight but everybody had the time for this and and i had the time for this and i decided to try sourdough bread and so i made my own starter i put the water and i put the flour in it was potato water because that's what everybody everybody recommends you boil potatoes pour off the potatoes and you use the water and you create your own yeast and i nurtured this thing i fed it every single morning every single night i kept it at the right temperature i did everything right but i left it in the fridge because i had to wait a while before i was gonna cook it but one day i went to go and create this gorgeous sourdough lo-fi and my hopes all up and and i decided i was gonna try this i went to go get my starter out of the fridge and i looked around and it was nowhere to be found i thought my child my my baby i i've fed this thing since it was just starting out in life i i've taken care of this thing for since the very beginning and i asked my wife do you know what happened to my sourdough starter she said well it started to smell funny and so i threw it out i thought what you murderer it's starting to smell funny that's the flavor it's supposed to smell funny i forgave her i decided to try it again and so i went through the process feeding and fading and feeding and the right temperature and all this and that and you have to keep it at this little bit warmer than room temperature and they say to do that you've got to put it in the oven with the light on and we had this typical military strategy what are we gonna have for dinner tonight we were getting hangry and i said well why don't we just have boxed pizza and following the instructions on the box i preheated the oven to 350 degrees i know i know i'm an evil person please pray for me this is this is something that takes time it takes effort it's a process and in matthew chapter 14 verse 16 jesus is teaching 5 000 people and he says they need not depart give ye them to eat and they said unto him we we have five loaves and two fishes that's all we got in john chapter six verse five to twelve it recounts the same story and jesus says when shall we buy bread that these may eat and philip answered his ham 200 penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may take a little one of his disciples andrew simons peter's brother simon peter's brother he said unto him there's a lot here which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes and jesus said that's good enough we can use that jesus was looking for something and he said what what are we going to do for food to feed all of these people mcdonald's mobile order are we going to order pizza oh are we going to order in the diplomat let's get a bunch of tacos from taco boys what are we doing here guys what we got to feed these people out here and and i just moved in in saint stephen and one of the most exciting things about where we we've moved to is we can now get food delivery glory to god hallelujah but john highlights the fact that when the disciples had said we don't have any food here he said there's a lot here somebody stepped forward and said there's a lad here with five loaves and two fishes we don't find anywhere that anybody else has come as prepared as this one boy in a group of five thousand people nobody nobody else had gone through a mcdonald's drive nobody had a granola bar in their purse it was just one lad that was brought forward and he said you know what i've got some bread and some fish that i can give to god somebody had the foresight to say if i'm gonna go hear jesus i'm not going empty-handed if i'm gonna go hear jesus i'm gonna go prepared somebody had the foresight to say if i'm gonna go sit and listen to jesus teach i'm not gonna go empty-handed i don't know whether it was his mother whether it was him maybe he's had them in his pockets for weeks and they were starting to smell bad but when they were looking for something to feed everybody else there was one lad that said i've got five loaves and two fishes and that's all i've got in verse six said jesus said this to prove him for he himself knew what he would do jesus knew somebody in here has something that i can use somebody in here has something already prepared that i can bless somebody in here already has something i can multiply somebody in here i i'm looking for somebody that already has come with a little bit of bread ready and it was because he already had something that jesus said we can use this we can bless this we can i can work through this i can i can use this i can multiply this because somebody stepped forward to say i'm prepared i might not have much but i've been praying i might not have much but i've been reading my bible as much as i can i might not have much but but i've been setting myself apart i might not have much but i've been getting ready for this moment so take this use this multiply this bless this and so my word tonight to you is we need some young people that after a year and a half long pandemic are going to walk into church and say i don't have much but i've been preparing and i've been praying and i've been getting ready because i want to see the word of god multiplied so take this oh come on church come on young people it's been too long since we've been in church i hope somebody's come prepared [Music] yes it may be seated i'm trying to move fast here jesus he was willing to multiply the boys five loaves and two fishes he he was willing to do that but we find just ten chapters before in matthew the jesus in chapters four verse one to four it says then was jesus led up to of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil and when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights he was afterward and hungered and when the tempter came to him he said if thou be the son of god command that these stones be made bread thou be the son of god here's here's what the tempter does you take these stones and you turn them into bread just just aren't you hungry i'd be a little bit hungry too 40 days and 40 nights i be getting a little bit hungry and here satan comes and says aren't you hungry just turn these stones into bread and look at you you're wasting away to nothing just turn these stones into bread but what the enemy was trying to do was to get jesus to feed his flesh and jesus answered it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word of god that proceedeth out of the mouth of god our enemy whenever given the opportunity will try and force us and get us to feed our flesh so that instead of coming to god with bread and saying break this and bless us and multiply this we come to him with rocks instead and say can you turn this into bread for me the enemy is trying to get us to feed our flesh so that when we walk into church we walk in with a weight instead of something that can feed other people we walk in here with something that begins to hold this town after a while and we've got to say god can you change this into something you can use the devil wanted jesus to listen to his flesh he wanted jesus just to just to give in a little bit i want to tell you tonight that we serve a god that he came to earth and gave his life on the cross out of love for you and i he he's in the business of changing people he's in the business of turning people's lives around he's in the business of working miracles he's willing to forgive whatever sin is out there but what i'm telling you tonight is that there's so many times we walk into service with rocks and we say god i want to be used we say god you know can you just take this i want you to change it into some bread because i want to see it multiplied and i want to see it be be given out to people god god could you just here i haven't spent any time working on it i just pinned it hey it's been weighing me down for a while i've been i've been carrying it around god can you can you just change this too many times we walk into service after service and we pray god use me god anoint me god work through me but in between those services there's no preparation involved and we bring rocks to jesus and say change this into something that you can use but god isn't looking for somebody that's just trying to appease their flesh he's looking to use somebody that in the midst of 5 000 people that came with absolutely nothing he's looking for one lad that said i've come prepared he's looking for one lad that said i'm not coming empty-handed i'm gonna pray i'm gonna fast i'm gonna read the word because i want to be anointed because i want god's blessing because i just want to be used it's all i've got to get ready it doesn't matter how difficult it is it doesn't matter how long i've got to spend working at it i've just got to be ready if i'm coming into church i'm going to be ready if i'm coming into god's presence i've got to be ready because i want his spirit to be multiplied you see god's not looking to turn stones into bread but when we bring him a little bit of bread he's willing to take it and bless it and multiply it what we have might not be much but when we bring something to him he can say how i can use this i can do something through this i i see you over there molding and shaping and kneading i see you spending time in the word i see you praying what i feel so strongly tonight from god to say is that we've got a lot of people in here tonight a lot of young people that you felt the call of god on your life but instead of preparing for it we come to service after service with rocks in our hands because we've been feeding our flesh when god's looking for you to be able to feed the multitudes we walk into service after service with rocks in our hands that weigh us down and hold us back when god's looking for somebody to say i've put in the time i've put in the effort so god take this piece of bread and break it that's a word we're scared of to be broken but it couldn't have been multiplied if it wasn't broken first take this god do with it what you want break it and multiply it it's not much but but it's yours we've got to be walking into church with our arms full of bread instead of being weighed down by the rocks because we've been feeding our spirit all week long or feeding our flesh all week long there's a preacher by the name of scott graham that preaches a message would you like god with that and he did he begins to talk about the importance and the necessity of bread when jesus said on the bread of life it was a staple in their culture in their society and he was saying when jesus said that he said i'm not just a side piece i want to be the center of your meal i want you to i want to be in your life the thing that you work towards the thing that you want the thing that you crave and throughout this pandemic that has accelerated the business world and the church and the directions that they were headed before the pandemic ever started i've heard people say before that this pandemic is just an accelerator to get to where you were headed before the pandemic if you were already headed there you you just got there faster if you're in a church that was headed for a revival you've probably seen it even through a pandemic but restaurants and and stores they they've seen people decrease uh store as restaurants maybe weren't as popular but the ones that were popular we'd get would get takeout and everyone switched to online shopping we were already headed there but it just pushed ahead the timeline god's looking for some people that throughout the pandemic he's saying what have you done have you fed your flesh or have you been preparing so that you can feed the multitudes if the music could come back what have you been doing during this pandemic have you been feeding your flesh or have you been preparing bread to praying to god to say i don't have much but take this julius caesar was one of the greatest military generals to ever live but one of the things that really put him on the map in rome was that he fought and won again against the northern tribes of gaul and the gauls were known for being ruthless people from the north that about 300 years earlier had almost wiped out the romans completely and caesar when going to attack the gauls had gotten to the point where he marched far beyond where the supply lines could still reach him they were running out of food day by day and the leader of the gauls knew it he marched ahead of the roman army and he burned down towns and villages and took all the food possible so that nothing could be left for the romans to live off of the romans although it may have seemed like they had nothing to feed their army had to learn to live off the land and despite their attempts to starve them out the romans came back and were able to defeat the gauls the fact that the source of their food had been taken away from them they had to learn to live off the land instead of relying on the places around them to feed them they had to say i've got to learn to feed myself if we're going to get through this i've got to learn to find my own food even though they were cut off from the supply they learned to live off the land this pandemic has tried to pull us away from the church and what we need to feed us but we need to learn my source has to be more than just sundays and wednesdays my source has to be more than just relying on the elders around me my source has to be more than just going from convention to convention some of you in here have felt the call of god in your life but you've walked into convention with rocks in your hands that weigh you down that wear you out you've walked into here with rocks and you're in your hands instead of bread but it's jesus ed and john where where are we going to buy the bread that these people might eat where are we going to get the bread from he already knew the answer there's somebody in here that's prepared i wonder if we could stand right now we felt something break in the spirit early in their service but i want to appeal to you tonight we've been carrying rocks around with us for far too long somewhere along the way we've traded the preparation for god to use us to just feeding our flesh we've allowed ourselves to grow farther and farther away from the plan and the purpose that god has for us but god's looking at the world sin how are we going to feed these people we've got thousands of people that have got to be filled does anybody have something i can use we've been weighed down for far too long with the burden of rocks and sin in our life we've been burning by feeding our flesh [Music] you've been watching things on tick tock that maybe you shouldn't you've been seeing some things on instagram you've got to put a stop too if you've been watching some movies and watching things on youtube you you shouldn't be and you're being weighed down as you come into service you've been snapchatting people that you maybe you shouldn't be and you're carrying rocks around with you saying i'm just feeding my flesh we've got to walk into church in a new convention after all those times and all we've got to offer god is rocks change this use this i felt the call of god on my life at one point but this is all i've got god's looking for some people to bring the rocks to the altar tonight he's looking for some people to lay down the weights to consecrate themselves and say i'm gonna stop watching things i shouldn't be i'm gonna stop listening to things i shouldn't be i'm gonna stop going places i shouldn't be i i've got to stop hanging out with people i shouldn't be around because i know there's a call of god in my life i know god's looking for bread at some point and so i've got to be ready because it's more important to feed the multitude than to feed my flesh in deuteronomy chapter 2 chapter 27 and verse 2 we find the israelites as god is speaking to them saying these are all the things you've got to do he gave them laws about all kinds of different things in verse 2 it says and on the day you cross over jordan to the land that the lord your god has given you you shall set up large stones and plaster them with plaster and you shall write on them all the words of this law and when you cross over to enter into the land that the lord your god is giving you and land flowing with milk and honey as the lord the god of your fathers has promised to this is what i want you to do israel make an altar out of the stones and leave them behind as you walk into the place i promise you [Music] [Applause] [Music] you see young people god's promised you things and god's called you to places but he's saying i want you to leave the stones that weigh you down behind and cross over as you begin to prepare because i'm going to come looking for a lad someday hashtag he said i want you to lay them down at an altar i want you to cover them up so that nobody can see them but more than that i want you to cover them up with the word of god i want you to walk in the place i promised you [Music] oh come on young people all across this room right now i wonder if we could lift our hands [Music] we just get out of a year and a half long pandemic and some of you have walked in here with rocks and god is saying i i'm gonna call on your life but i want you to leave the rocks in the altar i'm gonna call on your life but you gotta put away feeding your flesh i'm gonna call on your life but it's gonna mean putting some things aside it's time to start making bread it's time to start getting ready for the call [Music] allah we've been out of an altar for a long time and i'm going to ask you tonight i want every person in this room to make their way to the altar i don't want us to be timid i don't want to be nervous around people but every every person under the sound of my voice i want us to come to this altar tonight come right in close there's room for everybody but i want right now for you to make this a place of consecration [Music] right now as you find a place around this halter i wonder if you could take the weight that's been holding you down and say i'm leaving this here i'm not coming back to it it's going to be covered up by the word ha i'm gonna start getting ready i'm gonna start preparing i'm gonna start praying and reading my bible giving myself to him the way that i should be come on young people just begin to consecrate yourself right now god i'm sorry i'm sorry i've been giving myself to things i shouldn't be i'm sorry i've been allowing some things into my life that shouldn't be there but god i place it on this halter right now god i give it to you right now and i want to hear your call [Music] i've got to get ready [Music] i've got to start making bread it's all about [Music] young people just place those rocks at the altar tonight i'm not leaving with this again i'm not leaving with this weighing me down anymore i'm not leaving with this holding me back from the cold i'm not leaving carrying this around with me anymore but i'm leaving here gonna start preparing [Music] i'm leaving here and i'm gonna start being ready for when god is looking for somebody with bread so you

Channel: Capital Community Church

Views: 734

Rating: 4.757576 out of 5

Keywords: capital, community, church, fredericton, nb, new, brunswick, canada, upc, upci, united, pentecostal, international, apostolic, sermon, preach, preaching, bible, study, teaching, bible study, atlantic, district, atlantic district, atlantic district upci, braden, brewer, braden brewer, loaves or stones, loaves, or, stones

Id: BFOps8BONWY

Length: 36min 37sec (2197 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021