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Living by Faith

Bread from Heaven (4): God’s Economy

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“He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.”

It’s a much taught-on topic, but we cannot move on from the sign of the Bread of Life without considering the fact that the miracle happened in the hands of the disciples, not just through the hands of Jesus. For those who walk by faith Jesus is waiting with provision for the needs of the multitude, saying: “Take this, and give it out in my power.”

Riches in Glory
Imagine what it felt like for the disciples to have a small chunk of bread and a little bit of fish in their hands, to break pieces off, and see it just reappear in their hands, like water coming out of a tap. I wonder what it looked like? What it felt like? An unending flow of provision from Heaven pouring onto Earth by the Spirit to meet every need, in abundance. 2 Cor 9:8 comes to mind: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” Count the “abundance” words in this verse: all grace, abound, always, all sufficiency, all things, abundance, every good work. Seven times in one sentence, the Holy Spirit spells out just how sufficient are the riches in glory according to which our God will supply all our needs. (Phil 4:19)

So why can it so often feel that we are behind the door when the abundance is handed out? We can bring any number of spiritual “reasons” to why our need can seem to remain no matter how much we tell God that we are believing for His sufficiency, but I think we can find a key in James 4:3. “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” James is not one to pull any punches. Does he mean that God is a Killjoy and doesn’t want us to have any pleasure? If God made all things for His pleasure (Rev 4:11), then surely we get to share in some of it? ! Tim 6:17 tells us that God “gives us richly all things to enjoy,” so it is certainly in His will that we have pleasure in our lives.

Pleasures and Priorities
The whole of 1 Timothy 6:17 says this: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.” It’s not that God doesn’t want us to have “things to enjoy;” but in this verse we see that He wants to have the pleasure of giving them to us Himself, rather than see us try to by-pass His will for our lives and help ourselves to the things that we want. It’s a matter of trusting Him to Know what’s best for us, rather than asking for our inheritance like the prodigal son and spending it on carnal foolishness.

But it’s also a matter of priorities. It’s when we seek first the Kingdom of God that “all these things” are given to us. It’s when we give, that “pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men pour into your lap.” (Luke 6:38) God’s economy is the reverse of the world’s. When we live as servants of Christ (which we are: 1 Cor 4:1, Col 3:24) our responsibility is first to Jesus: what does He want us to do with what He has given us? Like the unprofitable servants in the parable (Luke 17:10) our job is to do what we are told, and it’s the Lord’s job to reward us. He puts the loaves and fishes into our hands for us to distribute.

When I’ve read this story in the past I’ve tended to focus on the multiplication aspect: the boy’s lunch becoming food for the crowd, and all that we can learn from that. The teaching that I have listened to or read has tended to have the same emphasis, and the twelve baskets left over have been a bit of an aside. I’ve come across references to them being symbolic of the twelve tribes, and I’ve seen the instruction to “Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost,” (v. 12) as referring to the theme expressed in v 37, where Jesus talks about gathering “all that the Father gives me.” But what I haven’t seen so often (if at all?) is that this is quite simply a demonstration of God’s economy in practice.

The Kingdom Equation
I see it like this: Jesus gives a visible handful of resources to His disciples, with the instruction to distribute what they are holding to the needs He has shown them. What they see in their hands is ludicrously insufficient, but what they need to believe and see in the Spirit is Philippians 4:19 and 2 Cor 9:8. When they obey and step out into the crowd, Jesus fulfils His part of the Kingdom equation, which, broadly expressed, is “His abundance always equals our need.” So far so familiar. But once the ministry is over, there are twelve baskets of fragments that weren’t needed by the crowd to gather up. And they may well have a symbolic and spiritual significance: as with all of the Word, there are many layers to every detail. But I think there is a more concrete and immediate application to this part of the story: twelve baskets, twelve disciples. One basket each. They began with crumbs, which, like the widow of Zarephath, (1 Kings 17:12) they shared out; and they ended up with plenty, pressed down, running over, poured into their laps.

We know God’s promises are true, but I think there is more to receiving God’s abundant supply than just knowing the words and declaring them. Jesus Himself tells us why: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 11: 28 NIV) In these days of crumbling world systems and collapsing international order we are increasingly going to find ourselves in the place where Jesus is our only source of supply. And this isn’t just so that we can keep what He gives us for ourselves: it’s so that we can feed the hungry crowd with it first.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

The Key of David

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I was recently at the UK National exhibition Centre (the NEC) where our company was exhibiting and I was a speaker at an event. It’s a while since I have set up our exhibitions stand at a show, but the people I usually delegate weren’t able to do this one, so the lot fell to me, and because I have had other priorities over the last couple of weeks – and because I tend to leave things till the last minute anyway – my preparations were minimal, and I arrived at the exhibitor traffic control entrance for the exhibition hall expecting the procedure to be the same as last time we were there. It wasn’t.

“Have you got a QR code for me, mate?”

“QR code? Sorry, what QR code?” Apparently I should have registered on the (new) traffic control website to be given allocated a timeslot for setting up. I would have been given two hours. There had been road works and a diversion just before the NEC where it had seemed like every access to the centre was closed, and I had gone badly astray,  and with other (more self-imposed) delays I was already over an hour behind my hope-for schedule. I was on my own, and I had a van full of stuff to unload to build my stand and set up my display. This was not what I needed.

 However the gate attendant was very friendly and helpful, and said, “Don’t worry mate. You can do it now.“

So I logged onto the site on my mobile phone, filled in my details, (hassle, hassle!) and pressed register. Nothing. I pressed register again. Still nothing. I could not register on the site. No matter how many times I pressed the “register“ button, the site failed to respond. I called the attendant over. “I can’t log on!“ I shouted through the van window. I had asked the Lord for help with setting up – angels, I was thinking – as it’s a good few years since I have set up a big exhibition on my own, and at this moment I did not see the help that had just come my way.

The attendant grinned. “Ah! Site crash!“ he said. “Don’t worry mate – hold on a minute.“ He went back to his little hut, and came back with a printed form, which he started scribbling on. “ Here you are!” he said. “You’re Dave today! Put this on your dashboard. That will keep security happy.”


He gave me the form he had filled in, and “Dave” was written in the space where my name should have been. Why he didn’t ask my name to fill in I wlll never know, but what I did know straight away was that I am a brother of Jesus, and Jesus was the Son of David. I was very happy for Dave – David – to be my name. Revelation 3: 7 says “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, ‘These things says He who is holy, He who is true,”He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens,” and right now this was my key of David, and indeed it opened the way into the exhibition hall for me.

But that isn’t the whole story, and of itself would hardly be a tale worth telling. What is worth telling though is that because the traffic control website crashed, I wasn’t allocated a time slot on the system. It took me four hours to set up my stand. A heavenly hand had frozen the system for me because God knew how long I would need, and what the key of David opened for me no-one could shut…

But it doesn’t end there. I left the hall at 7.30 – the last man standing, in fact – and headed for where I thought the hotel was. I found a multi-story car park and a brightly-lit complex called Resort World, but nothing that said The Genting Hotel. I drove round some cones in the road to ask another gate attendant if he could help me (The NEC is full of cones and gate attendants), but all he did was shout at me for driving round the cones and point me to the multi-story car park, where the entrance to the one-way system yawned like the gates of hell I had two suitcases – mine and Anne’s, my laptop, and another large shoulder bag, and I had visions of having to park the car and still go looking for the hotel, carrying all that luggage.

Actually the Genting Hotel is inside Resort World, but I didn’t know this until I had gone to the very top of the multi-story, parked the car, and saw the sign by the entrance to the lift.

When I came out of the lift at the bottom I was in a world of loud music and bright lights: the shopping arcade and the bars and restaurants of Resort World, but I saw the entrance to the hotel off through an archway. So by his time I had got lost in the diversion, been unable to find the hotel – oh yes: I hadn’t been able to find the exhibition hall loading bay  either – had an unwelcoming encounter with a gate attendant, and now found myself in a world of noise and bright lights and shiny people heading for their night out, when all I wanted was rest,  dinner, and my bed. I was supposed to have been at a speaker’s welcome dinner at six o’clock, so that ship had truly sailed. I felt like an alien in Babylon.

However when I finally got to my hotel room it was delightful, and I did manage to find a restaurant where there was no loud music and I could eat a nice meal in pleasant surroundings, and when I went back to the comfort of my room and reflected on the evening I saw a glimpse of the story that the Holy Spirit was writing…

Hebrews 12:23 says that we have “come to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.” Because I am registered in heaven there was no need for me to register for my limited timeslot, because my Father was going to supply all my need (4 hours) according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus, not just half of it. (Phil 4:19) By Christ Jesus He gave  me the Key of David which opened a door that none could shut. I felt like an alien in Resort World because I am one: I am not of the world, even though I am in it.  And in that world there is going to be opposition – traffic diversions, confusing road signs or lack of them, unfriendly officials, all seeming to conspire against me fulfilling the purpose I was there to accomplish.  But Jesus has overcome the world, and in the midst of that alien environment He didn’t just give me a few scraps that would keep me going, but He looked after me as a child that He loves, and whom he had sent into that place for a purpose.

What was my purpose at the event, as a speaker and an exhibitor? My talk was well-received, and the exhibition of our products was a success commercially. But none of that was really the purpose of my mission: they were just aspects of the marketplace where the Son of David was walking with His key on His shoulder, ministering His truth and love. Because in the course of the social events of the following evening He opened opportunities for me to speak of Him to four different people: a lapsed Baptist, a liberal vicar, and two agnostic academics.

Whatever we are doing, our purpose in the world is to reveal Him through it. Whatever opposition we receive, all things will work together for good because we love the Lord and are called according to this,  His purpose. Because we are his beloved children, registered in Heaven, He will meet our need according to His riches in Christ Jesus and not our poverty; because we are His masterpiece walking in the works prepared beforehand for us in this crumbling world, and because we are His light shining like stars in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, He will make a way where there is no way. (Rom 8:28, Heb 12:23, Phil 4:19, Eph 2:10,  Phil 2:15,  Isaiah 43,  2 Cor 3:3)

We are the epistle of Christ: what is the Holy Spirit writing through you today?