Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.

John 13:6-8

In the process of giving or wanting to give, it takes two sides or parties in order for the gift to be realized. There has to be the giver and there has a be a receiver. Both sides have to be willing participants in the process. If one refuses to give or if one refuses to receive the gift, then they are hindering the beautiful process of giving and receiving.

Peter thought he was doing something noble by refusing to let the Lord wash his feet. Yet, he was in gross darkness and error. By refusing to receive the humble blessing from the Lord, Peter was missing out on a deeper relationship with Christ. When one gives and one receives it accomplishes the fellowship of the ministry to the saints. If we refuse to let our Lord or brothers and sisters give to us, it prevents the blessing. For it is more blessed to give than to receive. If we want to truly bless others, then allowing them to give to us is absolutely essential to both parties spiritual health.

Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account.

Philippians 4:17

This statement from Paul is very striking. He said that he was content in whatever state he found himself. That
includes the fact that he was content in receiving a gift. Not for the sake of being blessed, but that the giver
would know the blessing of giving and that they would have a heavenly reward for their giving. In the name of Christ, Paul is receiving the gift for the good of the body of Christ and the good of the individual giver. It is in the
best interest of everyone if everyone becomes a cheerful giver! When I give to you and you give to me, what a blessed fellowship it brings! The fellowship of the ministering to the saints.

When someone is willing and wanting to give a gift and the would be recipient refuses the gift, what damage it does to the heart of the would be giver! It brings discouragement instead of encouragement. If their giving is refused long enough, then they may be tempted to give up and stop giving altogether. God created us a people who are to be zealous of good works. Zealous of giving ourselves away in many different ways. We are to be continually giving as the Lord enables us. Every good gift and act of giving is from the Father of lights. If we refuse a good gift from a person, it is not only injuring them but it is injuring the heart of the Father. He wanted to give us something good and we were too prideful to allow someone to give to us in the name of Christ.

The Bible teaches us to receive gifts from our brothers and sisters in Christ because of the deepening fellowship it brings. The Bible teaches us to receive gifts from our brothers and sisters in Christ because we want them to have
heavenly treasure! For the sake of their heart and God’s heart, we need to graciously accept the gift, even if we
may not think we need or want it. Let people give from the heart. That’s what’s best for them!

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

Ephesians 5:25

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

Ephesians 5:22

Husbands are commanded to love their wives and wives are commanded to receive that love from their husbands and submit to it. Giving and receiving, giving and receiving. Husbands are to be the primary givers and wives are to be the primary receivers. This is God’s design for marriage. Wives are then able to give back to their husbands by following the example and pattern that is laid down by the husband. It is the same way as the body of Christ. When we are sinners, we can do nothing for God except receive His love and repent of our sins. Once we are Born Again and Spirit filled then we are able to learn how to minister back to the Lord. Thank God that He receives our gifts when offered with a perfect heart of love. He wants us to know the joy of giving, so God joyfully receives back from His own creation. Brothers and sisters, if God can receive from us, then how shall we not receive from our brothers and sisters in Christ?

To refuse a loving gift is to injure the heart of the one who wanted to give. Let the blessings flow to you in the name of Jesus Christ!

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, and the time is now past; send the multitude 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. 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 the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, 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 of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

Matthew 14:14-21

On the surface, this story is about Jesus giving some natural people some natural food. That’s a good thing for him to do, but I believe God wants us to learn something deeper from this story. Imagine instead of feeding 5000 men, Jesus Christ wants to feed the entire world with the spiritual food of the Word of God. God is not willing that any man would perish, but that all would come to repentance. So let’s go step by step through this account in Matthew, with some assistance from the other gospels. This is one of the few stories that appears in all 4 gospels, so I believe that is another reason it has increased importance to God and to us.

Jesus and the disciples and the multitude were in a desert place. There is little to no life in a desert. It is a barren wasteland. There was no food available in the desert, but only the food they had brought with them. The disciples had a couple thoughts about this problem of no food. Their first thought was to send the multitude away so that they can buy food for themselves. They wanted the people to look to themselves for the answer to their hunger. This is not what the Bible teaches us to do for people. We are to look to God to supply all our needs. The disciples’ second thought was that they could go and take what money they had and try to buy food to feed the multitude. This also encourages them to trust in themselves and in their own abilities to feed people. Neither of these thoughts by the disciples was the correct one. For that, we look to Jesus.

Jesus said that the multitude need not depart, but that the disciples have the power to feed them. The disciples responded with the fact that they only have 5 loaves and 2 fishes. In another gospel it says that they are SMALL fishes. This was a good response by the disciples, for it was a humble response. They acknowledge that there was NO WAY that they would be able to feed the multitude in their own strength and power.

To understand this story, we need to look at the spiritual meaning of numbers. There were 5 loaves. 5 is the number of ministry, which is taken from Ephesians 4:11, that God gave some apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. You have 5 fingers on each hand and 5 toes on each foot. Our hands were designed by God to minister to Him and to others in His name. Your feet were made to take you places for purposes of ministry. Jesus Christ said that He is the bread of life. So 5 loaves is representing the ministry of Jesus Christ to the people.

Yet, it wasn’t just 5 loaves, but there are also 2 fishes. The number two is spiritually representing witness. Acts 5:32 says there are two witnesses of God, the Holy Spirit and the church. Revelation 11 also shows the two witnesses of God, which are still the Holy Spirit and the church. The fish represent the disciples of Jesus, for Jesus said in Matthew 4:19, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. The fish are those that have been caught out of the spiritual sea of sin.

Jesus gave the solution to the disciples’ problem. He said, bring what you have to me. We need the blessing of Jesus Christ before we try to minister in the name of Jesus. It takes time spent in prayer to the Father in the name of Jesus before we will be spiritually prepared to minister for Jesus to the people of the world.

So Jesus commands the multitude to sit down on the grass. In Mark it says that it was GREEN grass. If something is green, that means it is alive. Despite being in a desert place, there was life there because Jesus was there. The Lord is my Shepard, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in GREEN pastures. Jesus is inviting the world to sit down and rest in a place of spiritual life and life more abundant through His name.

In Luke, it says the multitude sat down in groups of fifties. This is key. 5000 is a large number and can seem overwhelming when looked at in the natural. When one divides 5000 into fifties, it breaks the task down into manageable pieces. Jesus isn’t asking one disciple to feed the complete 5000, but he is asking individual disciples to feed their 50. We already said that the number 5 represents ministry. The number 10 represents completion. That’s why there was 10 plagues in Egypt and 10 commandments. So for 50, we have ministry going on to a complete number of people. For 5000 we have 5 times 10 times 10 times 10. 1000 represents a large complete number. So ministering to 5000 represents ministry going on to a large, complete number of people. This is symbolic of Jesus reaching the whole world with the Word of God, the true spiritual food.

Jesus took the meager food that the disciples had and sought the blessing of the Father. This is important because every good gift and every perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of lights. With the Father’s will and blessing, Jesus then broke the bread and the fish. Before the spiritual food can be distributed to the whole world, there must be a state of spiritual brokenness. Jesus represents the bread of life. He was meek and broken in spirit, which was perfected when He went to the cross and was physically broken for our sin. The body of Jesus was broken, which is what has made it qualify to be spiritual food for whosoever will, through all these thousands of years since the cross. It takes more than just Jesus to feed the 5000. It takes the fish to be broken as well. The fish again represent the disciples of Jesus, which includes you and me. Our lives must be broken in humility before we can minister to the masses. Jesus was broken and so His church must likewise be broken in spirit, so that there can be true unity of the Spirit in the ministry to the world.

The disciples gave Jesus the food they had. The Lord Jesus took it from them and blessed it and then broke it and then redistributed it back to them for distribution to the masses, the 5,000, the whole world. When we humble ourselves and refuse to minister in the power of our own strength, it allows the Lord to bless our abilities, to sanctify our abilities for His purposes, in the power of His strength. The Lord authorizes us to go in His name. That’s why He said to His broken disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That’s why He said to go and teach all nations. He is sending forth the broken ones. Have you allowed the Word of God to break you spiritually?

What we don’t see in this story is the ministry of the Holy Spirit, yet I know He was present there. Jesus Christ said to the disciples that the Holy Spirit is among them. This is how the food was actually multiplied. The Holy Spirit manifested the multiplying of the food. As the disciples tore off some bread or some fish, the food regenerated. This is a physical example of what the Spirit does in the spirit, when He regenerates our dead spirits to be alive. This is what God wants to do to the world. He wants the complete world to be saved and to experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit, through faith in the name of Jesus.

It says that the multitude was filled and yet there were 12 baskets full of leftovers. The true church has what it takes to feed the world. We have Jesus in our lives, as the source of living waters. We have been baptized with the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, guide us into all truth. God has made us ministers of reconciliation. We are inviting the world to come unto the marriage supper of the Lamb of God. The Holy Spirit will never be exhausted. If we rely on Christ and His Spirit, the church will run and not grow weary, we will walk and not faint. When we try to minister in our strength, we get tired. When we allow the Spirit to energize us, then we have all the strength we need to accomplish God’s mission of feeding the whole world, the 5000. Let’s talk about the spiritual meaning of 12. To get 12 we multiply 3 times 4. 3 is the number of the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 4 is the number of the world. 4 points on a compass, North, South, East and West. So 12 is God multiplying Himself in the world. That’s why there were 12 tribes of Old Testament Israel. That’s why there were 12 New Testament Apostles. When God multiplies Himself in the world through His Spirit and through His church, there will always be more than enough resources.

So I encourage you reader, if you have been born again and then later baptized with the Holy Spirit. I encourage you to go forth and know your God and then do exploits for Him! You might think that you have nothing to offer, that the food you have is SMALL, just like the disciples saw it. Yet, if you come to Jesus and pray to the Father in His name, He will hear and He will bless and equip you with His Word and His Spirit, so that you can be a BLESSING to the nations. Start small in ministry. Start with your “50”. Those who are in your sphere of influence in your day to day life and those you interact with on the phone and the internet. As you are faithful with little, God will make you ruler of much. He may join your efforts with others so that together you can reach the whole world, the 5000. Go in peace and be led forth with joy, in the power of Christ’s Spirit, amen!

Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born.

Acts 22:27-28

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

Romans 3:24

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

Romans 8:32

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

Revelation 22:17

When the Apostle Paul said that he was free born, he was talking about his Roman citizenship. He could have just as easily been talking about his citizenship in heaven through being born again by the work of Jesus Christ. That is what we will be discussing today. I want to discuss how the sacrifice of Christ is given freely to whosoever will receive it. The only requirement Christ has is that we die to ourselves daily and pick up our crosses and follow Him in the path of sacrificial love. No greater love has a man than that he lay down his life for his friends. This is the sacrifice we are called to imitate through the Spirit of God which is likewise freely given to us.

It is a travesty that Antichrist religious churches don’t allow the born again experience into Christ to be freely received. They rob the people by preaching tithing, which is an Old Testament doctrine that has been wrongly carried into the New Testament, because of the love of money by wolves in sheep clothing. God’s gifts are given without money and without price. All we need to show God is a humble spirit. If we have that, He will freely pour out His grace upon our lives.

But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

Acts 8:20

It is wrong thinking to believe we can buy God off with money. God owns the cattle on 1000 hills. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. No man can bribe the Lord into salvation or the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. God requires the humble and contrite heart. God requires that we love Him by keeping His commandments. There is no other way to prove our love to God than through obedience. The gifts of God are free as far as money is concerned, but God does not give grace to the proud in heart. He gives freely to those who are poor in spirit and meek in heart. Surrender your life up to Christ today and He will raise you up for His glory.

When something is freely given, it shows the heart of the Giver. God is the giver of all good things. Every good gift and every perfect gift comes from above. We need to learn to trust God and His giving heart. He doesn’t want to exclude anyone from His wonderful salvation through Christ. That’s why it is monetarily free. The naturally poor people can receive of the goodness of God just as much as anyone else. God is no respecter of persons. Money doesn’t impress God, only a soft and gentle heart that receives His Word. The best thing we can do is to receive the love that God achingly wishes to bestow on mankind.

The gifts of the Lord make rich and add no sorrow with it. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty and freedom! The free gift delivers us from the bondage of sin and separation from God to a holy relationship with God founded on His Word. The Apostle Paul was freeborn both naturally and spiritually. His heart was to make the gift of God free to all people. He had the right to receive money from those he ministered to, but he never wanted people to say he did the preaching for the money. So, Paul labored with his hands as a tentmaker, just to support his own ministry. I am humbled by the example of Paul, who did what the Spirit of God led him to do. This blog will continue to be free of charge to all who want to read it. There will be no appeals for money here. I want your life to be transformed by the rightly divided word of Truth, the Bible. Glory to God forever. I encourage you as a minister of the Truth, to always make your ministry without charge. As you go forth in faith, the Lord will provide your needs.

Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart. If you want to impress the Lord or cause Him to marvel, you can do that through faith in His Word. You can do that through a humble heart of love, as He leads you into such a transformed heart. God and you, working together in a holy partnership of love. This is the beauty of the Christian walk. God bless you as you serve Him freely in Spirit and in Truth, amen.