THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES.

(John vi:1-14.)

I. The Analysis.

1. Jesus leaving Galilee, verse 1.

2. The gathering multitudes, verses 2-5.

3. The incomparable Teacher, verse 3 (see parallel accounts in Matt., Mark, Luke).

4. The hungering multitudes, verse 5.

5. The impotent disciples, verses 5-9. See "Heart."

6. Feeding the multitude, verses 10, 11.

7. Gathering the fragments, verses 12-14.

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

Christ commands the impossible; with Christ the impossible becomes possible—that is manifestly the core truth here. It is a parable in action, this feeding of the five thousand; a parable of interpretation, for it explains the whole mystery of the co-working of God and man; a parable of this dispensation, for it illustrates the method of the dispensation.

Christ commands the impossible. Five barley loaves and two small fishes were too few for so many. When our Lord said: ''Give ye them to eat" (Matt, xiv:16), He told them to do what they were wholly unable to do. The enterprises of Christ are all humanly impossible. When he ordered twelve unlettered, untravelled fishermen and Galilean villagers to assault Judaism in its central stronghold, Jerusalem, and then to attack the heathen world system, a system organized by the immense skill and experience of Satan, and intrenched in the high places of the earth. He flung a handful of spring water against Niagara. And His ethic is just as impossible. When He tells us that we are perfectly identified with Himself, and that therefore we are to ''Walk worthy of the Lord, unto all pleasing," He commands what men cannot do. The yoke of the law, which neither the Apostles nor their fathers were able to bear, was child's play compared to it.

When His Word requires that our hearts shall hold an unceasing song of gratitude, and be filled with humility (Eph. v:19-21), He requires the impossible.

But with Him, all this becomes so possible as to seem axiomatic. Five barley loaves and two small fishes plus the creative power of Almighty God, are enough, not for five thousand daily, but the whole world. Twelve unlearned men plus the Holy Ghost, are enough to deliver souls out of the power of the very Sanhedrin itself, and, in three centuries, to drive heathenism from the throne of the world. A saved sinner, weak as water in himself, and the sport of the demons, may, in the power of the same Spirit, beat back Satan, and (an even greater victory) dethrone self and enthrone Christ over the kingdom within.

And note: Doubtless Christ could have set aside the human instrumentality entirely. His own hands were sufficient for the task that day, and all the days, and all the tasks ever since. Not only so. He could have used the angels. It was not imperative that He should have us, but it was His plan. He made it part of the eternal counsels that as the salvation of mankind was entrusted to a Man, so the tidings of that salvation should be carried to man by man. But from the first messengers to the last, it is part of the plan that the power shall be of God. The sense of this is almost the lost sense of the churches of Christ. Organization, money, high training—these, which are but the loaves and fishes of the great enterprise, have been made the ground of confidence. Like the prophet's servant on Dothan, we need to have our eyes opened to see that the mountain round about us is full of the horses and chariots of the fire of the Lord.