This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Waterford Lakes, East Orlando. Visit us online at christkingum.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. Well, in case you weren't here in the beginning of the service, this morning is kind of just a little bit of a strange morning. Scott, who's our senior pastor, is in the mountains in Tennessee, which is God's country, which I'm from there, and I can say that that's the truth that it is God's country. He's in the mountains in Tennessee with his son. And John, who is our, our internal, our, our pastoral intern, was scheduled to preach this morning, and was going to be preaching this morning until his wife's water broke early this morning, and they are now in the hospital giving birth to their second child. So I knew that I was going to be leading worship, and then I got a call from Scott a to clock saying, John's water broke, we're kind of in a pinch, and so this morning you're getting a little bit of a pinch hitter for the preaching this morning, and just because of that, it'll, it'll probably be a little bit more reflective of my nature, just as the way I process God's Word, which is often a lot more probably reflective than exogetical, rather than taking God's scripture and saying, this is what the scripture is saying, and this is how we apply it to our lives, this morning maybe a little bit more contemplative and reflective, and I'm okay with that if you are, and if you're not okay with that, then I'm sorry, because that's what you're getting anyways. And also, we'll seek to be brief this morning. I know that it's really uncomfortable with there not being air conditioning, and so I'll, I'll seek to be brief this morning, and so what I would love for us to, to look at this morning is, is a text from Matthew 14, and you can be turning there if you had a like, or you can just listen. One of Jesus's good friends, and in fact his cousin was John the Baptist that went before Jesus, and John the Baptist's life in ministry was a life in ministry of saying, I'm not the guy, there's someone that's coming after me that is greater than I am. John's whole life was about pointing to Christ, pointing others to Christ, reminding them of who he was and what he was here to do. And at the beginning of Matthew 14, John the Baptist has been imprisoned, and then he has put to death. And so even as we come to Matthew 14, verse 13 this morning, we can begin by remembering and realizing Jesus is fully God, yet fully man. Jesus is, is caught with grief and remorse over the loss of his dear friend and cousin John the Baptist. And we get that because it says that when Jesus heard this, when he heard that John the Baptist had been put to death, he withdrew from there and aboot to a desolate place by himself. And so I'll even pause there for a second, and just note, if we're to follow Christ, if we're to be those that follow Christ and love Christ, we will often find ourselves going to desolate places. We may or may not choose that ourselves, but we may just in the nature of living our lives and following Christ, find that we wander and stumble into places that are desolate. Desolation is a place that is lacking in life, it is no avoidive life, it's a place where it's barren. It's not a fruitful place.
And so as we follow Christ, we see that he himself goes to barren places. He goes to desolate places. And so if our savior that we are to follow and to model our lives after goes to desolate places, we too will most likely find ourselves in desolate places. Places where there is no life, where it feels like hope is lost, where it feels like there is no hope for new life, for new fresh things to come into existence. Where in your life right now, or in the past or future do you feel the desolateness of life? What if that's a place that Jesus does can and wants to meet you? How much might we miss of Christ if we seek to avoid desolate places? So going forward, and when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Now what is evening, the disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place and the day is now over. Send the crowds away and go to the villages and buy food for them. So the disciples are just acknowledging what we've already acknowledged. There's no food here. There's no market, there's no target that you can run to and get your groceries, or no whole foods if you want to be on the upper side and get your organic produce. There's no place where you're going to be going to get nourishment. These people have come a long way and they're going to be needy. They're going to be tired, they're going to be hungry. And so the disciples are thinking and saying, you need to send them back. But Jesus said to them, they need not go away. You give them something to eat. And actually, let me even back up to just point this one thought out. What does Jesus do in the desolate place? The text talks about that people who are sick, people that are wounded, people that are broken. In the desolate place, that's where Jesus is healing that which is broken.
What if in the desolate place is in your life this morning, God in his timing is and will heal the places in you that are broken?
And so Jesus says, they need not go away. You give them something to eat. They said to him, but we only have five loaves here and two fish. And he said, bring them here to me. Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass and taking the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up to heaven and said, a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all they ate were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of the broken pieces left over and those who ate were 5,000 men besides women and children. And so not only is Jesus healing what is sick and broken, but he's also feeding that which is hungry. He's feeding those that are hungry. What is it in our hearts and our souls, the places that are sick and weary and hungry? How much we might miss out on God's nourishment? And care for our hearts and souls by avoiding the desolate place. And I guess I would just throw out, there are two ways that we can move into desolate places. One would be just naturally in the course of our lives, I think that there's enough brokenness in this world that we will find ourselves there, whether we choose it or not. And when we find ourselves there, we can run from it and we can ignore it. Or we can embrace it and say, God, unless you are meeting me here, I will be a starving crippled man or woman that is incapable of anything until you feed me and you heal me.
And maybe one other way that we can intentionally seek to meet Christ in the desolate places is by making time and space in the midst of our lives. I know that I've talked before on Sunday morning about how full and busy our lives are. I think sometimes we're so full and busy that our souls and our hearts don't even have room to breathe. What would it mean for you to cultivate quiet into your life? What would it mean for you to cultivate rest in your life as a way of cultivating desolate, a desolate quiet place in which Jesus can meet you?
And so the other thing that we see in this text is Jesus providing the foundation for the Eucharistic life which he later at the end of his ministry introduces us to. What does that mean? It's a forefold movement of Jesus taking blessing, breaking and giving. Each Sunday morning as we come and celebrate the sacraments, Scott walks us through that process where it says, on the night he was betrayed, Christ took the bread and when he had given thanks, when he had blessed it, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, do this in remembrance of me. And if we were to take the Eucharist, if we were to take the Lord's supper in remembrance of him, I would submit that I think that God is doing the same thing in our lives in order that we might remember in order that we might be a reminder to those that he's put in our lives. So what does it mean for Christ to take us, to bless us, to break us and give us? Because that's what he's doing in this text. He takes the five lows and then he looked up to heaven and he said a blessing. Then he broke the lows and gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the crowds. I heard a story recently on NPR of a man who was adopted. He had grown up in an orphanage and there's kind of this almost seemingly cruel thing that happens in this orphanage where parents would come and they would pick up a child and take him home kind of for a trial run for two weeks. Just to see how the child would do in their home to see how they would do with the child. And as this man is telling his story, he says, you know, I remember the first time that I came and got picked up and I sat in the front seat of the car of the family and they were talking and the whole time and they were laughing and they were telling stories and they were asking questions and there was a lot of excitement and joy because I felt like that I was going home that no longer was I going to be among the orphans who in this orphanage, all the orphans shared jackets. There were literally a hundred jackets that would just be thrown on a table and they would grab one when they would go out. And none of them owned their own toys. They were just piled in a pile and you would grab the one that you wanted. So this child, this boy was going from a place of owning nothing, having nothing to his name, having no one to call his own, having no one calling them, calling him their own. To going to a home where he felt like this may be the home that I've always wanted. This may be the place where I am loved and known best. This may be the place where I'm giving gifts and and and and and and delighted in. And and so he tells of the drive being a joyful thing. And after a few days, they start making another drive back. And what he notes is that it's a lot more quiet and somber. There's no more questions. There's no more laughter. There's no more stories. There's silence. And he begins to realize what this pattern is is it is repeated once and twice and three times where our family will pick him up and there's joy on the ride home. But then on the ride back to the orphanage, there's sadness because they realize they don't want him. And he's not what they were wanting. He's not what they're hoping for. And so this young man, this man as he's telling his story says that as a young man, he he began to give up hope that he no longer believed that that he was going to ever be adopted. And so he just kind of made peace with the fact that he would live in this orphanage's whole life. And until there was one day that he started noticing that there was a family that came day after day after day that just stood in the corner and watched him, watched him play, watched him interact. And he began to wonder what that was about. And ultimately, after about a week of this, they came over and they talked to him and they said, we would love to take you home. And he said, no, that's okay. I'm fine here. And they said, no, we want to take you home for good. We're not going to bring you back. And they pulled out a hat to give to him and a coat to give him and a toy to give him to give him a stuffed animal, I don't remember what it was, but they gave him a stuffed animal. And as he's telling the story, he's telling from the perspective of just having gone through the attic of his parents' house who had just both passed away. And he was going through a cubby of stuff in the attic and he found the hat and he found the jacket and he found the stuffed animal. And he remembered what it was like to have been chosen. To have been taken and chosen by these parents who said, I want you. You are mine. And so this morning, as we think about the life of being taken, blessed, broken and given, that is our story that amongst all the others, amongst our brokenness and messiness that God has looked at us and called us by name and said, I choose you. You are mine. And that changes everything. We're given a new name. We're given a new identity that changes everything about us. And because of that, just like these parents, we are blessed, these parents blessed this young man by giving him gifts, by giving him clothing, by giving him toys. And as we are taken and blessed, God is simply this morning blessing us with Himself. The way that God shows us His favor and blessing is by giving us Himself. And in this past week, I was at high school camp with some of our high schoolers to elevate and was just struck with this idea. At the end of most services here on Sunday mornings, you will hear Scott give the benediction where he says, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon me and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance to you and give you peace now and evermore. What if this morning one of the ways that God wants to bless you and bless those in your lives is through being in a relationship with one another? We this morning are all image bears. We all reflect the image of God's glory. And so if God blessing us means that He is giving us more of Himself, I would submit to us that one of the greatest ways that God blesses us is the ways that we get to see Him in the heart and soul of one another. So maybe consider who are those that have been given to you and to whom have you been given to see the glory of God in their lives? So we are taken, we are blessed, and then we are broken. And this is the part that's not so fun. I like being taken. I like being chosen. I like being, you know, when you're out on the courts in school and you get chosen first in dodgeball, that feels really good. I like being taken. I like being blessed with gifts. I don't so much like being broken. And I would just again point us back to the idea that it is in the broken places. It's in the desolate, the lifeless places that God wants to heal what is broken and He wants to feed what is hungry. We can seek with all of our energy to avoid brokenness. We can seek to control and to avoid our suffering and our brokenness. We being image bears have great capacity to impact into shape our worlds. And we can try to avoid brokenness. We can try to avoid suffering. But we miss out on so much when we do. So this morning, if you are in a place where you, where life feels undone, where life feels broken, what would it mean for you rather than running from that to embrace that, to be okay with being in that place, to accept it, to be broken by your brokenness? And ultimately, we're not broken just for the sake of being broken, but we're broken for the sake of being given. It's after Jesus breaks the bread that He gives it. And so I would again simply ask to whom are you being given as you are being taken blessed broken? Who are those in your life that you are being given to? Who are those that God wants to reflect His glory to by your presence in their lives? And so we're taken blessed, broken, and given. And lastly, after they had all eaten the 12 baskets, the 12 took up baskets full of broken pieces left over. And so if we were to be disciples, followers of Christ, we will find ourselves in broken, in desolate places. We will find ourselves being taken blessed, broken, and given. But we're also to be like the disciples in that we pick up the broken pieces, where we see the brokenness and others we go and pick it up and offer dignity to those that are broken. Who are those in your life that you see brokenness in? Who would it mean for you to go and walk with them in that brokenness to pick up the broken pieces and bring them to the Lord? Maybe it's as simple as praying. Maybe it's as simple as sharing a meal and asking about it. Maybe it's as simple as sitting with, being with in silence and not saying a word. Maybe it's as simple as weeping and crying with. So if we're to be disciples, we pick up the broken pieces and bring them to the Lord. And so lastly this morning, I'll just say this, and maybe this is selfish. This is a selfish word. Like I keep coming back to the parable of the of the lost sheep where Jesus is talking about. There's a shepherd that has 100 sheep and one of them wanders far off and he leaves the 99 to go find the one. And of late that comforts me greatly because of late I find myself fearing some of the places that I feel like I'm a heart and soul that I'm at. I feel scared about the places. I feel at times worried about what it means if I'm broken. I feel myself concerned at the times that I'm not feeling taken or blessed. And so this morning, wherever you are in that in that pattern of being taken, blessed, broken or given, what I would say is this, there is nowhere. There's no pasture or plain so far that God's spirit won't track you down and bring you back. We don't intentionally seek to wander but we do wander because we are broken sinful people. There's nowhere so far that God won't continue to look at us in the eye and say, I choose you. You are mine and because of that I'm going to bless you with me. And so we rest. We rest in the truth that God's spirit is restoring us himself again and again no matter how far we wander,
taken, blessed, broken, given. God meets us in the desolate places and sometimes I don't even believe that in my own heart. It sounds really good but God may you and your spirit allow us to sink into the truth that that is. Would you allow us to experience that from you even in this day and the places that we are broken? Would you gather up the broken pieces? God, would you give us ears to hear you choose us? You bless us. You rejoice over us with singing. Would you give us ears to hear that?
Would we turn from our striving and our own power to get it right but rest and trust in the fact that you are at work. You are taking us blessedness, breaking us and giving us that we don't have to get it right but that you are doing that in us. Would we rest in that?